One Year Ago....

One year ago our family received the phone call that we had been waiting for- the phone call that would change our lives forever- the phone call that would forever change the life of a little girl. We had been waiting for this call for over 3 years, but I could not believe it when the phone rang and it was the lady at our agency asking me if we would like to look at a file for a little girl who needed a home. I was shaking all over and could barely speak- of course we wanted to look at her file!!! I waited for Mike to come home from work to open her pictures in the email that our agency sent, and together we sat down at the computer and got our first glimpse of our precious daughter.



This was the child that God had chosen for us, the child that God had put in our hearts, the child that we had been praying for. When we opened her medical files, we found that all of the information from before her heart surgery was missing and there was no record about her stay in the hospital. All we had were reports that were five months old- nothing current. We had our doctors look over the little bits of information that we had about her history, but in our hearts, we knew that she was our child and we could not wait to officially accept her as our daughter. It was a true leap of faith, but we knew what God had promised us when he told us years before that our daughter was in China with a heart defect. We found it truly amazing that our sweet little girl was born at the same time that God was urging us to change our adoption application to include a little girl with a heart defect.

It is so hard to imagine what our life would be like without her as I sit here on the couch typing this with my precious little girl curled up next to me reading her Elmo book in her ladybug pajamas smelling of sweet shampoo from her bath.

A Sad Goodbye

Alex had a very sad life lesson to learn this weekend. His beloved pet hamster died while he was at school on Friday.

If you know Alex, you know that he does not really ask for much in life, but several years ago he was adamant that he was getting a hamster for Christmas. At the time, I cringed at the thought of caring for another pet in our house. However he spent the entire months leading up to Christmas asking for a hamster, naming the hamster, and telling everyone that he met that Santa would bring him a hamster. This was the first time that he REALLY wanted something, so of course Santa brought him a hamster on Christmas morning.

Alex learned a lot of responsibility in caring for Laia. He was the one that was responsible for feeding her and cleaning her cage. We all grew to love her and her silly antics. We never knew that a hamster could be so smart. She would find clever ways to escape from her cage and roam during the night. By morning she would be back in her nest along with the little "treasures" that she collected during the night. Sometimes Alex would find Laia climbing on him in the night, and when we put her cage in the bathtub at night to keep her from roaming, she turned the water to a slow, steady drip! We have more stories to tell about this hamster than you can imagine.

When Laia became sick several weeks ago, we were all pretty upset. We thought she wouldn't make it through the night and Alex went to bed teary-eyed. Even though she got better, Laia never fully recovered, and Thursday night she was barely breathing.

Sometime during the day on Friday, Alex's little friend died. When Mike came home from work, he and Alex put her in a shoebox and buried her in the backyard. My heart broke for Alex as I watched him coming up from the backyard with a shovel and tears rolling down his cheeks. He came into the house and curled up in a ball on my bed. Together, we held each other and talked about all of the good times and funny stories that Laia gave us.

Today, when the weather was finally sunny, he sat in the driveway and mixed cement in a bucket to pour into a stepping stone. He used pieces of broken glass to make a heart and stamped her name and the word "love" into the cement as it dried. When the cement sets, he will put it in the backyard to mark her grave.



Thankfully, Mike has been working for some time now to refinish a desk to put into Alex's room, and Mike was able to put the final coat of sealer on it this weekend. The table that once held Laia's cage has been replaced with an antique desk. Still, Alex says that his room feels empty without Laia. I know that this is a life lesson for Alex, but watching my little boy learn and grow up is not always easy.

A weekend of elephants, dragons, and basketballs

This was not one of those weekends of picnicking in the backyard and relaxing with a movie in the basement. This was one of those weekends to go down in the record books for being crammed full.

We started the weekend with a Friday night trip to the circus. My grandmother gave us some money as a Christmas present with the instructions have fun as a family. In her exact words, she said, "Don't spend it on plastic," which meant we were not to buy toys with the money. So, we have been waiting since December for our trip to the circus.


Anna Grace was so excited to see the elephants. Actually, she has been looking for elephants for weeks now because Mike made up the very cruel game of telling her that she can talk in the car when she sees an elephant out the window! You would have to ride in the car with our little non-stop chatter box to understand why Mike made up that game. So, she has been looking for elephants for some time now, and she finally got to see them at the circus.

On Saturday we had Cole's last basketball game at the same time as the annual Chinese New Year event with our local adoption group. Alex and I took Anna Grace to the University for her event while my mom and Mike went to cheer Cole on. They joined us at Chinese New Year after the game.

Anna Grace enjoyed spending some time with her mentor, watching the Asian performances, and playing with some of her friends. What she did not enjoy was the dragon dance. She was so terrified of the Chinese dragon that she is still asking me where the dragon has gone. Thankfully, the dragon was only in the room for a very short time and it only came near us once.




Finally, today we had the end of the year celebration for Cole's basketball team. The event was held in a high school gym and had a ventriloquist performance. We really enjoyed Cole's season of basketball this year. This was the first season that he played Upward basketball, but we loved the time that was built into the program to help the children grow spiritually. We will have a one week break from sports in our house before Alex's soccer season begins.


