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!

I added a button to the left that will take you to the post regarding the ribbons. We also set up shop on Etsy and recently had our first order there (thanks J.B.!). The ribbons are doing great here at home and we are on our second case. I also started a new project I will share shortly. So far we have raised 11%. I am very excited about that!

Also....

God has called my friend Kim and her family back to China. They are adopting a 13 yr old. They having just
brought home the cutest little girl Cai and are also raising money to go back to China. They are selling Show Hope t-shirts.These shirts are soooo soft and fit great. I bought one a while back for another family adopting their third child. Show Hope is the organization Steven Curtis Chapman started. Go to Kim's site and check out these cool shirts! Help another child home.

Have a Blessed DAY!

I finally decided it was time to redo the blog. I was tired of looking at the oh so out of date pics of the boys and poor little Lily still didn't have a spot. This time we are scrapping the pictures and going with a theme.
If you know me you could take a stab at the theme. It is silly but so me!

Stay tuned.......I have a few posts that I'll wait to post until the new look is ready.

A friend and I were talking and she suggested I list the ribbons on Etsy. If you have never heard of Etsy well you have been missing out! I have found some great things from Etsy over the years. This friend also mentioned how easy it was to set up this Etsy account, she herself has one ya know. But she must not have realized she was talking to the computer illiterate. What probably would have taken a computer savvy person 30 minutes to set up has taken me a few very interrupted hours. My site is very plain because I could not even begin to come up with an actual personalized banner but I did manage to squeeze in a stock one. So check it out! It makes buying the Ribbon easier. Just click on the link below:

This is only half of the beautiful colors that you will get, you  receive 27 colors total in your pack.

While we were in China we started talking about adopting again. We somehow knew this was the plan. Even though our minds were saying are you nuts?? Six kids! The family we traveled with even joked around with us and told us we would be back.

On our very last day  in China we were walking around Shamian Island doing some last minute shopping. Just as we were leaving a store we had been to several times a worker there thrust a small baby rattle into John’s hand as we were leaving and told him this is for when you come back to get her a little sister. We laughed and I wondered would we really do it?

Not long after we got home I was ready to start the process again. John had to work through his doubts and I prayed hard that John would be ready and willing. In my mind I was consumed with adopting again and waited patiently. Well my God has reassured us that we are following his plan for our family and we have started our second adoption from China. We are all so excited and wish we were leaving tomorrow! The children can't wait and ask all the time when are we going to get our little sister?

We will adopt Special Needs again. We will adopt a girl and we plan on her being 3 or younger at the time of adoption. Though we know sometimes Gods plans are not ours!

The biggest difference this time is that we need to raise money for our orphanage fee. For Lily's adoption we were fortunate enough to have the funds available this time is different. We are required to make a donation of $5000.00 to our child's orphanage. This money is used to better the orphanage our daughter was in. They can provide education, medical care and basic needs through this donation. We plan to raise that money. I will have several fund raisers and will be launching our first fundraiser very soon so stay tuned!

We are just in the beginning stages of our Home study and because China has changed their process yet again we will need to be DTC (Dossier to China) to get a referral. So I am hoping to be DTC by end of year! So please join us on our second Journey to China...

I would first like to thank my friend Sharon. If she had not posted about this I would not have learned of this neat little gem. Not long ago she got her hands on a copy of choreganizers and posted about it on her blog. She referred to the Pioneer Woman who also blogged about it and between the two of them I was sold and excited. I ordered mine from Amazon and anxiously awaited for it to arrive. I received it and couldn't wait to  learn how to implement it. I sat down and read the instructions, tore out all the cards and have gotten all my items bought for the store. Tonight I will place cards in the kids charts for the first time. I can't wait to see how it goes. I really need these guys pitching in more around here. You can imagine the mess 5 kids make and some of ya don't even have to imagine.
As for choreganizers they have thought of it all, even including blank cards for me to include my own special chores like massaging mom's feet, scrubbing the dried, spilt Sunny D out of the crevices on the kitchen cabinets and of course my favorite one, breakfast in bed for mommy.
I just love it, how can I not love something that included a chore card for memorizing Bible verses!