Basketball

Now that the weather has been a little nicer consistently, the kids have enjoyed going outside and shooting hoops.

It's funny to see how each of the kids "plays basketball" differently.  Ashten for example, sees the ball more an accessory to pose with!

Preston humbles himself and uses a pink and purple ball, just so he can shoot better, have better form and score more!

Logan usually isn't into playing the sport, but if he's especially rowdy or has energy to burn, he'll go out and play around a little, dribble the ball, but always making up his own game.

Brayden is usually out there with them too, but he was at soccer practice the day I took these.  Brayden is 100% about the rules and playing the way the game is meant to be played.

Newest cousin

My sister, Clara, had her second baby boy in February and he is just adorable.  Ashten loves him too, even though he cries almost every time she holds him, she is so patient and really tries to get him to calm down before just handing him off.

Olivia's shower

My sister's bridal shower was a few weeks ago and I think this is the first shower for one of my sisters in a long time that I wasn't involved in the planning of it.  It was kind of nice, though I did help a little by making a few signs and making some spinach artichoke dip.

I love it so much when all of my sisters and I are together, which has been happening more recently than it has in a long time!

Olivia with her two flower girls, Madison and Ashten

Clara, Monica, Olivia, me

All of us Versaw girls and our girls

The shower was a lot of fun. They planned a newlywed game where they asked Olivia's fiance some questions and Olivia had to try and guess the same answer he gave.  Some were funny and some were so sweet.  I'm so excited for her wedding, just less than 5 weeks away!

Paperwork and patience

It's been about a month since I've blogged about our adoption.  There really hasn't been anything exciting going on, unless you consider paperwork exciting, in which case I hope your job is something like accountant or auditor or lawyer or something!

We have finished up almost all our paperwork and we are just waiting on one more thing until we can get everything state certified and our dossier completed (minus our I800A approval) and sent in to our agency.  Our homestudy is also totally completed except for this one thing.  It's so so frustrating to wait on someone else to complete something so we can move forward, but I am trying my best to be patient and not harass the poor guy who is supposed to be writing this letter for us.  Never mind that it has already taken him 3 weeks and he's not delivered yet.  "Patience is a virtue, she is worth it, patience is a virtue, she is worth it" is my mantra lately!!

Once we get this final letter we need, we will mail everything off to be state certified, which should only take about 4-5 days.  Then we make 3 copies of everything and mail it off, along with our next payment, to All God's Children (our placing agency) and then as far as our responsibility is concerned, our dossier is completed.  When this final letter is done, our social worker will also wrap up our home study and send it off to the various places it needs for approval.  Once that has been approved by everyone, we will mail off for our I800A, which is our immigration approval.  That is taking about 2-3 months to come back, unfortunately, another step that is out of our control.  Once we receive that letter of approval, we will make a copy, get the copy notarized, send that in for state certification and then mail to All God's Children to join the rest of our dossier.  Then our dossier will officially be complete and then sent to China for the next step.

The next step is our Log-in Date (LID in adoption slang!), which takes about 1-2 months.  Once we have our LID, we are finally eligible for a referral.  And then we wait.....  The estimated wait time for a referral after the LID is 9-12 months and then travel is 5-6 months after that.  So we are hoping and praying that we will be able to travel in 2015 to bring our little "K" home!

I saw this in a book I was reading and love it!  It means "I love you" in Mandarin.  I am planing to make some art work with this symbol and hang it up in our basement!

We love you "K", mommy and daddy are coming soon!

Celebrating 9 years of Logan

We had 3 different celebrations of Logan this year.  But he's a boy worth celebrating!! 

The first was the "grandparent party" that we did in conjunction with Ashten's.  Secondly, Logan had a friend party at our house.  He chose the theme of Despicable Me and wanted a real cake from a bakery that looked better than anything I could do on my own.  

He had 6 friends over and they had a great time just running around being silly and playing together.  He chose BLT's for dinner.

Logan thought it was hilarious when everyone was singing Happy Birthday to him. I'm not sure what was so funny, but he was having a great time with all his friends!

Presents time!

 Group picture! We didn't ask for a silly picture, I guess this is what happens when you give kids cake and then tell them to go run around and play together.

Logan made a minion out of Legos wihtout any instructions!  Great job Logan!  The smaller yellow piece is a banana.

On Logan's actual birthday, he had the day off of school, but Chris had to go back to work after Spring Break.  We spent the day watching Frozen, playing the Wii, going to the library and playing outside.  When Chris got home, we opened presents and then went out to dinner for Logan's favorite: orange chicken!  Then we came home and had cake and then Logan worked on putting together his new Legos!!