Happy Almost 6th Birthday Ellie!

So we had Ellie's birthday party this year at Chuck E. Cheese.

She has been asking for a party at Chuck E. Cheese since shortly after she became a part of our family and I have put her off the last two years so...

Here is her birthday in pictures (and not very good ones at that since I left our camera on our kitchen counter)...

Ellie and dad in the ticket blaster...

Ellie and Chuck E. Cheese

Ellie with her Happy Birthday crown

Ellie

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of any of Ellie's friends. I used my camera phone, which isn't exceptional, to get the few photos that I got...

She had fun but she wasn't feeling great. She has had a virus all week and is still not feeling great today. She also got a bloody nose that took almost all of her play time to get to stop bleeding. We did let her stay longer at the end of her party to play because of her bloody nose and she did say she had a fun time. I was just sad that she wasn't feeling well and that she seemed "out of it" for a lot of the time.

Her actual birthday is tomorrow and that's when we will give her our gifts.

We have leftover cupcakes from Ellie's birthday and cookie cake from Mackenzie's birthday.

This is NOT good...and by not good, I mean really NOT good...

Happy 10th Birthday Mackenzie!

So my eldest has turned 10! I can't believe I have a child in double digits. It feels like just yesterday when she was born...

On Thursday we allowed her to open gifts from us...

She got 3 gifts...

A dolphin pillow pet...

Apples to Apples family edition....

Just Dance for the Wii...

We did bigger parties this year since this is their last year here with friends.

Mackenzie chose to have her party at the Independence Skateway and a good time was had by all...and here are some pictures to prove it!

The pained look on Ainsley's face is due to not getting to lick the candles...

I ordered the chocolate chip cookie cake from Sam's and it ROCKED!!!

She did a great job making everyone feels welcome...friends from church, Burlington and Beechwood and I was very proud of her!

Dossier is on its way!!!

We got the following e-mail from our agency on February 7th!

Dear Families,

Congratulations! Your dossier is on it's way to China! Your official DTC date is listed here: FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In several weeks we should hear of your log in date from the CCAA-as soon as we have that information we will pass it along to you. (Just a quick note about log in dates, it has been taking a little longer for the CCAA to send us your official log in dates. That DOES NOT mean your documents have not been logged in it just means they haven't let us know when they were logged in. They typically wait until they have a bunch to send us and send them out with something else(to save mailing costs). We will send out a similar e-mail once we have the LID's.

The wait time is ever changing, we do not expect it to get shorter. If we get any information we will pass it along to you. The monthly updates will have the current wait time, that is really the best way to keep track of your wait. As I said we will let you know of any updates we receive from the CCAA.

We are very thankful that all of our paperwork is on it's way! Now the process of finding a little girl that matches the description that we gave our agency begins. Not sure how long this process will take but I am guessing somewhere between 6-8 months which is completely ok with me. Right now I have enough on my plate without processing even more paperwork and thinking about traveling back to China! I need a few months to settle in to our new house and get the girls situated in their new schools, find my way around a new area, and the list goes on...

Thanks for continuing to pray with us that we would have peace throughout this move and patience as we continue to look to God for guidance on this adoption!

backlogged

It has been over a week since I have posted and a ton of stuff has happened since then...

Where to start..

Last Friday night Mackenzie had a friend over and we played her new Apples to Apples Family Edition game. The girls love this game and it's a lot of fun to play, but while playing I noticed it was cold in our house. This isn't unusual as it always seems cold in our house but this seemed unusually cold so I got up to check out the temp and it was a whopping 60 degrees in our house!

The heater was broken.

Fortunately for us Jeff is pretty handy with these sorts of things and diagnosed the problem fairly quickly. He called the repair company to see if he could get the part that night but no call back. Ainsley was at another friend's house for the night and Ellie had already gone to bed, so Mackenzie, Cary and I spent the night in the living room in front of the fireplace. Much warmer than the frigid rooms upstairs!

The repair company called back early the next morning but of course were unable to get Jeff the part. They had to come out and fix it themselves because yada yada yada. So $230 later, our furnace is fixed. Pretty sure the part probably cost $25 and they hiked up all the prices because it was the weekend. But since we needed the heater fixed for an afternoon open house and we didn't have time to wait, It was worth getting it fixed. So we now have heat...yay!

That afternoon was lunch at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants for Chinese New Year. We gathered with most of our Chinese friends and had a fantastic time together. It was our last big group event before we move and they all chipped in and bought us a cake and signed a framed picture of Cincinnati. The cake was very yummy and the picture of Cincinnati was taken by the same friend who took our family pics. Everyone signed the back of the picture. We are going to miss our Chinese group so much. It has been a lifeline for me in helping connect Ellie with just a small bit of her culture and the moms of Ellie's friends have become my good friends. I am glad they will be just a phone call or e-mail away and that we won't be moving to far away that we can't come back for visits!

Everyone signed it

The framed picture, taken by Jeff Fusaro, that our

group gave to us..

Here are the girls sleeping on the sofa bed

Here are most of the kids in our group...I failed miserably with Chinese attire...

More group photos

Lovely dressed children...and then our kids...lol

A picture of our cupcake cake. I didn't get to snap one before it got cut so this is the best I could get :)

Thankful

Reading over other's friend's and acquaintance's blogs, I am reminded again that I have so much to be thankful for.

And that being thankful isn't always about the earthly possessions that we have though I am thankful for those things as well.

I can choose to be thankful even in the most difficult of circumstances and trying of times because God knows me and loves me. He sees my weaknesses and my shortcomings and He still loves me.

There are days when moving seems to be so overwhelming I can barely accomplish half of what I want to do and then there are days when it's ok. But I am trying to remember that I don't just choose to be thankful on the days that are ok but also on the days that aren't so ok. My thankfulness shouldn't depend on my circumstances but on who God is...and it's a lesson that sometimes seems painfully slow for me to learn, but I will keep plugging on...

Thankfulness...something I need to remember on this very wet, cloudy and cold day.