My kids are hilarious, just regular comedians. I wish I could remember all the funny things they have said because it would make a good book.

Like earlier Lily and I were doing her homework. She had to read a Scholastic News and guess what it was all about? China. While reading I always ask Lily if she understands something that I think she doesn't understand so it went like this...

Lily: Long ago, the Chinese built the Great Wall ...
Mom: Do you know what long ago means?
Lily: Shakes head No.
Mom: Well it means many, many years ago.
Lily: (pause) Oh I know, like when you were born, right Mama?

(Seriously????)

And Mason well he's been on a roll lately. He saw my bra in the bathtub (had fallen in after I lazily laid my clothes on the side of the tub instead of hanging back up, something I never do ;0)) He then looked at me and said mom aren't you going to get your boobies out of the tub? Of course I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked in the tub and saw it. After telling him I would later he said, "aren't you afraid your boobies are going to get wet?". 

That kids just makes me smile.

This morning I was still in bed when Mason came in and turned the bright lights on in my room.
He wanted to show me something.
I said, "Mason turn the lights off I can see".
He said, "is that because you have blue eyes?". (which by the way I don't)

Lily struggles with speech. I can usually understand her just fine but to others it is not so easy. She speaks very fast and doesn't finish her words. Hard consonant sounds at the end of a word are nearly always left off Lily has been receiving 30 min. of speech a week at school and has made great improvement but there is still a lot to accomplishment. Recently we had a conference with everyone at school involved in Lily's education. It was decided that Lily would be evaluated to see if she would qualify for additional speech.

I didn't realize that part of this evaluation was for her to receive a eye exam. Lily has never complained about her sight and she's even passed two wall chart exams with no problem but the schools exam showed a problem and we had to follow up with a doctor in order for her to be evaluated any further for speech.

After a thorough eye exam we found out that our daughter has a very significant eye deficit and needs to wear glasses all the time. She was not very happy about it at first and it took a while to find a pair of glasses she likes but I think she is starting to get used to them. She is asking to take them off less and less. I really like them on her, they suit her just fine. 

Here are some of my hairbows. They are great quality ribbon, all have been heat sealed to prevent fraying. Please pass this along to anyone you know who has little girls. 100% of profit will go to help fund our adoption. They are $7.50 if mailed and $6.00 if delivered in person.




Happy Birthday Hairbow



Heading to Disney soon? This bow would be perfect. It is our Minnie Mouse Bow.



Get Crabby Hairbow



Rock and Roll Hairbow




Watermelon Hairbow They have not been place on a hairclip yet. You can choose snap clip or alligator clip and Left or Right.





This is the Summer Fun Pony-O! It has great summer colors and flip flops.




All about Pink Pony-O!




Just in time for Valentine's Pony-O with hearts!

 Just claim it in comments and leave you email address for me to follow up or email me at theocaincrew@aoldotcom

I wish I could muster up some excitement about our latest snowfall. After a record breaking snowfall last year, snow the day after Christmas and snow this past Monday I am a little tired of snow.

In the south most people love snow, we just like it to all melt away the next day. This snow is still lingering and here we just don't have the ability to keep going. The kids have been out of school all week, finally stores (some) opened back up yesterday but my kids have some serious cabin fever. I've had my fill of tattle-telling, aggravating each other and whininess. And we are so fortunate (insert sarcasm) because hardly any snow has melted which could mean no school tomorrow and we are already scheduled out Friday and Monday for holidays. Yay for us! I think my birthday weekend at the beach with my wonderful sis-in-law and a good friend could not have come at a better time. We are gone all weekend! I cannot wait!
Here are a few pics, I am out of memory so they wouldn't all download...


Lily trying to make a snow angel but with a half an inch ice on top of 5 inches of snow it wouldn't work.




Daddy just before some southern sledding and snow/iceball fight.




Pool floats made for good sleds.



In 10 short days I will hit a milestone...the dreaded 40!!!

