Christmas thoughts

The presents are open, the girls are wiped out and watching a video and the living room looks....well, way worse than usual. Santa showed up as scheduled and enjoyed a snack of cookies and chocolate milk. He left lovely gifts for all. We even had a little snow earlier today. It was very pretty, enough to turn the grass white for a while, but it's too warm to stick.

Bethany definitely figured the present thing out quickly. She also understood the whole Santa thing, but seeing him in person was a different story. We saw him twice and both times she screamed and refused to sit on his lap (same reaction she had to Chuck E.Cheese). Annie, however, ran right up to Santa, plopped herself down and finally had to be dragged away both times.

Both girls did very well over the last couple of days but are pretty overwhelmed at this point. We are starting to get some crying and irritation from two tired, tired girls. Luckily we are planning a quiet afternoon. We both have to work tomorrow and Annie will be at the YMCA program and Bethany at preschool.




On the other side of the world, a little boy has found out that he has a family of his own. Our package to Jack arrived in Beijing last week and was forwarded on to Hefei. We don't know exactly when it got there but we are choosing to believe that it arrived on Christmas and also that it was actually given to him (this isn't always the case depending on the orphanage). Two of Jack's best friends have gone home with their parents in the last couple of months, so we are hoping and praying that he now knows that he has his very own family, who loves him and can't wait for him to come home. Last night at Christmas eve, he even got presents from his new grandparents and Aunt and Uncle.




We also have Katie in our thoughts. We hope she is warm and cozy with her aunties and that she is happy and content. We are hoping that after the first of the year we can finally get a fund set up to help with her medical expenses so she will be able to have surgery to walk better.

Three years ago Charlie and I spent our 7th married Christmas together with our usual Christmas eve celebration in Salem and a relaxing and quiet Christmas day. Although we had been talking about adoption on and off for several years, we never dreamed that in less than a year, our lives would be changed forever for the better when Annie came home. Eighteen months later, Bethany joined our family and it all happily changed again. And now we wait for Jack, who has no real idea of the changes coming for him and for us. We are so very lucky and can't imagine our lives without our children. Quiet and relaxing has given way to loud and wonderful, with more love than we could have ever imagined.

We give thanks this Christmas for the blessing of our family and pray for all those children around the world that are waiting for a family to bring them home and love them forever.

Merry Christmas Eve

It's late on Christmas eve, the girls are still awake but are being slowly convinced it's time to go to bed since NORAD shows Santa is in Arizona! We had a lovely day. At noon, we attended the annual Tuba Christmas. Mom has been playing in it for many years and we've been attending just about as long. This year there were 144 tubas playing Christmas carols. The girls (and cousin Ben) didn't quite have the patience to sit through it all, but it was fun as usual, even when I was listening from the lobby.

After that, it was on to Grandma and Grandpa's house for lunch and presents. The girls had so much fun opening the gifts. This is Bethany's first Christmas and she definitely understands the whole process. We've always had the tradition that the youngest child opens the first gift and then it goes in order of age and she was more than willing to fulfill her youngest child duties this year. Here's a couple of pictures....







Off to bed, hopefully certain small girls will be asleep shortly and wake to find that Santa has come! More tomorrow

Counting down to Christmas

Hard to believe it's just about 10 days to Christmas! Both girls are very excited. The other day Bethany told me on the phone that Santa was coming down the chimney and he has a big tummy, "just like BaBa!!" We have a gorgeous tree (only one pet-related mishap so far) and Charlie has done his usual wonderful job decorating the yard. We always have the prettiest house on the street at Christmas.

Last night was Bethany's Christmas program at school. Each preschool class sang a couple of songs and recited Bible verses. Bethany's teacher told us she did very well in memorizing everything and she certainly wasn't scared about being in front of a crowd (she waved and blew kisses to us several times). One of the songs required the kids to count to 10 several times and she was the loudest of all, making the audience laugh.

Bethany was so excited this week to talk to her friend Harrison on the phone again. They really have an amazing bond. The look of her face when they talk is hard to describe. She has learned to write her name and we mailed him off a card this week from her, which included a picture of her for him to keep. We were also excited recently to get an email from a family in The Netherlands. They adopted Annie's best friend. We have pictures of this little girl and had known she was being adopted at the same time we adopted Annie, but we didn't know where her family was. It's such a gift for both our girls to have contact with the other children who were so important in their lives. We already know of two families that have adopted close friends of Jack and hope we can keep in contact with them also.

Speaking of pictures, here are a couple more from the photo session a few weeks ago.

We finally got Jack's care package mailed off this week. It goes to the wonderful, Kathy, our agency rep, in Beijing first and she will translate the letters and mail it off to Hefei. So he should have it in 3 weeks or so. We sent him a Spiderman t-shirt, some toy cars, and the special Ultraman Jack action figure. We also sent a LA baseball cap for his foster dad, some fancy soap to his foster mom and a puzzle, stickers, toy cars and fruit snacks for the other kids in his home. And of course, we sent a picture album of all of us, the house and some postcards of Portland. There is a great website called Babelfish where you can type in any word or phrase and get a translation in any language. I made captions for all the photos in both English and Chinese ("Your sister Annie...etc"). It's cool to imagine Jack getting this package and knowing he finally has a family of his own!

New pictures

Wow, we've had a good couple of days for pictures. We got Christmas pictures done last night. The girls were all dressed up in the gorgeous dresses Grandma got them for Christmas. They did really well for about 1/2 hour or so and then things got pretty silly. Luckily we were the only customers and the two women working there are great with kids. So here is our favorite- more of these later.

And we got some new pictures of Jack from a family who is in Hefei right now. It really is weird to see what he was doing just a few hours ago. The mom said that he seems very happy and helpful and that he has beautiful eyes!

