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!!

 

9 is pretty nifty!

Our Logan is 9 today!  He is really growing up, especially this year, I have seen so much growth and change in how he acts and the ways he is displaying his personality and working towards more independence.  Logan is really funny and loves to be around people.  He is compassionate and it hurts him to see others hurt.  It can be a challenge at times because he is very strong-willed and easily gets his feelings hurt, but we are learning how to better parent him each day.

Happy 9th birthday sweet Logee (!!).  We love you so much buddy and we hope you have a great last year of single-digit-hood!

Celebrating 4 years of Ashten

We had a busy weekend of celebrating Ashten's 4 years of life, but it was fun!  Friday the 21st was her actual birthday and we started the day with a breakfast of donuts, complete with candles and a stirring, very off-key rendition of happy birthday.  We never have donuts, so this was a special treat!

I had asked her what she wanted to do while all her brothers were in school and had given her several choice.  She wanted to "meet Daddy at lunch at Subway", so that's what we did!  Chris brought her a rose when he met us and she felt so special and grown up!

After an eternity Chris and the boys were all home from school and work, Ashten finally got to open her presents.  She is really into Frozen right now, so she got the Frozen movie and some Frozen dolls and also some clothes from her aunt!

A post-present opening photo shoot with our big girl!

 

For dinner, Ashten wanted to eat pizza at home, so we ordered some Papa John's. Chris was super happy with her dinner choice, that's his favorite food too and probably his favorite place to get pizza. Ashten requested a pizza with olives on it.  For her birthday dessert, Ashten chose brownies with M&M's on them because she doesn't really like cake.  No one complained, especially mommy!  

The next day, on Saturday, we had the "grandparent party"  as the kids have started to call it.  My grandpa was even able to come, which was a real treat because we haven't seen him in a long time and he has never been to any of the kid's birthday parties before.  We took a few pictures with him too (much to the boys' dismay).

This time, Logan and Ashten chose brownies with M&M's again - fine by me! I tried to put a 4 and a 9 on the cake for Ashten and Logan, but it ended up looking kind of like 49.  Oh well.

Ashten had just had her makeup done by Aunt Monica

It was a fun few days of celebrating Ashten's 4 years of life, even though I'm still in denial that she is possibly that old already!  I loved this time to just focus on her, she is so sweet and spunky, a gift to our family!