Carmi and I are members of the Charlotte FCC chapter. It’s tough for us to be extremely involved because so many of the meetings and activities are in south Charlotte which is a rather long drive for us.

However, this morning some families from the north Charlotte area got together at a park in Cornelius for a picnic and playdate for our children. There were actually two Chinese boys who came and that is a rarity!

A few of the families left a little early but here are the young ladies who hung around to the end and played together. We only planned for our gathering to last until 2:00 pm but we didn’t get away until almost 3:30.

I received an email this morning from our case worker, Virginia, with CWA. Much to my surprise, there were 3 updated pics of Karys!

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I arrived home at lunch today. There were two Priority Mail packages in the mailbox...one addressed to me and one addressed to Carmi. I opened mine to find my newly-renewed passport.

Both of our passports had already expired this year. Everything we were reading about passports said that renewals could take 4-6 months to process which didn’t look very good considering we hope to travel in 3 months or less.

On June 11, Carmi wrote the checks and mailed our forms including extra money, of course, for expedited processing. Here it is only 16 days later and we have them in hand.

I told Carmi this surely must be an indication that we’ll be traveling soon!

Eliana and I were scarfing down some food at the kitchen table earlier this evening before heading to the church for Vacation Bible School.

She asked, “What was the name of the girl that came to our room at the beach? Anna or Annie?”

“That was Anna, sweetheart.” Anna is a 5-year-old from China adopted by some friends of ours in Charlotte. She came and played with Eliana in our room one afternoon while we were at the beach for the Reunion.

“Annie is in Kansas?”, she asked. Annie was the little China girl who came from Eliana’s orphanage. They really palled around at the beach.

“Yeah. She’s a long way away.”

After pausing for a few seconds, Eliana with a very solemn look on her face said, “I miss her.”

1:00 pm

We played 18 holes of putt-putt at Jurassic Park this morning. Eliana made 2 holes-in-one...one when I was helping her putt but another without any help at all!

3:30 pm

Me and the Shaoyang Girls (Eliana [right] and Annie from Kansas)

9:00 pm

The three musketeers at the final Reunion banquet.

There was a 2-hour meet-n-greet of just China families this morning. We met Pam and her daughter Annie from Kansas there.

We would have been in the travel group with Pam back in 2002 had it not been necessary to rush our travel plans because of our paperwork expiring. Her daughter, Annie, is from Eliana’s orphanage (Shaoyang) and the two girls share the exact same birth date.

Oh yeah...today was much better.

This journal offers a peek inside the Henderson home where you'll find two Little Empresses. Eliana stole our hearts on October 29, 2002 and Karys forever became a part of our family on September 17, 2007. Is a Little Emperor in the future?