A to Zs

Today we met the Zs at the park for some playtime!! I did get asked once if they were all mine~ I wish!! Seriously, aren't these some beautiful girls!! We travelled with the Dorris family when they brought home Zola (she is from Jiangxi but we were together for most of the trip) and we are so blessed to know them : )

*Zara, Zola, Zena & Annslee

Running, jumping, sliding, climbing, swinging...all part of the fun!

I love this shot~ the sun was shining through the holes above and Annslee and Zena thought it looked like sparkles in their hair

Miss A has finally mastered the art of swinging herself. I give her a big push and then she can lean back and pump her legs to keep going. I know she is no pro like Linlee but it is a start ; )

Going down the slide together. They really had such fun!! We are looking forward to playing again soon!

*I know a few of you are so jealous~ aka Stacie : )

Just the stats~

What in the world will I do with a little peanut. They are so different in size : ) Annslee is always saying he is "teee tiny" and she is right. Now remember these percentages are for the US growth charts not the Chinese/Vietnamese ones but it does at least provide a comparrison.


Here are Annslee's current stats!

At 3 years and 11 months:

your child is 37 pounds, and that is at the 69th percentile for weight.

your child is 38 inches, and that is at the 17th percentile for height.

*no head circumference at this age...but she is from Hubei and they call them lollipops..so I am sure it would still be in the 90s : )



We just got updated measurements yesterday and here are Coby's stats!

At 8 months:

your child is 15 pounds, and that is at less than the 3rd percentile for weight.

your child is 25.75 inches, and that is at less than the 3rd percentile for height.

your child has a head circumference of 17.3 inches, and that is at the 19th percentile for head circumference.

I think I will be packing a lot of 6 month clothes for him ~ better get shopping!!

Go HERE to do your own calculations~ luckily it only goes up to 20 yrs old so I didn't have to see mine!! I did go look in my baby book and at exactly Annslee's age I was 36 pounds and 38 1/2 inches. Sorry baby...you are built just like Mommy : )

Lift this child up in prayer

I saw this on Cindy's site and wanted to call out to all of you to lift up this child and this family in prayer. They are in China now and have met their daughter. It was not the meeting they were expecting as they had to meet her in the hospital~ she is not doing well~ she is dying~ they are asking for miracles to get her home to Vanderbilt where she may be saved. Please stand in the gap for this family.

You can go to their site to read more of their story and leave them words of encouragement.

Does my heart good

to see my sweet baby smiling AND sitting up!! We just got new pics of Coby...go on over and check them out!!! I am hoping to get updated measurements~ he looks so tiny for 8 months old. One month ago today I got "the call" and now we are 11 days into our wait for our I 600 approval. Annslee is so excited about going to get her brother. Her teachers say she talks of Coby constantly and about getting on an airplane to go to "Vee et vam" : )

Moon Festival

We went to our FCC Moon Festival party tonight and everyone had a great time! I snapped this picture of her in the car and I just think she looks so grown up!! *sigh*



She was so excited because Paige was coming. Paige made the comment once that if she had a little sister she would want her to be like Annslee. Well, Miss A took that to heart and now refers to her as her "big see wa" and she is the "lil see wa" It is really, really sweet : )



Look at these cuties!!! Annslee had a great time running and running with Amelia and Jack! I promise there were about 60 people there but these were the four I spent the most time with : )

My sweet girl loves giving hugs!!

I hope you all enjoy your celebrations (the actual day is Sunday) and take time to go outside, look up at the moon and send your wishes up. I know when I look at it I can't help but think of a little one on the other side of the world who sees the same moon : )

Fourth Time's Charm

I was nominated by Patricia , Missy, Marla and Kimberley for this sweet award. I am so honored to be nominated by these sweet ladies. The four of them love the kids in their lives so much and all you need to do is visit their blogs to see it. I am so blessed to know all of them.

