Monday, December 04, 2006

Another full moon goes by...

And we still have no referral. 14 months and counting from our Log In Date.
Well, the longer the wait, the more chance she'll be born in the year of the Dog.
Mei Li and I were driving home yesterday evening. It was light outside and she said- "Hey, mama, the moon's out!"
It was one of those days with a moon and sun in opposite horizons.
Later that night when we were outside, I said something like "When I see the Full Moon, I think of all the people that I know and I think of your birth parents."
Her response was, "I don't."
Hm! ok, honest answer- she's fine and that is so good.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Grandma how do you hang this on the tree? & Treasures in the attic.

My sister Sandra and I went to mom and dad's house today to get the Christmas stuff down from the attic and to decorate the house.
Dad poured us our traditional Mud Slides (2 years in the tradition so far) and we toured the marvelous world of "treasures in the attic". We both ended up finding cool stuff to take home ;} She got a Christmas tree- they had 4 up there- I came across a bag of old slides, well, they were slides of me as a kiddo so they were quite old. There are"old fashioned" reel type movies too that we will have to keep in a safer place than the attic.
Sandra and I had to keep telling our dad to not help us- he just had his pacemaker batteries changed yesterday!! They actually used a screwdriver?

I guess you had to be there, but as I made progress to the back darker corners of the attic, I saw so many garbage bags that I said to my sister- "This is where they hide the bodies!" then I went to move a bag- it felt wierd, kind of soft and furry and bony....!!!!

I took it to the lighted area and had Sandra check it out and she said- "Oh, yeah, it's the Ram Head" EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK! I was right. I took it back to where I found it- next to the Boar's head and some other animal's head in a bag.

One Very old thing we found in the attic- other than the charcoal drawing of mom and dad where dad looks like Burt Reynolds- hehehe- was a pair of old hunting boots- my Pap Pap's. Dad said there are movies and photos of him wearing those boots. I said he should give them to my brother Joe for Christmas this year.

It was nice to get rid of lots of empty boxes and to help straighten up mom and dad's attic- we did not get to everything. Have to save some for the years to come.
We freed Willie- the pool sweeper thing that had OD'ed on leaves. We froze our arms off digging those leaves out of the skimmer.

A moment I will never forget was when Mei Li asked Grandma, "Grandma, how do you hang this on the tree?" and mom showed her how.
It was the first time she got to help decorate grandma and Pa Pa's tree.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Family

Well, my family is certainly a goofy one. These are photos from my parents Linda and Joe Thomas' anniversary. For once, my brother and sisters were able to make it with their kiddos.
This was a photo session of the young group of Thomas family children. Me- Cheryl, Sandra, Jody and Joe.
There is a teenager group that consists of Chase, Samantha and Sarah but only Sarah could make it that day.

Here are the kids with the yougest batch of kids.
Cheryl and Mei Li, Sandra and CJ, Jody and Corin and Hannah, Joe and Joseph and Mia

It looks like mom and dad are going to kiss but they are actually planning their escape.


As you can see, my mom and dad had enough and they are running away.
We managed to get a couch photo- a bit much color with the Hawaii outfits- but it is appropriate for our wild bunch.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Moon festival and thinking of Birth Families





Friday night

was the actual Moon Festival date and Mei Li and I bought Moon cakes.

We got daddy- Jann to come out with us to look at the moon which he thought was silly until he heard Mei Li say Hello to her baby sister and told her we were going to come and get her soon as she ate the top off the moon cake. (next year we will probably use moon-pies).

Tonight she was playing with her dolls and had cribs out for them. She had made a mound of couch pillows and I asked her why. She explained it was cause she needed it cause her baby had to go back to China on a airplane and she didn't want to go on the plane by herself so she had to go with her. She said "Her's gonna go to China 'n see her birs (birth) parents and her birth mother said 'I miss you and I love you and I kiss you and I love you all day' I carried her to her birth mother. Her birth mother gave her a present".

Then she asked me to draw the present on paper- it was a round box with a lid and stripes- then she had to have 2 more, then she wanted me to draw a long box- 3 of them with stripes, and the activity blended into regular old art project.

I am so glad she can verbalize things like this and that I have been given a child who is so open and loving and who has such an imagination.

The pool, Moon Festival and 1 year Wait already!



