nothing going on...

Well, today is Day 46 of waiting for LOA.
Remember, we could in hear something in 50-150 days. What a window!
I feel very much in limbo, not wanting to plan, having a lot to do, not wanting to do things too early but not wanting to wait too late. Pretty much I just look at the messes and think about things to do and then forget why I was in that room and walk back out.

Maybe I will just post a "hope" verse.

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love
we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

Lamentations 6:21-22

46 by Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Fabric??

Hi friends--
Never fear. If you think you are too late to send fabric, you aren't! I have gotten a lot but could still use more. So if you were thinking about it but felt guilty that you were too late (wow, don't I know THAT feeling?!) don't worry, be happy. But please do hurry :-).


Happy Spring!

Day 30 and a poem

We are on day:
of "waiting for approval" and recently some families have gotten approval in 32 days, but it seems like 90 days is about the average.

I came across this poem today and I am not usually one for sappy adoption poetry, but this one really got me!!

The Waiting Child

I saw you meet your child today
You kissed your baby joyfully
And as you walked away with her
I played pretend you'd chosen me.

I'm happy for the baby, yet
Inside I'm aching miserably
I want to plead as you go by,
"Does no-one want a child of three?"

I saw you meet your child today
In love with her before you met
And as I watched you take her out
I knew it wasn't my turn yet.

I recognize you from last year!
I knew I'd seen your face before!
But you came for a second babe.
Does no-one want a child of four?

I saw you meet your child today
But this time there was something new
A nurse came in and took MY hand
And then she gave my hand to you.

Can this be true? I'm almost six!
And there are infants here, you see?
But then you kissed me and I knew
The child you picked this time was me.

Copyright 1997 by Debbie Bodie

(number 30 picture taken by Lincolnian)

When are you going?

That is the most asked question, so I will answer:
Sometime between July and October 2009!
I did some obsessive counting after some obsessive statistic analyzing, all very scientific.
The next thing we wait for is our LOA, which is Approval from China. That will be 50-150 days after LID. 50 days would be the shortest someone has ever ever waited that I recall seeing and 145 days is the longest I have ever seen someone wait, and I have only seen one person wait that long. So, if you obessively count (not that I would do that), we are at day of "waiting for LOA" as we like to call it.

After we get our LOA, we then wait for TA, which stands for Travel Approval, meaning a date has been set at the US consulate in China and we know when we will travel. That takes a few weeks to a few months. Then a few weeks later, we will TRAVEL, which is the part we all want to get to!!

So you can see why the answer to "When are you going?" is often, I don't know. Which is usually a cop out but in this case, the absolute truth. Ask me when I WISH we were going. That one is easy!! YESTERDAY!!

PS--don't forget to send me quilt fabric (look 3 posts below for details) Deadline extended to April 13, so you have time!
PSS--my 17 is from Leo Reynolds on Flikr just in case that matters

New pictures already!!

Just got these from our agency today! I am thinking she is more the outdoorsy type and was NOT happy about the Glamour Shots she had to do before. I am so happy to see smiles! And we also got updated measurements. Can you believe she is almost as tall as Lilla but a few pounds lighter. They are only 11 days apart in age (Lilla's birthday is 8/6/04 and Hope/Song's is 8/17/04) and apparently will be the same size too.

Here She Is!!!

We are pleased to present our daughter!

Hope SongYi
Born August 17, 2004
In Guangdong Province, China

We talked about several American names to give her, but this weekend, Mark and I both talked about Hope, a name that has never been on any of our name lists. I just love HOPE--the girl and the word! The Bible is so full of hope, in fact, I’d say it is the thesis of the whole thing.

More details later about how all of this came to be!

She is either missing her right eye or it is very small, according to her papers. We hope (there it is again) she will be able to get a prosthetic eye one day. More on that later too.

We would love to travel in August, but it could be as late as October.

Please pray for us to just trust God. He started this and he is able to finish it and give us everything we need in the meantime! Pray for Hope to be well taken care of until we meet her.

We wait in hope for the Lord;
He is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
For we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love
rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in you.
Psalm 33:20-22

100 Good Wishes Quilt

The top of Lilla's quilt before I put the whole thing together.

Praise God we sent our paperwork (dossier) off to our agency this week and they will be sending it to China Friday!

