Happy Birthday, Caylie!

Caylie JiuChang is 6 today!

She's always happy with Kitty and Frozen.  

Tessa and Uncle Keelan

Mei mei and jie jie.  

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.  We love you!

Caylie's Kindergarten Field Trip!

Caylie's Chinese kindergarten took a field trip to the Joyous Chinese Cultural Center in Denver.  It was lots of fun and the children learned several new things, and got to practice their Chinese with people other than their teachers!

They learned how to do a traditional Chinese dance.

They learned how to do Chinese paper cutting.

They learned how to make dumplings.  Yummy!

And they played a fun game for prizes!

These are Caylie's teachers.  They are all so great with her.  We love them!

Happy Birthday, Taylor!

Our oldest son Taylor is 22 today!  He is doing great, working full-time as a book processor for Goodwill, and we are so proud of him!

Sammie dog wanted in on the present-opening action. 

Yummy cheesecake.  I don't know why he isn't smiling about it!  

We went out for dinner at a Japanese steak house, but my pictures from that are on my old phone, and I can't get them off!  Hopefully I can figure that out.

Happy Birthday, Taylor!

Samuel's Adoption Update

During the adoption process, there are several times that we are waiting expectantly for envelopes that look like this to appear in our mailbox!  This one is my appointment for biometrics (electronic fingerprinting).  USCIS received our initial application (I800a) on December 31.  After our fingerprinting - done on Tuesday of this week - we anticipate that our approval will come in another couple of weeks.  Please pray that there are no problems with our application or with our fingerprints.  Sometimes there are additional questions that they have or the fingerprints are not quite to their liking, and these things slow down the process.  None of that for us this time, please!  As soon as we have this approval, there are only a couple more steps before our dossier can be sent to China.  We are anxiously waiting - some of us more patiently than others - for that day!

But while we are waiting through this tedious process, we so SO VERY THANKFUL that we have the opportunity to Skype with Samuel and his foster parents every Friday evening!  This is a blessing that we never even dreamed of when we were in process for Caylie.  Samuel's foster parents are Christians and they speak English and we love them already!  They are making the task of getting to know our new son and understanding his needs so much more easy than it would have been otherwise.  We feel God's hand all over these events and see Him working so much in our boy's life.  He is shy with us, but we still have several more months for him to get to know us and to feel comfortable talking and even trying out his English!  Our boys here at home help him to feel at ease by being silly in front of the camera with goofy hats and funny faces.  I always know when Keelan or Justin is behind me doing some crazy thing, because Samuel will be laughing on the screen in front of me!  It's a lot of fun, and we love to see Samuel's beautiful smile!  (I can't wait until I can post his pictures here!)

Please continue to pray that God would prepare Jim and me to be the parents that Samuel needs, with much wisdom and grace.  Please pray that our children here at home would be prepared for the changes in our family, and that they would have compassion and grace for their new brother.  And please pray for Samuel's heart, that he would be learning to know and trust us, so that love will blossom and grow.  And also that he would be learning more and more of who God is and how much he is loved by Him.

Thank you, friends, for taking this journey with us.

Christmas 2014

The night before Christmas.  We went to the Christmas Eve service at church and then out for a late supper at IHOP.  A years-long tradition.  Then home for jammies and the Christmas story.

This little elf showed up the next morning.

Tessa's first Christmas.

Bunnies from Taylor.

Opening lots of presents.

Keelan

Justin

Taylor

Brad and Brittany

Cute baby and her presents.

Brittany and Keelan playing with Caylie's kitchen and food.

Nana and her sweet baby girl.

 Jim and his new drill.

New outfit from Grandma NaiNai.

Merry Christmas!

Adoption Update (And a Few Pics, too!)

Well, we were moving along at a much faster pace than we had with Caylie, until this past week.  All of our clearances came in - even the one from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation - which took 2 months last time!  Our agency submitted our Letter Of Intent to adopt Samuel the day before Thanksgiving, and we got our Pre-Approval to adopt him in less than 24 hours!  Usually this takes a week or two.  Our social worker came last week to go over the written home study with us.  Everything was in place!

However, we had forgotten to get our CITY clearances when we got our finger prints (the 1st set of fingerprints!) done in late October.  So, we went back to the police station to order those last week.  Last time they only took a couple of days, but so far they are not back yet.  Ugh!  As soon as this comes back, our home study can be submitted to the state for approval, and then we can start the process with USCIS (immigration).  It's just one thing that holds up the next thing, that holds up the next thing.  It's so frustrating.  BUT, we know that God holds the timing of all of this in His hands, so we don't need to be wringing our own hands over it.

On Friday evening we got to Skype with Samuel and his foster parents!  We are so, so blessed that they know Jesus and are teaching Samuel to trust Him and to pray.  We had a wonderful time talking with them and getting to know Samuel a little bit.  He seemed to not quite know how to handle the situation, but smiled and said hi to everyone, and was excited to see that we had a dog.  We are planning to have a regular Skpe date once a week, so it will only get better from here!  I sent him some pictures over email after that, so he can continue to become more familiar with our faces.  I will send a little photo album soon, as well.  So thankful that I have a friend who is traveling to Samuel's foster home next month to adopt her daughter.  She will take the photo album for us.  (Thanks Nichole!)  

In other news, we are muddling through the end of the semester for the school kids, and getting ready for Christmas.  Decorating the tree was old hat for Caylie this year!  We went to the AAC Adoption Christmas party last week, and she couldn't wait to see Santa.  We don't even do Santa, so she learned that at school I guess, haha.  

And of course I cannot post pictures without posting pictures of Tessa!  She is 3 1/2 months old now, and so, so cute! 

Don't you love her new hat??  

Sweet face!!