LID!!!!!!

We got our LID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you NOT in the adoption world, this is our Log-in-date. We are officially "logged in" to the Chinese adoption system. Our LID is October 23rd 2009. One small step closer to our little guy! Xinny hang on, we are coming!

Weekend at the Lake

We spent this past weekend at my parent's house at the lake. It was a beautiful fall weekend complete with color and cool temps! We started off by going on a field trip Friday to the Creation Museum in Social Circle, Ga. This was a wonderful little museum that my parents found and we all enjoyed taking in all the interesting and fascinating sights that our awesome Creator put here on this earth! We followed that with lunch at an old fashioned 50's diner complete with "poodle skirts" and juke boxes and milk shakes! The kids thought it was interesting to see what Nana and Poppy grew up with! Later that night Will joined us and he and I enjoyed an actual DATE!!!! We had a fabulous dinner in town in one of our favorite little restaurants while the kids stayed back at the lake and went on "The Haunted Trail". Sam is big into "scary things" and he didn't get to attend a Halloween party he had been invited to that involved a haunted trail. So, he requested Poppy make one for him. Well, if you know Poppy, he went all out! It was so cute/scary/creepy-right up a 7 year old little boy's alley!!!! They had a great time-of course Jaida was sound asleep during the creepy part of the night. We also celebrated Poppy's birthday-Happy Birthday Dad-I love you! I did manage to get a little shopping in at the great little shops in Madison. I love these places because they get my creative juices flowing!!! I just wish I had time to create more. Will and my dad then attended the Georgia-Auburn game in Athens while the kids and I and Nana "played" some more and then headed home. It was a wonderful weekend and enjoyed by all!

A Month of Milestones

Well over the past month or so at our house, we have celebrated/experienced several milestones. First of all we re-did Sam's room to accommodate 2 boys instead of 1! We are all ready for a little brother and the other bed looks so lonely without little Xin in it. While we were moving beds into the attic, we decided it was time for Jiada to sleep in her big-girl bed so the crib was packed away. We did not rush this event and yes, she was too old to be in a crib but she LOVED her crib so why change a great thing? Besides, I realized this will probably be my last child to sleep in a crib. So that little task was done with a few tears shed (by me, NOT Jaida). Next came Will's 45th birthday! The kids just LOVE birthdays and numbers mean nothing to them so we enjoyed that celebration! The next day we learned our dossier was sent to China!!!! One step closer to our Xin. Shortly after that Sam finally lost his top tooth! He did not get a tooth until he was 15 months old so he has been very slow to lose them. He looks so darn cute with that big gap on top now! We also experienced our first set of stitches as Julia took that honor. She rode her bike into a mailbox and gashed her finger open-YUK! Will was the lucky parent to attend that ordeal because I would have then required stitches in MY head as I would have fainted right there in the exam room! All in all it was a busy month and an event filled month and a blessed month! Thank you Lord!

Our Weekends

Well, most of the fall weekends have been taken up with soccer. Sam and Julia both play soccer and Julia did a club team this year. We have held out on this type of sport for as long as we could but this is her "thing" and she loves it!!!!! This means 3 practices a week and 3-4 games a weekend! Some are 2 hours away. It is quite an undertaking but as I said , she LOVES it! Sam and Will managed to squeeze in a UGA football game one Saturday-Will doesn't get to as many as those as he would like these days. Jaida, bless her heart, faithfully but not always cheerfully, attends most all the games and has become quite a fan of the "big" girls. She yells their names and cheers for them. She also whines and asks constantly"We go home now?" All in all, it makes for a packed weekend and I am so grateful for the home schooling because with that my kids get time to just play in the afternoons before the furious flight of driving 2 kids to 2 different practices in 2 different locations begins!

Jaida is 3!!!!!!!

My baby is 3! Or as Jaida says "free". On September 27th my baby became a "big girl" according to her (if we could only get her to agree big girls don't need passys). She was so excited about this day! We had donuts, church and a short nap and off to Funsville we went. She choose to go to Yo Pizza for dinner but alas they are closed on Sundays so we went to the old stand-by favorite-Mexican. She loved all the attention, cause you know she gets NONE any other time! We always have a birthday chair for the birthday child. It is decorated, and you ,as the birthday child, sit in it and open presents, eat cake, etc. She was quite protective of her chair and relished in this much anticipated perching point. Her big gift was a bike and she pedals those little legs as fast as she can. It was a great day! I am sad in a way that my baby is growing up but there is a season for everything. She is such an adorable little girl, full of life-smart, smart , smart, funny, precocious, loving, athletic, creative and cute as a button. We all adore her to no end! As I rocked her that night, I was flooded with emotion for her birth mother. I so often forget that I did NOT birth her but that night as I held her against me and took every part of her in, I cried for the woman who gave her life. I am so BLESSED God chose me to be her Mommy and I get to watch her grow up and love her, kiss her, laugh with her, dry her tears and tuck her in every single day. She does not-she would be so proud of her! I hope somehow God can give her the peace in her heart she needs to know that her baby is loved beyond words! I will be forever grateful to this woman for giving me this amazing gift-her child, my child, God's child. Happy Birthday my sweet Jaida!!!

Off We Go

Well, we went to Atlanta for our USCIS fingerprints(the last stage in this process) on Set. 11th and arrived 40 minutes early for our appointment, but they let us in early and we were in and out of there in 8 minutes!!!!!! For those of you that know this process, it is usually about 1-2 hours-YEAH! So we then got our approval about 10 days later and notarized the copy of our I-797(the document that gives us permission to bring an orphaned child into the USA) and Off It Went...... to our agency who will then send it off for final authentication. After THAT, then it goes to China for our official LID Log-in-Date. We will still have to wait 6-8 months until we actually have our sweet child in our arms-BUMMER but all in God's timing!!!!!!! I really am not stressing too bad about this which is quite unusual for me. It is so hard to see his face and know we still can't hold him for quite some time. I pray God will use this time for His glory in all of us. It is amazing how many months all that paper work takes! That is why they call it "paper pregnant" I guess. It sure does feel good to get that thing out of my hands-whew! Ok, on to preparing a care package for our new brother so that he can know someone ,halfway around the world ,is loving him!!!!!

"Nothin Better!"

There is "nothin better" to me than the smell of baby lotion. Just plain ole, old-fashioned baby lotion! When we first brought Jaida home I made a point to rub her with lotion after her bath. I had read that touch is so important to babies, seeing that I didn't know just how much "touch" she had received, I would rub her little body with yummy baby lotion. She would stare into my eyes as I did this and I would fall more and more in love with her. She still asks me occasionally to "do yotion Mama" so tonight after her bath I "did yotion". Of course now she has to help because "i a big dirl now". As I read, rocked and sang to her I took in that delicious scent and savored the moment remembering back to my 1st baby and 2nd baby and how I had done the same with them. I feel so blessed to be able to still hold and rock a baby covered in baby lotion 11 years later. It doesn't get better than that!!!!!!