While we are waiting for our daughter, we are working on a project that we REALLY need your help with. We are creating something called a "100 Good Wishes Quilt." I made one for Lilla. Can’t stop now!

To welcome and celebrate a new life, there is a tradition in the northern part of China to make a Bai Jia Bei, or "100 Good Wishes Quilt." It is a custom to invite 100 people to contribute a patch of cloth. The 100 patches are sewn together into a quilt that contains the good wishes from all the families and friends who contributed a piece of fabric. Really, it has just become more of a tradition in the adoption community as something to do as you wait so you don’t lose your ever-loving mind.

We love the idea of welcoming our daughter into our home with a quilt that represents the good wishes you are all sending her way.

Here is what to do if you would like to participate:

1. Choose any 100% cotton fabric that you like. It can be from old clothing or from a fabric store, or left over from a project. It just needs to be a design and color that you like. Please, not the stretchy knit kind. I found that is harder to work with for an inexperienced quilter like myself.

2. Cut two (2) 8" squares (or anything at least that large, can even be one big piece) from the fabric. This way, I can have room for error and have some extra left over to make a smaller matching doll blanket. Or, you can just get ¼ yard of fabric at the fabric store and I am glad to cut it.

3. Include your "good wish note" on a piece of paper or a notecard. I will attach a small scrap of your fabric to the note and we will place all your wishes in a scrapbook that we will give to the her. Lilla loves looking at her quilt book and remembers who gave which fabric. It is really very special.

*If there are several members in your family, please feel free to send more than 1 set of scraps if you want.

Ideas for good wishes note:

You can include a poem, Bible verse, short note...Some wishes that come to mind are faith in God, good health, perseverance, compassion, and sense of humor. Do whatever you feel. No pressure! Or just sign your name to a piece of paper if you prefer.

It would be great to get the fabric and notes before April 13 so the quilt can be completed before we go to China.

Thank you!

Katy and Mark

(if you don’t have my address, email me and I will give it to you if I don’t think you are a stalker…)

Update on Mom!

Hopefully you guys get the journal updates on my mom. If not, the great news is her scan looked good!! Everything looks the same, and if you know anything about metstatic cancer, you know that is GOOD. If you think you've never seen a miracle, well, I am thinking you haven't met my mom!! So woo-hoo! Thank you God.
Click here if you want to see her CaringBridge page.
She couldn't get chemo last week or today because of her low white count, but let's pray she can tomorrow. They are going to try again.

...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us...Romans 8 somewhere

a few photos

The volcano cake and Landon with his new guinea pig "Stripes," who is quite cute for a rodent.

Where have I been? Landon is 8!

I'm sure the 2 people reading this have wondered. :-)
Well, homeschooling has cut my computer time a lot. Which is very likely a good thing. I find I can only pop on and off to check email or my yahoo groups really quick. No time for actual thoughtful output.
And since we got home from Disney, I have been sick and just as I was getting better I hurt my neck by doing absolutely nothing. Yesterday morning I was drying my face and heard a gristly sound come from the back of my neck and pain followed. BUT it feels better today, not worse, so I can rule out most really bad things I think. Yea for getting older!

But more importantly, Landon is 8 today! Just 8 years ago, we got to Northside and about 3 hours later had a baby! Jake was 20 months old at the time.

Here he is at 6 days old:


And here we are when Landon was 4 months old and right before Jake turned 2.


He got a bike and a guinea pig. Pictures later.

As for adoption news, there is nothing new. A lot has been going on behind the scenes, but it is so hard to know what to write about in a public place! Suffice it to say, we are still waiting. So our child is still out there and it would be great if anyone wants to pray for God to bring us together with her really soon! Lilla says very often, I need company! I want my sister NOW! We will definitely update when there's something to tell.

More Disney pics:







And I'll just add in a passage I love. It throws so much in there that I am thinking of--memories of childbirth, comparing it to all the painful groaning expectation we have here on earth sometimes, the hope of heaven, us being adopted by God...

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:22-25

Hey I'll just give a shout out for Romans 8. If you read nothing else in the Bible, it's worth a look.

US immigration approval! (and Disney!)