Characteristics for the Smile Award:
1. Must display a cheerful attitude.
2. Must love one another.
3. Must make mistakes.
4. Must learn from others.
5. Must be a positive contributor to blog world.
6. Must love life.
7. Must love kids.

These are the rules for The Smile Award.
1. The recipient must link back the the award's creator
2. You must post these rules if you receive the award.
3. You must chose 5 people to receive the award after receiving it yourself.
4. You must fit the characteristics of the recipient of the award, as posted by Mere.
5. You must post the characteristics of a recipient.
6. You must create a post sharing your win with others.
7. You must thank your giver.

The creator of the award is Mere

Now I need to nominate 5 people. This is so hard because I know so many who make me smile and so many people have already received this one so here goes : )

1. Michelle~ She is a beautiful woman who was unfortuantely not given a referral from Vietnam in time and is now deciding where to turn next. She loves her family and always offers support to the rest of us.

2. Chandra~ She was involved in the Vietnam program but like so many when she saw the shutdown coming she decided to chase her dream elsewhere...all the way to Russia. They are currently waiting for a referral : )

3. Melanie~ She is waiting for her Kaylee and now turning somewhere other than Vietnam to find her. It has been a long painful wait for her but she is such a woman of faith and is so joyful in the journey.

4. Kris~ Another Vietnam family who found their daughter elsewhere. Their beautiful Malia (yep, you read that right) is waiting for them in Korea!

5. Tina~ She is an adult adoptee from Vietnam and had dreams of bringing her first child home from Vietnam as well. That dream hasn't happened yet but she is faithfully waiting out the shutdown for that to happen. She is going to be a mommy soon though as she is pregnant~ what a wonderful surprise : )

I had to add one more!!

6. Heidi~ I think it is obvious why she makes me smile...she held my son last week. I am so thrilled for their family! It has been a long journey to him but so worth it!

Yeah, there was a pattern there : ) I enjoy all of their blogs and the smile I get knowing they will all be united with the children God intends for them (Heidi already has been!!) When we were making our changes (gender/age) someone wisely told me, "God already knows what your family is suppose to look like even if it is different than what you thought" Yeah, God is good ALL the time!

*Our agency sent two new pics of Coby..they are on his website : )

Coby Pics

Just wanted to let you alll know that our care package was delivered and he loved it. We loved seeing him with things we had actually touched. Annslee kept saying "aww baby Coby" and pointing to the goodies she sent.

I have updated his website~ you can link to it on the sidebar~ with all the pictures we have received so far. It is password protected so if you don't already have it email me, tell me who you are or how I "know" you, and I will send it to you : ) You can leave it all in comments if you want. We have pictures on there from May, August and YESTERDAY!!! The family also took video for us and once we receive it we will post it there too!

Go check him out and please sign the guestbook : )

Go Team Go

It was opening day for our home team and Annslee was ready! I took her shopping yesterday for a new jersey as hers was too small. She really wanted a pink one but the smallest we could find (at the 5 different stores we tried!) was a YS so I was steering her toward a regular jersey so we could use it later for Coby. She spotted the cheerleading outfit and that was that! I did take the jersey into the dressing room for her to try on with it but she kept saying the words I hear every morning when I present her clothes for school "I no love dis" It was useless...she put on the cheerleading outfit and twirled, jumped, squealed and had to wear it out of the store. Hey, she is terribly cute in it : )


Before the game we played in the kidzone and she got her face painted. She did get a lot of compliments as I am pretty sure she was the only one there with a crown and sparkly earrings on : )

We invited her friend Andrew to come along and they had a great time together. He is two years older but is so sweet with her.

I captured her with her hand over her heart during the National Anthem. She does this at home too if she hears it on TV~ sweet

The flyover was awesome and loud!!