Well, the pool has gone from a constant digging to an actual concrete pool with cool deck and river rock around the edges.
Thank God there is something to see progress with!
We had to re-do our homestudy, get local non criminal reports, non child abuse reports, medical letters stating we were free of communicable disease and give info to the social worker so she could re-do it.
We'll send in the new I-600A as soon as we get the homestudy.
Our fingerprints expire this month and our I-171H expires in January and it is so unlikely we will get our daughter before then- so thus the re-do.
We are officially 1 year in the waiting process from our LID to China, but it is actually longer as we sent it back in August of last year.
Yesterday our FCC group held their Moon Festival at the Children's Museum, with a book reading, dancers and Red Thread display.
The red thread was strung along the staircase and families attached a copy of a photo of the foster parent, passport or referral photo to link their child to China- many children chose the item themselves.
After the festival, Mei Li and I walked to a gellato (sp) place and she picked out PINK- can you believe it gellato. It was good and we sat outside at tables near the street and she was SO PROUD! She told me everyone could see she "has pink ice cream".
On the way there I was trying to find a parking place and pulled into a space and say a homeless guy passed out in the doorway in front of us.
I decided to back out and she asked why so I told her I saw a man asleep in the doorway near the street.
She said, "Oh, he's waiting for his mommy to come get him".
I explained he was a grown up. She insisted his mommy would come and get him.
Part of me wished the same.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Safe Trip Gilchrist Family

I am anxious to see Audrey Gilchrist and family! They are leaving China in a few hours and will be here on the 31st.
I have their baby car seat and have seen it every day and have wished them all the best of luck on their trip. Our families met in Beijing back in March 2004 when we were there with CHI adopting our first daughters.
They were in our group for the tourist stuff and they are in many of our videos. Little did we know that we'd end up being good friends and living in neighboring sub divisions. They went to Hunan to get Lilli and we went to Jiangxi to get Mei Li.
Our girls play together, and as mommies, we have learned to have 2 of everything if we go somewhere in the mommy wagons with the girls.
I remember the day we were driving somewhere (probably a 2nd hand store) and they were both crying about something and it ended up being that one of them thought the other wanted to pick her nose. I can't remember who said it but we cracked up when we heard "She can not pick my nose, I don't want her to pick my nose!"
Tyla and I did the paperchase for our 2nd daughters together. I could not have done it without her. Well, I'd have done it but it would have been wrong or delayed etc.
Their son Ben is about the same age as my husband's youngest son Anders so when Anders comes to visit, they go tubing on the lake and have a blast.
I can't wait for them to bring their beautiful Audrey home and Mei Li is constantly talking about Lilli.
I remember when we arrived home and all I wanted was pizza and normal food. I think I will get some Diet Coke for Tyla or a Starbucks' double Americano with room fow when she gets back. I am sure Harold does not want any more rice!
Wishing them the fastest and safest return home!

Sunday, August 27, 2006

How'd we get here?- A bit about Mei Li Quan

I started thinking about adoption back in 2002. I say "I" because my husband thought I was crazy when he called me one day as he was visiting his mother and 2 sons who live in Denmark and I announced "We are going to adopt a little girl from China". He said something like "OK dear." to pacify me. Little did he know that the journey had begun.
Once I get something in my head, there is little stopping me- once I feel something in my heart...well, then it is a done deal.
I only had to spend months researching adoption from China, pleading my case and waiting for my husband Jann to warm up to the idea.
Since we were about 39 and 48, we had spent most of our time working and going on vacations. We lived a comfortable life. Jann's sons were already 11 and 16 and living in Denmark. He traveled to Denmark every month for the weekend to visit them. That gave me plenty of time to research adoption. ;}
At the time the CCAA had imposed a Quota system on agencies and several were not taking any more that year. We moved to Texas, started new jobs and the paperchase began. We were Dossier to China May 2003. At that time the wait was @ 13 months due to various delays including SARS.
The process speeded up and after waiting 8 months for a referral, we finally got the call.
This is the first photo we ever saw of Mei Li.

Her Chinese name is Cen, Ye Quan (pronounced Sen, Yeh, Choo wen). She was born in Heng Feng, Jiangxi province, China on February 6th, 2003.
The information about height and weight was from a few months earlier; she was 14.3lbs and 26 inches tall, tiny in size but never went to the hospital. You can see by the size of the person's thumb in the photo, this photo was taken when she was quite young.
The next day we got the packet with some more photos of our daughter. I made about 1000 copies and framed them and put them everywhere.

Friday, August 25, 2006

A Butterfly for my Sista in China

This is a picture Mei Li painted for her little sister who is waiting for us in China.

Mei Li and the pool



"you must begin by knowing you have already arrived"

I have always remembered those words that the great seagull Chiang said to Jonathan Livingston Seagull:
"To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,"...."you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived."
Some things about the process of adopting our daughters from China have made me think back to that quote. It is a certainty that our first daughter Mei Li was meant to be our daughter, we just had to go get her and bring her home. As we wait to get the referral for our 2nd daughter from China, we are already there. Our hearts and minds are already there.
As I type this first blog, there are 4 months worth of people ahead of us waiting to get their referrals.
We have to re-apply with Immigration to allow us to bring a child into the US because our permission slip expires in January. We have to get re-fingerprinted- our fingerprints expire! That is kind of like thinking your DNA expires. In the meantime, we are building a pool- nothing like a big project to pass the time...at least we can see progress~~~