Halloween 2014

This year I was so bad about taking pictures. I barely remembered as we were headed out the door to trick-or-treating, hence the poor quality photos.

This year we had a wizard, alien, pirate and ballerina. Ashten's was a last minute costume change as she was originally going to be Jasmine. Oh well, she has no shortage of dress-up clothes and I didn't pay for either costume, so fine by me!

Crazy hair day

For Spirit week at the boys' school, one day was crazy hair day and Preston went all out!

Ten tiny little rubber bands holding little ponytails of hair all over his head. That had to hurt since his hair is so short, but he was such a trooper! He wore them all day and then wanted to wear them that night and the next day too! Such a silly guy, Preston, your hair was definitely crazy!

The final stretch

We are planning to travel in the next 4-6 months to bring our daughter home! I can't believe after all this time, almost 3 years, I am typing that sentence!!

We still have some monies due, but we trust that God will provide every penny, just like He has up to this point.  Here is our latest fundraiser:

I'm so excited about this fundraiser, I have our suitcase and sharpie ready, so bring it on!! We have a couple of adoption friends who have also done this fundraiser with great success!! We are excited to fill our suitcase with names and wheel it through the airport!

Thank you to each and every person who has supported us and loved on us so far in this adoption journey, and thank you for helping in just another way through this fundraiser!

Campfires in the backyard

Last year Chris' parents bought a new fire pit when they were redoing their landscaping and gave us their old one. It was right at the end of fall, so we set it up in our backyard but never got a chance to use it because it got too cold and snowy.  This past spring, we had a big branch of our tree fall and Chris and the boys worked really hard to chop it up into firewood so we could enjoy our first campfire! Unfortunately, while they were chopping the wood, the bottom broke out of the fire pit. Logan, especially, was really bummed because he had been working the hardest to make sure we got to have a campfire!

Fast forward a few months and Chris' dad shows up at our door one afternoon with a brand new fire pit!! So wonderful and nice of him, he is so generous!!!  A few days later we enjoyed our first family campfire and it didn't disappoint!

Beautiful girl

Chris has an art to making the perfect s'more

Double fisted s'mores - the good life!

S'mores, lots of giggles and family time - I love it!!

The day we have been waiting for!

I can't believe I finally get to write this post - it's been so long and I was getting so, so worn in the wait! But our dream has finally come true!

WE GOT A REFERRAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

We got the call on Tuesday afternoon, November 4th, and officially accepted (after completing some necessary steps) on Friday, November 7th!

I so wish I could show you her sweet, adorable face, but until we officially take custody of her, I can't. Boo! :( But if you see us in person, we will gladly show off all her pictures to you - trust me, she is totally adorable!!!!!

We can also finally tell you her name! We are going to name her Kailin (prounounced Ky-lynn). We were going to use her given Chinese name as her middle name, but since her Chinese name is just one given by the orphanage and not by her birth mom, we are going to also give her a new middle name as well. I will let you know what it is when we agree on come up with one! It will have meaning and hopefully match the pattern of our other children and end in an "R". Kailin is 2 years old right now, so just about 2 1/2 years younger than Ashten!

Playing with phones already!

Want to hear a cool God story? Well one of them from this adoption at least? We can totally look back over the past over 2 1/2 years and see how God was leading us straight to this little girl. We have no doubts this is the girl God had for us all along! But one cool thing was back in May (May 13th to be exact) I attended an online webinar that the head of the AGCI China program did chronicling her latest visit to China and some of the children that she had seen. This next picture was in that webinar, and I was immediately drawn to this little girl!!!!

I emailed the case worker and inquired about her, but obviously since our dossier and home study weren't even close to being completed yet, she very cautiously reminded me that there is no guarantee on when certain children will become available or who will be the next eligible family on the list when they do! I understood all that, but still couldn't get this little girl out of my mind. Time passed and my hope grew dim, but I never forgot about her. Then on October 24th, our caseworker emailed me and said that this girl's paperwork should be posting "soon" (which can mean any number of things when dealing with a foreign government, the least of which is actually soon!) and were we still interested in her adoption? It took me all of about .37 seconds to email her back with an emphatic YES! And then my hope was revived and it was all I could think about. We still waited another week and a half before we were called with the official referral, the longest week and a half of my life!