We had a great week at Disney last week, along with my parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew. It was Lilla's first time there and it was so exciting to finally be able to do all the princess stuff! We had breakfast with princesses, Lilla got a princess makeover and we waited in line for princess autographs. We saw the Beauty and the Beast show and lilla got to introduce The Little Mermaid show. All fun things the boys would not be caught dead doing!

Also, Jake and Landon are old enough to ride the big rides now, so we rode Rock N Rollercoaster, Expedition Everest, and Space Mountain many times. I'll add more pictures once I find them! Not what I would call a relaxing vacation exactly, but very full of fun. Thanks Mom and Dad!

My mom is doing okay, trying to recover from a bad cold. She was a trooper in Disney. She will get a scan in February to see how the chemo is doing for her.

And big news! We received our I-797C in the mail today! We were approved in record time--56 days. The process is speeding up finally. A few months ago, people were waiting 120 days for approval. So, now we have everything we need to send our dossier to China. Hopefully we can get that done next week and be "DTC" as we say (Dossier to China). We are also reviewing files of some precious children. It is so heartbreaking to see so many children who, if they had been born somewhere else, would have had surgery as an infant and gone on to live a normal life. We are praying that God would lead us to the child he has planned for us and that we would KNOW His will for us.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1

words from the kids

Hi guys--this one is from Jake (age 9.5). We've been doing Ancient Egypt projects. We built a shaduf, which is a tool to bring water out of the river in Egypt. We built a model of the Nile. It is very fun being homeschooled because we have more science experiments. I don't like math.

From Lilla (age 4): I started doing gymnastics last week. I like when we did the bars because somebody helped us. I have a lot to tell. Who is reading this? One time we went to the Aquarium (in August-Katy). I got a Barbie for Christmas. I'm excited because because I will have gymnastics tomorrow. Next week we're adopting a baby (probably not next week! Katy) I can write my first and last name

From Landon (almost 8): I have already lost one tooth and another one is very loose. I have started gymnastics again. Legos are my favorite thing, and jumping on the trampoline, or tramping on the jumpoline. I think homeschooling is great because I get to be with my mom (awww...I didn't pay him, I swear-Katy).


We have to wrap this up because we want to go watch Man Vs. Wild, or Man Vs. Food. We like Men Vs. anything.

School, adoption and more

First of all, so far so good with our 3 days of homeschooling! I really have a lot less computer time, but that is probably a good thing! Here is a great post on someone's blog about "Me Time" that I think could have been me. I only had about 2 hours and 40 minutes of alone time most days, but it can get to be an idol if we let it, no matter how much time it is. I see already that I do much better when we are together for the whole day. Of course, they are still playing Legos, having TV time, playing outside and playing games, none of which involve me. But it feels like a much more natural shift between worlds.

And Mark is now making breakfast for the kids every day so I can do my Bible study and exercise, which is a lovely thing.

We're together, doing things together, then they're alone and I do a chore or two. Then we get back together and read or do work, then we all do a chore. We go to Target together and talk the whole time then come back and do some math. I don't have this constant feeling of a list hanging over my head that I am trying frantically to accomplish while they're gone. Or heaven forbid, shopping for no reason, wasting 3 hours of my day to come up with one t-shirt I didn't really need.

And Lilla no longer takes a nap (as of about Sunday!), but that has been a good transition too. I got her a huge pile of dried beans that is so far apparently very fun to scoop and dig through. She doesn't play with actual toys, mind you, but a hill of beans, yes. Right now everyone including me is having a short alone time.

In case you are worried about me, don't. I am going out with friends tonight to a tapas bar :-)

When my books arrive (of course all the books I ordered to start this were backordered!) and we move to a longer school day, I will report back! So far we are reading lots of library books on Egypt, doing multiplication and science experiments and working on our chore routine.

Adoption news: None for us! But we did get successfully fingerprinted yesterday and hope to be approved by US immigration in March. A new big list of Waiting Children was realeased over the weekend, but our agency said none of the children matched our checklist! I heard it was a lot of kids over 4, and boys too. I pray that they match with other families.

