Jet Lag - uggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

We are settling into life with four children. That part is absolutely wonderful.

The jet lag . . . not so good. Our bodies are definitely still on Ch*na time. Our littles wake up every single night after about two hours of sleep and do.not.go.back.to.sleep for hours! Yuck! We are all feeling the effect.

Some scenes from our life now . . .

Mommy is loving playing "girlie" things like Barbies and such.


Sophia keeps drawing her new family . . . so sweet!

Prayers are needed for our little guy. He is really

having difficulty adjusting to this new reality and jet lag.

These two enjoy each other's company. Now we are working with them to include Elijah, too!

We are home!

We are home! Thank you God for your protection on our return trip. We are tired but so happy to be home where we belong!

A Thank You to All

Our little sons want to say a big

"Thank You"

to all of you who sent us donations

to take to Philip Hayden's Shepherd's Field Children's Village.

(And we do, too!)

Shepherd's Field is where our Philip lived happily in China

for three years before we met him.

Families whose children once lived at Shepherd's Field sent donations of shoes,

school supplies, bandaids and such. While a sweet young lady who once lived as

an orphan gave us many hats she personally knitted for children still orphans. A couple

of people from our church even gave us shoes to take to the village.

Only two more days and then Kevin, Philip, Elijah, and I fly across the world.

Our first stop will be to stay at Philip's China home, Shepherd's Field.

We are all pretty excited about that!

Then the next stop will be to receive our Sophia Yilin! She has a little less than a

week until she is an orphan no more!

So very excited for the journey. Follow along at:

myadoptionwebsite.com

IN ONE WEEK!

We will be here!

Oh my!

Our adoption website is up and running

Our myadoptionwebsite.com site is up and running!

Yayhoo!

Click here to go to it.

While in Sophia's site, you might want to also click on an update I just did for Elijah.

I think this makes it official!! :)

Countdown continues

The countdown to Ch*na continues . . .

13 days to go!

Oh my!

Such a sweet day today

Today was our adoption agency's annual picnic. We have so much still to do (to get ready for Ch*na) and went back and forth on whether we should go or not.

Oh my, are we glad we did! It was such a sweet time.

First we got to hug our favorite adoption coordinator,

the lady who puts up with my too numerous to count questions each day,

the one who patiently tells me the same thing over and over because

I just can't quite take it all in,

the lady who gives us the wonderful news each time we go to the next

step in our adoption process . . .

This is that amazing lady and her beautiful daughter

Then we got to hook up with some of our travel buddies from Philip's trip,

Cathi, Ken, Lucy, and Mary Rose.

It is always a joy spending time with them.

Here they are with their little dog, too! Mary Rose, standing

with her daddy, came home from Ch*na the same time our Philip did.

She also is from the same province as our Sophia is from (Shaanxi).

Lucy, Mary Rose, Philip, and Eli

Four treasures from the East!

Then we met, for the first time in person, a family who

is with our agency and who has a daughter from our Philip's Ch*na home.

We have hooked up online and through telephone calls, but we have never met

them in person until today.

Two mommies with their Philip Hayden treasures!

Their family and ours

Sarah, Emma Grace, Rick, Matthew, and Andrew -

what a joy to meet you today!

And Sarh just happens to make hair bows - beautiful ones!

She brought us a bunch for our litte girl! Can hardly wait to see our daughter

wearing them!

We also met a delightful family who recognized us from our blog. It
was so sweet of them to stop and chat. They had lunch with our group as well.

They live in town and will be a play date sometime soon.

And then, as if the day could even get
better, our friends (another family from Philip's

travel group) gave us a dollhouse - a really big Barbie dreamhouse!

Wow, that made it really soak in that our daughter will soon be here,

a part of her forever family, forever!

What a day! So glad we decided to go to the picnic. So glad we are part of this miracle called adoption.