Saturday, June 30, 2007
FCC North picnic
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.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
More pictures of Karys
I received an email this morning from our case worker, Virginia, with CWA. Much to my surprise, there were 3 updated pics of Karys!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Our passports are here
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!
{extended}Monday, June 25, 2007
Annie is in Kansas?
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.”
{extended}Saturday, June 23, 2007
2007 Myrtle Beach - Day 4
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.
Friday, June 22, 2007
2007 Myrtle Beach - Day 3
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.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
2007 Myrtle Beach - Day 2
Oh yeah…today was much better.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Closet capers
I ran into some friends of ours, Skip and Melissa, here at the resort who adopted their first daughter just a week before we adopted Eliana in 2002. They have since adopted a second time from China.
I called Carmi and we met up with Skip and Melissa in their room which is just a few doors down from ours. Eliana was shy at first around Anna (5) and Lilly (3) but it didn’t take long for the three musketeers to warm up to each other. The squealing soon started and we laughed at their antics.
They didn’t want us to take their pictures so they ran into the closet and closed the doors. You’ve never heard such giggling and whispering. I snuck over to the closet, quickly opened one of the doors and Carmi snapped a picture before they scattered like roaches.
CWA Family Reunion 2007
Our adoption agency is sponsoring a Family Reunion at Myrtle Beach, SC from Thu, Jun 21 to Sun, Jun 24.
We came to Myrtle Beach a day early and arrived a little past 3:00 in the afternoon. This is the view from our balcony. There must be a category 1/2 hurricane going on outside with the rain and wind.
If you squint just right, you might be able to see the pounding rain.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Talking with Auntie Jen
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Charlotte Dragon Boat Festival 2007
We went to the Charlotte Dragon Boat Festival today.
My day started at 7:00 am as I left before Carmi and Eliana were even out of bed. I had been invited to paddle in a dragon boat for the Little Lotus dance troupe and the team was required to check in by 8:00 am at the park.
There were 30 boats in this year’s race. Five boats raced in a heat which means there were 6 heats in the first round. Our first heat was at 9:30 and we came in 1st place.
It might look like I’m laughing in this picture but trust me…it’s a grimace. I haven’t worked this hard in a long time.
Carmi and Eliana arrived right after we completed our 2nd heat.
Our 2nd heat was at 12:00 pm against 4 different boats and we finished in 2nd place. By the time the entire 2nd round of heats was completed, the judges took each boat’s best time and ranked us. Our boat was 8th out of 30 which meant that we would compete against boats 6, 7, 9 and 10 in our final heat. Our final heat was at 2:50 pm and we finished 5th which meant that we finished 10th overall out of 30. Not bad.
By the end of the 2nd round, this is all I wanted to do.
A highlight of the day was meeting a lady who adopted her daughter from Guatemala through the same agency we use. Her name is Kathy and her daughter’s name is also Eliana but she is called Ellie for short. Ellie is absolutely precious.
Friday, June 08, 2007
We’ve been pre-approved
There was a message on our answering machine at lunch from Virginia who is our case worker with CWA.
She wanted to let us know that Jane, a CWA employee who lives and works in China, informed her this morning that we have been pre-approved for Karys’ adoption.
What this means is that the China Center of Adoption Affairs has looked at our Letter of Intent to adopt Karys along with the accompanying information and were satisfied with what they read. They will now seek out our dossier for review from among the thousands tucked away in some brightly-lit room.
I expect that we should see our Letter of Acceptance sometime in August.
{extended}Saturday, June 02, 2007
Pomp and circumstance
This was Eliana’s big day as she graduated from Preschool. The good news is that Dad kept it together.