This was during the second half...she is tired so of course her fingers are in her mouth~ yep, both my kids do that! She had a great time cheering on her team and it was even better that we WON!! The funniest thing was since we were playing the Jag*uars she kept asking where Die*go was? LOL

*On another note, the family with our agency who is in Vietnam met their son and HELD our Coby!! They also got video and pictures they are sending to us. They said he looks healthy and strong and was holding his head up well and rolling over a lot!!! You can follow their blog at Dear Sam and Sophie to see what we will be doing in a few months : )

Coby Update

I know many of you are not familiar with the process of Vietnam adoptions. The "new" process is the one we are working under and it requires you to file your I600 to the USC*IS and wait for their approval before travel. Under the old procedure you got your referral then went to Vietnam and at that time applied for approval which really meant they would issue a Vi*sa for your child to come home. Personally, I like the new procedure better as we know before we leave that all is well and they are doing a much more in depth investigation now so we can sleep well knowing we did all we could to carry out an adoption that is ethical. The truth is we could leave today and go to Vietnam and adopt Coby (at least in the eyes of Vietnam) but the problem is at this point we wouldn't have a way to get him back home, so yeah, we'll just wait : )

Today I did have to send a letter to Vietnam to reschedule our Giving & Receiving (G&R) ceremony as they had it scheduled for Sept. 16th. Yep, under the "old" rules I'd be frantically packing right now!! I admit it was strange seeing that date in writing and saying no to it. We also just got our confirmation that the USC*IS received our request on Sept 4th (actually they got it on Aug 29th but with the holidays this is the date we have) Currently the wait time for approval is 60-100 days so we will just have to wait and see when we get the go ahead. The thing is, when you get approval they set your G&R immediately so we'll have about one week until we travel after receiving the OK from the US!!

Here is my current mantle....Annslee likes to point out that she is in all but two of the pics : )



Thank you for your continued prayers!!

Our sweetie!

We had a really fun weekend with our Princess. A lot of that time was spent at our pool which is now closed, which makes no sense as we could easily swim at least until the first of October before the water would be too cold. Annslee is not happy about it closing.

On Sunday night we went to Mia's house to continue our referral anniversary tradition. We had them pose with their referral pics from three years ago!



Annslee said about a hundred times on the way to Mia's house "Mia house too far" We should all have a friend who loves us as much as she loves Mia!



Two girls on a sit-n-spin makes for some cute smiles : )

We sent a care package to Coby through a family with our agency who is meeting their son on Sept 10th. We sent a puppy, a blanket and a picture of our family and one of Miss Annslee at the beach. Thank you so much Heidi and enjoy your trip!!




Monday night kicked off football season for our household. She was NOT in the mood to pose for me as you can see



Well, with the way the game ended maybe she was in the right frame of mind : (


I hope you all had a safe weekend. Some of my good bloggy buddies are in this referral batch from China. One in particular, Jennifer, is going to see her sweet Malia's face tomorrow. I am so happy for all of you!!!

3 years ago today

we received the call that would forever change our lives. The words "you have a daughter" were such beautiful music to my ears. Back then the wait was nothing compared to now but it was still difficult and full of uncertainty. I can't believe it was three years ago that me and my Lovebug (Feb '05 DTC) friends waited for the call while we stalked the yahoo groups to see if our date was "in" (this was before the RQ was around)

I have written about this day for the last two years HERE and HERE. I will just let those posts speak for themselves. We are soooo blessed to have Annslee as our daughter and will continue to give thanks that she was matched with us!

Referral Day 2008

Referral Day 2007

Referral Day 2006

Here are a few more shots from today. I should have done it earlier b/c by the time I did it she was ready to go to the pool and the sun was so bright. This was the most I could get out of her LOL

Today is such a day of celebration for our family but this year this date is also a reminder that there are over 1,700 families who did not received their referral from Vietnam in time and their dossiers will now be returned to them. Please continue to pray for them and also for our paperwork in Vietnam to move along smoothly.

