Friday night my sis-in-love and I took her kids and 3 of mine to Winter Jam. It is a big Christian Concert marketed mostly to teens. She and I love music so we made it a night and we probably had as much fun as any teenager!



We started out fueling up with a little bit of this....

It is Long but worth it!

We just got the word  that all our paperwork was being sent to the Chinese Embassy today.
I wish you knew how happy that makes me!
For the first time in a while I feel like things are moving along.
I just wish I just didn't have this restless feeling like there may be more than one child for us in China.
China has recently become more lenient on adopting two kids at a time.
Hubby says "no we are not going to have more children than will fit in our car".
I say lets buy a bigger car.
Usually when I get something like this on my mind it won't go away. After all I did start thinking about this adoption while we were still in China with Lily.
For now I'm just gonna see what God does with it.
So far he's done us pretty good!

For Christmas I gave myself Lightroom. Christmas is a great time to find it for a great deal online.
Problem is I have just recently had the time to download it and figure it out (well sort of). Last night I stayed up and played with some presets with this picture of Wyatt. These are my fav's...

Things are moving right along but not quick enough for me. By now I thought we would be DTC, matched and waiting to travel. We are none of those things. We are optimistic that we will be matched soon though! Found in Feb. that we could be matched with certain waiting kiddos but haven't found our daughter...yet!

If you have ever adopted you know how this process goes. Two steps forward, one step back but eventually we will step into an airplane and be on our way to our daughter.

Speaking of daughters you must go to my friend Kim's blog. Her family met their newest daughter in China
just the other day. Kelly is 13 and has waited a long time for a family. They have the neatest Gotcha Day Story. I am sure there will never be another one like it!

One thing my kids (yes, even Lily) LOVE to do is fish. And since spring decided to visit here a little early my kids have been outside a lot. (yay!) Recently it has been all about fishing. Today we loaded up 8 kids, 75 crickets and a whole lotta fishin' poles and headed to our clubhouse to go fishin'. The kids had a blast and caught about 20 fish. And the prize winner belonged to none other than Lily, the only girl in the bunch. She caught the one and only bass and it was about 1.5 pounds.

I am asking for prayer, please!!!

We are having a difficult time getting USCIS approval. We just received notification that they will not approve us at this time without some pretty significant changes to our Homestudy. I don't understand this because it is pretty much the same one we used for Lily. But please pray for this to happen smoothly and to not be costly. Pray for our homestudy, our USCIS caseworker and our approval, thank you!

I am just very anxious over this and would feel better if I knew others were praying. I am just soooo
ready for this part to be over! There is a little girl in CHina waiting on her family!!!

Update: Homestudy corrections have already been made. Now we just need to get another copy and send it on to USCIS and another sheet has to be signed by John. Once that is done we should be fine. Our agency jumped on this quick as well as our Homestudy provider. Thank you for your prayers.

Today is the Birthday of someone special. This someone I love so much I spent 2 hours baking him this...

Lily Made a Valentine for our family. She wrote each of our names and then glued a conversation
heart next to each name. She carefully selected each heart with just the right meaning. Here are her
choices:

Wyatt- Love You
Mason-Too Cool
Mom- First Kiss
Dad-I (heart) you
Sellers-Too Hot
Noah-Hello

My Family- You Rock

This card made me smile, laugh and brought tears to my eyes. My personal favorite is the last one!

This just seems to be Lily's year. Her artwork was selected to be displayed at an exhibit in our community.
I was not sure what to expect when I took her to see it on the opening night. I was stunned at the beauty of this picture. I just love it and am so proud of her.

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