My mom has set up a CaringBridge site in case you want to keep up with her there. She is doing quite well! Praise God!! Here it is. You can register to get emailed updates when she posts them. Scroll down to "Journal" and click the link that says "Subscribe to journal update notification."

documents back and fingerprints rescheduled and other big news

Well, I guess CIS didn't know they were closed December 26 when they sent us that notice! So our fingerprints are rescheduled for January 7. It doesn't set us back any because I am sure our homestudy is still in some pile on a shelf in someone's office. I am hoping it is a very efficient, merciful someone so that we will quickly know if we need no corrections to our homestudy or even none!

Also, the UPS woman brought all of our beautiful documents yesterday, authenticated by the Chinese Consulate in Houston. They came back!! I see great beauty in perfectly executed paperwork, in some weird way. So now we have everything ready for our dossier, except the paper from CIS.

Okay, so the big news is...we have decided to homeschool Jake and Landon next semester and hopefully beyond. Who knows what child #4 will bring, but I am hopeful it will work out even after she gets home. It has been a very long, God-led path to this journey. I can't call it a destination because I have come to realize that there is no destination in this life. We never arrive or get settled and I have made an effort to stop saying "well, maybe one day when..." All we have is today.

Basically, they were doing well in a really great school with lovely teachers and I still thought constantly about keeping them home. Even though when they first started school I was so happy to be alone for once! As they get older, I see that time is so short. I can't get these years back and we were in a cycle of get up at 6am, school, get home at 3pm, homework, piano practice (or lesson), soccer or gymnastics, chores, pehaps some free play or a friend over, dinner, bed. And by 3pm I'm tired anyway! We were missing the best of each other.

Maybe more later once we start. I am terrified and excited, but I know it will be okay. As I cleaned out their backpacks last week, I found these two things I had to share.



From Jake (age 9):
"Three Wishes"
1. Give poor people in China homes
2. For all kids in the world to have food.
3. That cancer had a cure.

From Landon (age 7):
"Thanksgiving"
I'm thankful for my friends, family, food and water, school. Grandparents too. My teachers, friends, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other holidays! I'm thankful for my house and classroom. I am thankful for shelter and you should be too.


Psalm 127:3-5
Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children are a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

Logged in at CIS

So, we just found out this week that we are logged in at CIS, which is US immigration. We need their approval to adopt a child from another country. Our date is 12/5, and people have been waiting about 90 days for that approval. But the process is relatively new, and I have seen people waiting 150 days, or 59. This approval is the final piece of our paperwork! We are hoping to be matched between now and then, but that timing is another unknown piece of the puzzle. In this part of the process we also have to be fingerprinted by the FBI again, just in case we've done anything since October. It really pays to be an upstanding citizen since birth in this process. Our fingerprint appointments are at 9am on December 26. How CONVENIENT. I'm rolling my eyes as I type...

My mom got chemo yesterday, which is great, since last week her white count was so low she couldn't get it. Fluid still gone, which is great!!

FedEx woes

So got a call from FedEx. Yes, my heart was pounding...I'm thinking they will say, we are so sorry but our truck ran over your documents. No, not that bad. But the Houston Consulate no longer accepts FedEx deliveries. Huh?!! So they have to send all of our papers back to us and I have to re-send them via UPS. Have you seen Australia? (the very long Baz Luhrmann movie that is) I keep thinking of our papers saying "I sing you home to me" Please, please come back to me, papers.

My mom and I took Lilla to see the Nutcracker at the Fox Theater on Friday. She loved it (well, for about 30 minutes) and wants to know when she can be in it.




Also, here's a cute picture from our 3rd annual Garage Nativity Play. We had about 20 neighborhood kids. So cute! It was very nice to focus on God coming to earth so early in the season, as opposed to trying to just squeeze him in the last Sunday of advent.



Check out this verse that I have been pondering.

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you." John 15:9 Whoa. That is Jesus talking there. I think that means he loves us as much as God loves him. Jesus loves us as much as God loves him, his one and only son, a very part of him. Well, himself actually. THAT is what Christmas is about. God's love for us. Jesus loving us so much that he humbled himself and became a helpless baby, confined to a human body for a time so that we might know him.

Yea for mom

I'm sure my mom is so thrilled with me sharing all about her weight gains and losses but I have to share again--she has lost about 25 pounds of fluid in the past week or so! Praise God! FINALLY something worked. Lilla has been praying and praying about this and sometimes it is really nice to have a clear answer--and the one you wanted too.