Early Thanksgiving

Today we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The girls, as always, loved seeing their grandparents and of course Aunt Joan, Uncle Chris, Ben and Mary. Grandma got them the most amazing Christmas dresses - here's a little preview

Catching up - Part 2

Last night we went to see cousin Mary in the ballet of "Little Women." It was really interesting and Mary was wonderful. Bethany is much more interested in the whole dance thing and was very quiet and attentive during the whole performance (on Aunt Joan's lap). Annie was a little more restless, but enjoyed it also.

Catching up again

So I haven't posted in a while it seems. Not too much new. Things are getting busier as the holidays come up. We are still working on our dossier for Jack - got our first set of fingerprints done last week and ordered the certificates. Bethany had her first visit at Shriners, with the best results we could have hoped for- she does actually have 5 fingers on each hand, with normal joints up to the first one of each finger. So they can separate the final two on each hand and she will have 10 fingers. Scheduling for surgery is out to next July, but she is so good with her hands now that we can wait. We are very lucky.

The girls enjoyed Halloween, though it was very cold and they didn't want to stay out too long.

A few days later, with some of the last good weather of the fall, we visited the park. Annie was thrilled because, for the very first time, she was able to hang from the bars all by herself. It helps to have all 10 fingers!

Ultraman Jack

We were so excited last night to get some new pictures of Jack from a family in China right now. The pictures had been taken only a couple of hours earlier. Not only do we have some great pictures of Jack, but we have pictures of his classroom, teachers and friends. It turns out this family's new son is one of Jack's friends. The new mom had this to say about Jack:

"Another little boy and Jack are very close to Carson! They nearly FLIPPED when they saw him!! The got closer and were quite impressed with his Ultraman shoes (a goofy Japanese cartoon that the boys in Carson's class are quite familiar with -- Ultraman action figures are a great gift idea if you have time to shop before Gotcha! We found them at the Lotus Center, a WalMart type store within walking distance of the Sofitel.) They were both very outgoing and laughing the whole time we were there."

We are getting ready to send our first package to Jack so will be going on an Ultraman action figure hunt tomorrow. It makes me so happy to think of him getting this package, finding a toy he will love and learning for the first time that he has a family.

Annie Halloween 2006 and 2007

What a difference a year makes!

Pumpkin Patch

Best Friends Forever

I am a little late in posting this, but week before last Bethany was able to talk to her friend from Guangzhou. They are only 3 weeks apart and we think they probably spent almost their entire lives together. They definitely have a special bond. Bethany has been talking about him since we came home and makes up little songs about him. We are so lucky that we were able to make contact with his new family, who lives in Florida and find out that he came home a month or so ago. It turns out that he has been talking about her a lot, too. His new dad is Chinese so they are able to communicate with him well.

Anyway, we set up a phone call with them and the look on Bethany's face when she realized who she was talking to was just amazing. They talked for about 1/2 hour, a lot of which was Bethany saying "Whatcha doin?" and him repeating that. But they understood at least part of the conversation as she told me several days later that he has a new father and mother and house, and she said he told her that.

His family is really nice and we plan to keep in contact. It would be wonderful for them to meet up in person sometime!

Bethany Turns 5!

My Friend, the Balloon

Yesterday was Bethany's 5th birthday. We are having a little party tomorrow afternoon so will post more after that. We did take cupcakes and ice cream to her preschool yesterday which all her friends enjoyed thoroughly.

I had a balloon that people at work had given me for my birthday and it was still looking good so I brought it for Bethany. When she saw it, she yelled "BALLOON!!" and came running across the room to claim it. Sadly, as we were getting into the car, there was a tragedy - Balloon took off into the sky, sending Bethany into hysterics. We had to stop to get her another one on our way to dinner.

After a little while I could hear her talking to herself in the back seat. I finally made out what she was saying..."Don't go Balloon, 'kay? "Kay Balloon? Please don't go." Balloon #2 made it safely home and she slept holding on to it.

It's time to announce....

Annie and Bethany are getting a little brother!! Ke turned 4 years old on August 1. He lives in China in a really good orphanage that is supported by Half the Sky. He is actually in a foster care family. We don't know how long he's been with them. In this SWI, the foster families live right on the grounds, in apartments, and the kids attend school there. He's in kindergarten and doing well. We've been blessed in that we know several people who have actually met him, we have a lot of pictures and even some video of him taken last summer.

We had talked about adopting another child when we were in China last time. We were actually thinking about an older boy in a couple of years. Ke was on our agency's waiting list last fall and I had been following him, hoping that he found a family. He did, but something fell through and right after we got back from China, he was available again. I remember writing an email to the Heritage adoption Yahoo group about Ke in June, saying if only...we hadn't just come home, etc, etc....but the more we talked and thought about it, the more it seemed possible that we could be his parents.

After talking to the wonderful Vicki at Heritage and researching his medical condition, we took a deep breath and sent our Letter of Intent to China on August 30th. On September 20th we received our Pre-Approval from China. So Ke is officially matched to our family! We have to wait one year from our last travel approval to send the rest of our paperwork, which will be April 19th. So we have some time to work on the house, save money and, in my case, lose weight.

We are very happy to be adding this little boy to our family. Annie and Bethany are already planning the games they will play!

Here are some pictures of Jackson Chunke Brundage (we are almost sure that's his name). He's a very handsome guy, our son!

Dinner out

Last night we had dinner with the Clarks - Ruth, Troy and Annalynn, who is 2 and came home from Hefei earlier this year. We had great fun and Ruth took this cute picture of the 3 Heritage girls!

The Return of Coat

Coat is back and Dr. Grizzly is much relieved.