I was sitting outside the boys' school like I normally do every afternoon waiting for them to get out. I had stopped thinking we would get the referral call that day because I figured since China is 15 hours ahead of us, any paperwork that had been completed the day before in China would be available first thing in the morning here in the US. So I wasn't even expecting a call when my phone rang at 3:27 with an Oregon number. I knew right away it was our case worker.As soon as I answered I could tell it was the call and I just started crying and celebrating!! I am not sure I even let her finish! (sound familiar, Chris?) We talked about this girl for a few minutes and then I right away called Chris and told him to hurry home as fast as he could. In the middle of my conversation with the case worker, the boys got out of school and Logan overheard my conversation, so he found out right away as well. I swore him to secrecy and he kept it!!

As soon as Chris got home, we locked ourselves in the office by the computer and looked at her pictures and medical report. I would say at first we were both kind of guarded, not wanting to get too attached. I think it was too late for me though, I just started crying again and hugging Chris, it just felt so right, I knew this was our little girl! After that we had to rush out to sports practices and it was killing me that I was so happy inside but I couldn't say anything to anyone! After sports practices and dinner, I emailed all of her referral info to an international pediatrician for review (one of the required parts to accepting a referral). By the time we got all the kids to bed that evening I would say we were both sure this girl was our daughter, despite any new information we might receive in the medical evaluation. I could barely sleep that night, I was so excited.

Wednesday evening we couldn't hold it in any longer and were just dying to tell our kids the good news. We decided to surprise the kids and go out to our favorite Chinese restaurant! After we got our food and sat down we told the kids that going out to eat wasn't the real surprise. Then we showed them all her pictures and they got so excited!!! After that we drove to my parent's house (under the guise of needing to pick up a check from them) and Chris' parent's house and told them the good news in person!! Even though we hadn't officially accepted the referral yet, we felt confident that this was our daughter and we couldn't wait to show her off!!!

Thursday evening, November 6th, we had a phone consultation with the international pediatrician and then we officially accepted her referral on Friday, November 7th!  I really don't even know the process from here on out, I would never let myself get familiar on it since it always seemed like such a distant dream. All I know is that we have gobs of more paperwork to do, more fees to pay, more fundraising to do and then we will be traveling in 4-6 months for a 2-week visit to China to bring her home! Get ready, we're coming Kailin!!!

Swim team

This fall Logan has been doing swim team. He really enjoys it, it's actually the first sport he has enjoyed playing. I am glad he has found something he loves to do! He is really doing well this season and he has improved a lot. He is seeing increased strength in his upper body too, which encourages him to work even harder!

Logan's swim team had a swim-a-thon to raise money for a camp for kids with cancer. Logan swam the entire hour, he didn't even use a kick board when they offered him one and said he could use one. He swam 30 laps! That's 2 laps shy of 1 mile! We are so proud of him!!

All about Ashten

When mommy doesn't want the temptation or calories, then a certain little girl gets a treat of finishing off the last of the ice cream while her brothers are at school!! Straight from the carton because mommy is also too lazy to wash another bowl!!

During the months of August, September and October I watched a friend's little girl while they waited for a spot to open up for her at their daycare. It was fun to have a little baby around again, I definitely forgot what it was like and some of the freedoms I now enjoy that I had forgotten that you don't have when you have a baby around! Ashten loved playing with her and helping me with her, she was such a good helper. It was good training for when she becomes a big sister soon!

We are so blessed to have people who give us hand-me-downs for Ashten! The only downside is we usually end up with lots of separates, but no complete outfits, so we mix and match and buy pieces here and there at thrift stores to make her wardrobe work. She loves dresses and leggings right now and it is so much fun to dress her! I hoping these days of not fighting over clothes and liking the same things lasts a LONG time!

Ashten loves gymnastics and cheer-leading and dance right now! She is very acrobatic in her dancing, but she is actually kind of good and enjoys putting on a show. She just finished up a gymnastics class. She was going to take a dance class, but we showed up the first day and they told us the class was cancelled. :( Ashten was really bummed, but I told her we will sign up for the next one, after Christmas. And unfortunately I can't find a cheer-leading group for her age, most start between 6-7 years old. Meanwhile, she can keep regaling us with her wonderful modern, acrobatic dance interpretations.

Ashten loves for people to know she is 4 1/2 now! I can't believe our baby girl is more than halfway to 5 this year! Crazy!

Brrrrr, bundle up!

This is Ashten, "not tired", using my coffee mug as a water bottle because it was highly imperative that she use just that cup and no other cup or water bottle (did I mention she was not tired?):

I realized just the other day that I only have six months left in this school year before it will be the summer and then she will be heading off to kindergarten in the fall. Time goes so quickly and I am determined to make the most of it! I love my time during the days with just Ashten, it is so much fun, exhausting as it is to hang out with an extrovert all day! She is a treasure and so much fun! I love her to pieces!