Our week, thanks SB & prayer requests

We started off the week celebrating birthdays with the cousins : ) Annslee loves hanging out with all her cousins and of course enjoys a party! We did have a little drama at the end as she wanted Shelby (whose lap she is in) come home with her to spend the night...we have been promising this for a while so it is time to make it happen, but not on a school night.


Some serious cuteness!

We had a great playdate planned with some local families and Miss A was really excited as she is always up for some water fun!






We didn't realize we had them looking right at the sun~ poor kids...but so cute!!! I love being in this group because it isn't limited to children from China...so far they are all from either China or Korea but we are about to add a little Vietnamese boy to the mix : )





Our neighborhood has a pond and there are some baby ducks. Annslee wanted to feed them so of course we did. She kept getting angry at the big ducks for taking all the bread LOL



We also received a wonderful package from our Secret Buddy this week. It was in a HUGE box and Annslee was excited to tear into it. I had to laugh as she kept pulling out "boy" stuff and saying "all boy stuff" with this sad face. Of course my SB (who has totally spoiled Annslee) threw in a girl gift too. Annslee was THRILLED and yelled "Yay, girl stuff" when she pulled it out : )

WOW, what a generous gift we received~ a soft blanket, Cars overalls, and tons of clothes that I assume my SBs boys wore. I am so honored that she would pass them on to me! Thank you so much SB!!! It was wonderful receiving much needed "boy stuff" !!

I want to send out a huge thank you to all of you for your well wishes on our referral of our son. It is amazing to me how close this bloggy community is and how we are all so quick to cheer each other on and offer support and prayers. Speaking of prayers please lift up all the families who did not receive referrals in time. I know of a few personally and they are hurting!
On another sad note, a local family lost their two year old daughter this week. She has been home from China for 10 short weeks and they are hurting and could use all the prayers and support they can get. Go HERE go read a post about it that is much more eloquent than I could manage. The family has a website so go HERE to offer them support.

Referral Day

I wanted to get this down so I wouldn't forget (yeah, right!) I don't know if many of you will bother reading as it may get long and ramble LOL

The day we received our referral for our son was a pretty busy day. It was our last day at the beach so I spent some time packing and then we went out to the beach. Annslee played with her cousins ~ surfing and duck, duck goose : ) Gigi came out and watched her while I went to load the car. We then started out on what would turn out to be a 7 1/2 hour drive to our friend's house near Atlanta. I have to admit I was getting tired and cranky, we both were, and when the phone rang at 8:33 pm (Eastern time) I picked it up with a sigh. I then heard T's voice and didn't know whether to be excited or afraid. I then settled into the thought that she was calling b/c I'd left her a message about FINALLY receiving our renwal for our I 171 H. (If I had been thinking clearly I would have realized she wouldn't call about that on a Friday night LOL) Anyway, she asked if I could talk and I ask if it was good or bad. She then said "how about a child referral?" UMMMMM...what?? Please remember that it is just me and Annslee in the car, she is NOT happy about still being in the car, I am on a road I have never been on, it is dark ~ you get the picture : ) I told her I would need to get off at the next exit to write stuff down. You see, I am not good at driving and writing Vietnamese at the same time! I got off, pulled into a Zaxby's parking lot and took down the info. I honestly don't remember much of what either of us said. I don't know if it is b/c I was shocked or b/c Annslee was saying "get out Mommy, Annslee all done" over and over from the back. I do know that when she said his birthday I thought I misunderstood as I was expecting an older child. She said she sent an email with pictures and so I got back on the road so I could get to a computer ASAP. She probably thought I wasn't excited b/c I was pretty calm but honestly, I was stunned. After 21 months of waiting for it to happen, the entire call took 11 minutes.

