Miss Lily

First..... a BIG thank you to everyone for your comments on the Ty post. I will save all of those for his scrapbook. We really appreciate all of the support and excitement. Thank you SO much! I'll be posting more Ty pictures soon.

I just took this picture of Lily. She loved her denim dress and pink belt. In fact when I told her she looked so pretty she said, "PICTURE OF LILY, MOM".
I couldn't resist and she was full of poses.

Introducing Ty Olsen TongLin

I am SOOOOO excited to finally do this post.
As I mentioned in a previous post... we started our paperwork back in the spring for our second China adoption. We notified our agency that we were very happy to adopt another special waiting child.
WELL....... on August 6th they called us with a referral..... An, TongLin. With this adoption we indicated we would adopt a boy or girl. We just felt this was a decision for God to make.
Here is a little bit about An, TongLin
HE will be 2 years old on October 15
He has a repaired cleft lip (only lip affected)
He is SUPER cute
He is at the Xi'an City CWI
Lily is already blaming him for things that she does
Lily calls him Ty baby or China baby
We can't wait to bring him home.....

Our dossier should be headed to China in the next few weeks. We just received our PA (pre-approval) on September 20th. We are hoping travel will be in 4-5 months.

An answer to our prayers....
We (mostly me) was really concerned about the travel part. We both LOVED our trip to bring Lily home and of course we both want to go this time. Our first experience couldn't have gone better. Other than getting stuck in the Newark airport (overnight) on our return it all went very well.
So the travel part......leaving Miss Lily with anyone that long wouldn't be good for her and we just feel she is still too young to make such a long trip.
When Jeff mentioned this to his parents his father said he would be delighted to go with Jeff.
I was praying since we started the process for an answer about what we should do. I really feel this was an answer to our prayers.
I am disappointed that I won't be going but I know this is the best decision for our family.

I joined a Yahoo group (just as I did for Lily's orphanage) and this group is WONDERFUL. They have a system they call pay it forward.
When a family travels to the orphanage they take pictures for waiting families. We have received some wonderful pictures of Ty. In return Jeff will take pictures when he travels.
Ty looks very happy in the pictures and looks very well taken care of. It certainly makes the wait so much easier to know that he is well taken care of.
In addition, the floor he is on is sponsored by a Christian organization called Caring for China.

Needless to say we are so excited!

Mom & Daughter weekend

Before Miss Lily came home I was so lucky to travel with my mom about 2 times a year. We've been to Aruba, Costa Rica, Bahamas, and Costa Rica some more. My mom and I have the best time and we LOVE our trips together.
Getting away lately has been more of a challenge. So, we started to take weekend get aways every 3 or 4 months. Two weeks ago we took a little trip to Holmes County... A.K.A. Amish Country. We shopped, talked, ate, shopped, drank wine, ate, and talked some more.
It was a great weekend and as always too short.

Pretty in Pink

Sun Flowers

Labor Day weekend we went to visit Grandma & Grandpa N. Lily loved swinging on their big swing set (that dad also used as kid), taking a golf cart ride with grandma, a train ride at the Sauder Museum, visiting Great Grandma Vera, and all the fun we had.

Weeeeeeeeeeee

Swinging with Grandpa

So sunny

Lots of sunflowers in their wetlands

My sunflowers

Lily was so excited to ride this train

A laptop for Lily

After seeing how much fun Lily has typing on one of our extra keyboards I thought she might enjoy her own. She LOVES it. She picks up her LABTOB and her little pink phone and says she is going to her office.
She also checks her email.