But honestly I am not dreading it, I am excited. I think my 40's are going to be the best yet.

Why? Because this decade and beyond I am going to live for my purpose. The purpose God has placed on my heart.

If you know me, you know what that is and if you don't know me you probably could take a good guess.

My mind has been going crazy since I finished RADICAL.

I cannot wait to do RADICAL things for God!

Come on 40, Bring it on......

Now that Christmas is over and we have started a New Year I feel like I finally have time to blog. December was incredibly busy but a good busy. We had a lot of fun with our family and friends and John and I even had the chance to get away for a long weekend the week before Christmas!

This year I am going to borrow the title of a book I read for the motto of my year, RADICAL.

I know many of you have read it and if you haven't and you desire to live your life differently and make a real difference for God's Kingdom then you should. I begin leading a Bible Study on the 10th on this book and I am so excited about it! God blessed me with a wonderful group of ladies that started meeting in my home last October. Being a busy mom I have trouble finding time to spend with other ladies and this Bible Study group has been an answered prayer for me. God place the perfect 5 ladies together and I am so excited about leading them in this study.

Anyway, I want this year for me to be RADICALLY different than how I have lived in the past. Some things are for me personally and others are all about helping others. The first thing I am going to tackle is unnecessary shopping. This is a big problem for me and something I have got to stop. I have tons of clothes I don't wear and things I never used because they seemed like a good idea at the time but I don't really need them. I want to use my money for more important matters like bringing home our daughter from China in 2011. So no more "I'm just killing time in TJMaxx" purchases anymore.

As for the adoption not a lot going on there. Just waiting on the US government to approve us and give us a fingerprint appointment. It should be soon because I got a letter from them yesterday saying we were being processed and would soon get an appointment. That is after of course they sent our I800a back twice. Once was my omission of some important info and then again because they raised the fee and requested 60 more dollars from us. I'm surprised I'm not overly discouraged because I had hoped to have a referral in January but that isn't going to happen! I know God is in control and I guess having gone through this before I know it all works out just fine. I just can't wait to see that little face and get excited about going to China to get her.

And another RADICAL thing I am doing is losing weight, Ok maybe it's not so radical but for me if I do, it will radically change my life. I know I said I was going to do this last year and lost some but gained it all back. I'm really making a commitment, I am tired of being ashamed of my weight and want to be more healthy! So I started back yesterday to working out, today I am trying something new so I better go before I lose motivation and find something to distract me.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

When you are adopting and waiting for a little letter to come from USCIS (US citizenship and Immigration)
you are beyond excited when you see an envelope in the mail from them, just like I was yesterday.
My thought was NO WAY, they could not have processed this that fast.

And guess what?

They didn't.

They returned it. BOO. Why? Because I left blank what country we were adopting from on our I800a.
How did I and my agency miss that?? Oh well I wrote CHINA in big ole letters and paid $20 to have that
thing overnighted back to them. Never mind CHINA and our name were written on the outside of the envelope. It also had included a piece of paper for me to have on top to have it expedited so at least they are thoughtful, right?

Well if they finish if as fast as they rejected it I sure better get busy with the last pieces of my Dossier, I had been dragging my feet because I was told it would take them 2 months to approve it. Maybe not!!

I'm A Little Late Getting Started on this but Stefanie over at Ni Hao Ya'll is Having a Giveaway of some pretty cool stuff. You can enter very easily and the giveaway lasts 30 days. You don't want to miss out

I am not sure how Lily became so conscientious. She is so conscientious that we sometimes joke about how maybe Lily is really a little old women that never aged. I could give you a million examples of this like when we walk outside to the car and it hasn't rained in weeks and she sees a dark cloud in the distance and runs in to get her umbrella.Or like the time I sneezed in the front seat while driving and a moment later I felt a little hand reach up and touch my shoulder. When I looked she was holding a tissue that she had packed in her pocketbook just in case somebody needed it. Or how she slips a few pieces of candy in her purse to give to her little brothers if we are somewhere boring and having to wait. The list could go on and on. She takes a purse everywhere we go full of things just in case. Today this is what I found:

Camera (just in case the perfect picture opportunity arises)
sunglasses (just in  case the sun is too bright)
Candy (just in case)
Pencil (just in case we need to jot something down)
Hand sanitizer ( Oh she loves to whip this out, when eating out, someone sneezes, etc. Just in case.)
Two notepads (just in case she gets bored and wants to draw)
Brush (just in case someone needs their hair brushed)
lotion ( just in case our hands are dry)
chapstick (just in case our lips are chapped)
Kleenex (just in case someone sneezes)
Band aid (just in case someone gets a boo boo)

She doesn't carry these things around for herself necessarily, she wants to be prepared just in case someone else needs them.She says she wants to be a nurse when she grows up and I think that would be perfect for her but I cannot imagine her pockets at work, they would be bulging with things she might need, just in case.

Wanted to get these pictures up for the grandparents who were unable to see these grand kids dressed up this year. Noah did not participate in festivities this year partly because he was getting over the stomach bug and partly because he was being disciplined. And I cannot believe for the first time ever I did not get a good picture of all the kiddos together. I dressed up as a witch also but of course there is no picture of mom so you'll have to use your imagination.

Today a blogger friend of mine met her son, for the very first time. There story is an amazing story of patience, obedience and love. Go to her site because I am sure she will be posting about this meeting soon and follow her family while they are in China. See first hand how God worked in the hearts of a family to bring home their son.

Please check out my friend Sharon's new blog. She has taken her compassion for orphans and turned it
into a ministry. She is advocating for orphans and spotlighting families who have and are adopting. Our family will soon be spotlighted there for our adoption of Lily.

It is called A Family for Everybody , go check it out and see some of these precious children waiting for a family!

Hopefully today or very soon the new blog design will be up. I'm so excited about it because it is themed with one of my very favorite things!

We received our final Homestudy on Friday WOO HOO! now we are waiting for DSS to approve it and then it moves on to immigration. That process takes several weeks. While we are waiting I am preparing our Dossier. I have just about everything I need for it except 2-3 items so that will be my focus this week! I really hope we will be DTC in December but who knows!

Halloween was a blast this year. The kids had fun carving their pumpkins, going to their cousins house for a party and then our big neighborhood party. Our neighborhood does a great job with the party and has hayrides, a haunted hayride, games, tons of food, pinata and much more. Afterwards we went Trick or Treating and the kids had so much fun because everyone was out at the same time. We had so many great families move into our neighborhood and lots of new kids so we had a blast! I will post a few pics but they aren't very good. My DSLR is in the shop and my click and shoot took a lot of blurry pics.

This past Saturday I went to my first craft fair to sell my ribbons and hairbows. I thought I did very well and sold all my Christmas and Thanksgiving hair clippies! I am going to make some more and try to attend a few more craft shows. Once I make some more I will post them here and probably post them on ETSY! I have raised about $775.00 towards the $5000.00 we are trying to raise for the orphanage donation. YIPPEE!

Last night at the party there was a mom and daughter that was visiting with one of her friends that lives in our neighborhood. She had a three year old from Guangzhou that she adopted 2 years ago. This little girl was just precious! It was so cute because she took a liking to John which is interesting because he was in costume and odd looking. Anyway, she kept going up to him and saying cute things and then she wanted him to pick her up. John's face just lit up when he was holding this little girl and it made me feel so excited about us holding our little girl. I am so glad I don't have a face to put to this wait yet, it would make it unbearable!

And Lastly, if you use your debit card to buy gas and have to move to another pump because it's not working PLEASE do not forget to cancel your transaction! I discovered that the "nice" man trying to help me with the pump that was behind me waiting on diesel actually took advantage of my mistake and helped himself to a tank of gas on me. This is a hard lesson learned for me, don't let it happen to you!