I called Daddy to tell him and I think he was stunned too. He really didn't say much and I did go ahead and tell him to look at the pictures. We wouldn't be home until the next day and I had no intention of waiting so why should he! His mom had called a few times to check on our drive so I told him to be sure and call her for me. I then spent the rest of the drive calling everyone I could think of. Poor Annslee was stuck in the back listening to me on the phone but she did great and watched Lit*tle Bill for the 100th time (this show is her new fav). I remember I kept thinking we would get our referral at the beach (last year!) and we would have still been at the beach to get it this year but I left a day early so we could get back home so Daddy could have the weekend with us : ) I also had been carrying my small camera everywhere because I planned on having Annslee take my picture getting the call but that didn't happen so no pics of the actual call.

We pulled into our friend's house and they of course had already received a call from me with the news. Daddy had called to say the pics weren't there yet so I chatted for a few minutes but then headed to the computer. Annslee was on my lap and I pulled up his pictures. I hate to admit it but I was worried about how I would react. We spent years preparing for a daughter/sister, I wasn't sure if I was really prepared for a son/brother. This was my second time experiencing this...I had the same fear many people have confessed to having, can I love any child as much as I do Annslee? I wanted to be as excited as I was when we got our referral for Miss A but worried I wouldn't be. I have to say, when I pulled them up and said "Annslee, there's Coby" and she grinned and said "baby brother" I was HOOKED! Seeing his two fingers in his mouth sealed the deal~ that was a look I knew, he looked so familiar to me. I printed off his pictures b/c I knew I would have to look at them over and over. He gets more and more handsome everytime I look at them.

*yeah, he is fuzzy..sorry but had to do it.



I took the printed pictures to the room we were staying in and put them on my bag. I went back out to visit with everyone and later when I came back in, Annslee was on the bed looking at them. Yes, I have pictures of that moment but sadly, can't post them as you as you can see Coby in them : (

I drove home the next morning and first thing Monday morning we signed and sent our acceptance papers. There was no doubt, this is our boy! I have a word that is now familiar on my lips that I never dreamed I would say "son" , isn't it amazing how God works. We now wait for approval from the US side which is taking 60-100 days...I have November in my head for travel. Maybe we'll have the same family day we have with Annslee (Nov 14) We are just anxious to bring him HOME!!!

Guess whose name she can write?

Her brother's of course!!! She yelled to me today "Mommy how write Coby" She loves writing words so I told her how. We have decided on his first name and are now debating what part of his Vietnamese name to keep for his middle name. Annslee's was soooo easy so we are struggling a bit. I need to video her saying Coby...it is so stinking cute!!


When we got Annslee's referral we toasted with champagne so of course we needed to do that this time too. Luckily Miss A is a great photographer so she gladly took a pic of us toasting (she has apple juice in case you were wondering LOL) We then had to go on a wagon ride to show off her baby!

Coby got his first gift last night from Mia and her mommy!! Annslee insists it would fit her (it is 6-9 mos size) I told her to pose with it and she held it up and started doing a fake cry. She said "Coby teeee tiny baby cry" She is probably right : )
We are sending off our I600 tomorrow and are then on the LONG wait for approval. I think it is just like Annslee's adoption. The wait for a referral is so stressful (especially with the shutdown this time) but honestly, the wait between referral and travel is the worst. Just staring at that face kills me knowing he is not home! Please continue to pray for us and for speedy approval and now you can pray for him by name!

Annslee has a picture of him in her room. I put it in a frame but she made me get a different one as the one I used was NOT a boy frame. She was not happy about him being in a girly frame! She is totally cracking us up..she says only she will feed, hold and play with him but if you ask her about changing diapers she is quick to say "mommy and daddy do" GREAT!

Beautiful girls

She did great during our photo shoot but was really excited when she saw her cousins Payton and Taylor heading to the beach for their "white dress pics"



I love this picture~ Payton was falling and they are trying to catch her : )

Gigi came down and got in the sand with the girls (this pic is framed in Annslee's room and she LOVES it )

They could only take so much so of course they turned silly on us!

She looks so grown up to me most of the time but when I see her sweet profile I see my baby again!