Shower surprise

My sister-in-law and Susie's sister threw Susie a surprise shower this past Thursday. It turned out very well and Susie was quite surprised. She wasn't feeling well that night and thought she was going out to dinner with my mom and sister-in-law. She mentioned a few times that "maybe she should cancel" because her stomach was upset. I was getting nervous that she wouldn't leave and called my sister-in-law to ask what I should do. We decided that if Susie decided to cancel, then I would tell her about the shower in order to get her out the door. Well in the end she didn't cancel and felt well enough to go to dinner (little did she know). Anyway, from what I hear, the night was great and Maeve got some very touching gifts. Thanks to all the ladies who came and made a special night for Susie.

Visa's are on the way

After a very worrisome past 24hrs, our passports have (finally) safely arrived at Great Wall and will be shipped to the Chinese Consulate in Houston tomorrow. The worry part came in yesterday when our package was to arrive at Great Wall by 10:30am. It didn't show up and UPS couldn't quite figure out where it was. They kept saying, "I'm sure it is not lost." That did not give me much consulation when our passports and visa applications were just floating out there somewhere. Anyway, they again didn't arrive this morning by 10:30 as they had promised, so I was even more worried today. After much fretting on my part, they did arrive around 3:30pm, so all is well. The good news is that we got our UPS overnight fees refunded, but honestly I would have rather paid them then think our passports were lost. Oh well, one more hurdle down.

No TA

Well our hopes of getting our travel approval (TA) before the CCAA closed for Chinese New Year dissolved today as our agency did not receive any TA's. Unfortunately this delay puts us back several weeks from picking up Maeve. Now the earliest we could get the TA would be 2/5 and then hope to travel on 2/25. This is a stretch though and we most likely won't even get our TA until the 2nd week of Feb. This is so dissappointing!! We just don't understand why it takes so long and why we can never get information beyond "hopefully it will come next week." We have been staring at Maeve's pictures since October and never envisioned it would take 5 months until we picked her up. Probably ignorance on our part, but we are still frustrated!! I know once she is home it will be fine, but getting to that point is excrutiating.

01.20.09

Might this be the best day of eternity? Or atleast the past eight years!!!

Basketball Fever

Aidan is playing basketball this year and we are loving it. Finally a sport I enjoy watching!! JK...well not really. Though I love watching all of his sports, I just don't get that into soccer. Let's not even get started about baseball. Anyway, this basketball league is really great. The whole focus is for the boys to learn the rules and have fun. They rarely call fouls and when they do they are learing experiences and the boy gets the ball back with an explaination of what he did wrong. Aidan is loving it too. This past weekend he had a double header. Here are some pictures....

LSC is off

Our LSC left Texas today and is heading to China. Now we have moved onto the next count down...to our travel assignment. We are still hoping for a mid/late February travel date. Please pray that our travel assigments come soon.

Shopping

Susie did some shopping today and got 10 new outfits for Maeve. She also picked up some pj's, socks and other necessities. From what we understand once we receive Maeve, she is just handed over to us with the outfit she is wearing that day. We need to have everthing else (which is okay since we are her parents!). We will have a great time getting everything ready. It is great to see all the girl clothes since we have been so accustomed to all boy everything. We are watching the weather in Nanning, Guangxi as that is where we will be spending most of the time once we pick up Maeve. Today the weather was 50 and tomorrow it is expected to be 70. That sounds pretty nice compared to our 20 degree day here! Susie also picked up some paint for Maeve's room. The room is currently green with blue accents and those will be changed to pink accents. We are going to paint some pink circles on the walls and add her name in white wooden letters. Hopefully will turn out well. We will then just need to change out the curtains from blue to pink.

Introducing.....

Maeve Jiajun!!!! Our agency received our LSC today. This is the letter from China officially referring this little girl to us. We will sign the letter and send it back to China. Once they receive the letter, they will begin making our travel arrangements. Hopefully we will be traveling to China in late February/early March. We are thrilled to finally share a picture of our beautiful little girl.

Happy New Year!!

Happy 2009 to all. We are looking forward to all the new experiences awaiting us in this new year. It will be quite an adventure. We rang in the new year in our usual fashion at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Eudora. The boys look so forward to this night and talk about it for weeks. I think they love the concept of being allowed to stay up to midnight. It always sounds like great fun until the next day when we have to reap the "benefits" of that decision. Actually they have been pretty good today and we have all survived with some naps! The party was a little low key this year with fewer people than normal, but it was fun, us usual, and we all had a great time.

We still have no more news on our LSC from China. We have been told to expect this in about 60 days from our pre-approval, which would be 1/7/09. Unfortunately this is only a guess and China could take as long as they want. We are hoping/praying/begging to get this soon, but trying to prepare ourselves for a longer wait. We are starting to get nervous that we won't be able to go get her and get back in time to go on Susie's family cruise that is scheduled for the first week of May. Surely it will all happen and work out seamlessly, but I hate not being in control!! Please say a quick prayer for us that this letter will come soon! Thanks!!