After the weekend that we had, our busy school week is going to seem relaxing!!

Is this normal??

Ok, friends who have little girls, I need your help. Just when I thought I was beginning to understand all of the aspects of raising a daughter I get blind-sided. Anna Grace is taking a little beginner dance class for 2 year olds. Her babysitter takes her because it is in the morning. When they asked if we wanted her to perform in the recital, I said "sure." I thought the cost of the costume was steep (like $ 58 or something like that), but I did not want Anna Grace to be left out. Now today I find out that we have to buy tickets to see her dance- they are $16 a person!!!! She will be in one little short dance on the stage and she is 2 !! Seriously??? $16 a person. It will cost a fortune to take our family to see her dance. Plus- grandparents and her sitter will want to come. Someone please tell me- is this normal???

hamsters are aMAZEing

Cole is so relieved to be finished with his science fair project (and I think I might be more than a little relieved too). We have been working on this project since early January, and Cole finally presented it to his class today. He decided to see which kind of hamster is smarter- the black bear hamster or the dwarf hamster. He and Mike built a maze and we researched methods for training hamsters to run through a maze using seeds along the path. He called his project "hamsters are aMAZEing!"

This was the first science fair project for our family. If you have ever completed a science fair project, you know how involved it is. He created a research paper, a log book with the scientific method, and a backboard. Every time we thought we were getting ahead with the project, we realized that we had done something wrong. It was two steps forward and one step back the whole way through. Cole will have to do a project next year, and then Alex will be in the 4th grade and will be completing two years of projects. (Can you tell how excited I am???) I am really hoping that now that we have learned what is expected, the next projects will be a little easier.

A Sweet Sunday

My mom recently made Anna Grace a gorgeous smocked dress. She spent hours hand stitching little rows of flowers and hearts, and I thought it would make the perfect dress for Anna Grace to wear to church for Valentine's Day.



I love how the sleeves have little ribbons that tie at the wrists.


This was the first Sunday ever that Anna Grace cried when I was leaving her at Sunday school. The minute I started to get ready to leave, her eyes welled up with big alligator tears and she said, "No, Mommy. I don't want to stay." Because of her past, we have to do things a little differently with her than we did with Cole & Alex. I never want her to feel like she is being abandoned all over again, so I promised that I would not leave her until she was ready. I stayed by her side while she ate a snack and started to play. She still did not want me to leave until she heard the teacher say that they were going to play outside on the playground. I told her that if she wanted to play outside, I was going to big church, but I would be back.
I feel like this was actually a big step for us today in the attachment process. She is such an outgoing and friendly kid that she really doesn't meet a stranger. Maybe I am the one that needed to know that she really does want me to be the one to take care of her. Attachment is a process. It doesn't just happen over night with an adopted kid. She has had so many let downs and disruptions in her life that she has learned to go with the flow. I worry that Anna Grace doesn't quite realize in her little 2-year-old mind that she is with her forever Mommy and Daddy, and she will never have to adjust to a new life again.



Anna Grace and I went to a birthday party after church. Her friend, Janie, who was adopted from Taiwan, was turning 2 and she had a party at the jumping place in the mall. Anna Grace was so excited that she was giving Janie a set of training chopsticks, some Kia-lan bubbles, and her all-time favorite Chinese cookies. Anna Grace will do anything for one of her cherished Chinese cookies, and she was thrilled to give a box of them to Janie- although she kept trying to convince me as we were driving to the party that we should only give one cookie out of the box to Janie!

I was amazed at the party to see Anna Grace scaling the climbing walls to the slides with the other 2-year-olds. I kept thinking about the baby who came to us just 9 months ago who could not even climb into her toddler bed or crawl across our bed in the hotel. And here she was, jumping and climbing and sliding with the other kids. We have truly come a long way!!

Mike's Projects

Over the last several years, Mike has been using his talents to create a special room for Anna Grace. His newest addition to her room is a little table with benches. It is hard to tell from this picture, but the table is white with green and pink benches to match her room. He also hand-painted the cherry trees on her walls to match her bedding.


One of his first projects was this cabinet to store her toys. It doesn't look so great with the space heater on top of it right now, but her room gets very cold at night and the heater keeps her cozy while she sleeps. You can't tell from the picture, but the doors are made of bead board to add a decorative touch.


This doll house was a true labor of love. Mike cut the shingles out of wood and spent many hours adding little details to the house. We still don't have furniture for it, but maybe that will be Anna Grace's birthday present in May.



My dad actually made this doll cradle for me when I was a little girl, but Mike cleaned it up and painted it pink to match Anna Grace's room. I love watching Anna Grace play with her dolls in the same cradle that I used when I was little.


This is a shadow box that Mike made for Anna Grace's traditional Chinese outfit she wore for her Red Couch photos in China. It is such a special outfit that I wanted to display it on her wall. The stain of the wood is very close to the color of her dresser and bed- that same furniture that was in my room when I was little.



Mike has used the Pottery Barn catalog for inspiration for many of the pieces that he has built. I love Pottery Barn, but most of the things in the catalog are not in our budget. Mike is thinking of building some of the little tables and benches to sell. Do you think other's will be interested in his craftsmanship?