Adoption news: All of our documents (except the one we are waiting for from US immigration) are at the Chinese Consulate in Houston getting their final stamps! It was very hard to seal them in the FedEx envelope and send them. Like mailing a child. Well, maybe more like a pet. But still, I labored long on them and they are precious and irreplacable! FedEx, don't lose them.

I just read this "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4:18 Jesus reading from Isaiah

Do you ever think of yourself as a poor, blind, oppressed prisoner? I don't usually, since I have a great house, I can see and I live in a free country. But I realized today as I read that, I sometimes am. Maybe more on that later.


Do you like the snowflakes?

praise time and tagged again

First of all, the diuretics or change in chemo seem to be helping my mom get rid of some of her fluid, so that is a big praise!! My family had a great Thanksgiving together. We had my parents, aunt and uncle and my brother and his wife and their son over for dinner. Jake and Landon came up with some fun additions to our dinner. First, they made handprint turkeys for everyone's place card. Then on the back they put a Thanksgiving trivia question and stumped some of the adults with questions like "What was the Mayflower Compact?" (an agreement among the Pilgrims that they would vote on all decisions and the majority would rule basically) and "In what year did the first Thanksgiving take place?" (1621) Then, this month we have been gradually making a wreath with little paper leaves on which we write what we are thankful for. So they cut out extra leaves and everyone around the table wrote something they are thankful for. We put the leaves back into the turkey can (coffee can made into a turkey by Mr. Creative Jake) and then everyone chose a leaf from the turkey, read it out loud and tried to guess who wrote it.

In other thankful news, we sent our I800A form and homestudy to CIS and are now awaiting biometrics appointments and final approval so we can send our dossier to China. In English, or for those who don't speak adoption-ese, that means we have officially gotten the ball rolling over here in the US to get permission to adopt an orphan from overseas. They have to approve our homestudy and give us fingerprinting appointments. We need this fianl approval to get the last piece of paper we need for our huge pile of papers to be sent to China. This will be the third time we have been digitally fingerprinted by the FBI in the past 4 years. Seriously! Just know there is nothing hidden about us whatsoever, if you have ever wondered if we lead a secret life. We don't. We have also gotten everything off to our agency and are officially "waiting for a match" and we are thinking we will have a little picture in early 2009! Still likely won't travel until about fall of 2009 though.

And the tag (from Jen again)--
The Rules:
1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open it to page 56
3. Find the 5th sentence
4.Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with instructions
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the most intellectual - Pick the CLOSEST

Okay, The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease..."Any of Tory Hayden's powerful books about the psychologically damaged children she has worked with through the years..."

I tag Abbie, Sharla and Lovell.

Army of Women

Hi friends--
This is a new thing I have just heard about:
If you are a woman, please consider joining the Army of Women. It is a research initiative to get more women involved in breast cancer research. There is no obligation to participate in any studies but you will be emailed from time to time with study opportunities. Here is something concrete you can do to honor all the women (including my mom!) who have fought breast cancer and help keep our daughters and granddaughters from having to suffer.

Mom again and other randomness

So, my mom got her port put in yesterday and got her new chemo. It has the potential to burn going in, so a port will help protect the vein. She also had some fluid drained (not much) and doubled her old diuretic and added a new one. She will see her doctor Wednesday to chat about everything. The fact remains that she has now gained 30 pounds of fluid in a few months. I know she is so uncomfortable and I hate that. Lilla prays for "Mimi" as they call my mom, every night.

Here is a cute picture I caught of Jake and Lilla dancing to "The Sound of Music." He is such a good big brother! Don't tell him you saw this.



Jake and I are currently reading The Tale of Despereaux. Can't figure out italics or underlined, but it is a novel, in case you didn't know (and are annoyed at improper citation, as I am). Landon is reading it with his class right now. I am the kind of mom who makes the kids read the book before they are allowed to see the movie. That's the kind of reader I am--if you see the movie first, it ruins the book for me, plus they usually get it wrong and it messes up your ability to imagine on your own. Anyway, I am so glad we are reading it! I highly recommend the book to anyone. Here's my most recent favorite quote:

"Reader, you must know that an interesting fate...awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform."

Happy Thanksgiving!

OOhhh, and I figured out how to add my song--you can play it to see where the name of the blog came from.