Happy New Year!

Recipe for a Happy New Year

To leave the old with a burst of song

To recall the right and forgive the wrong;

To forget the thing that binds you fast

To the vain regrets of the year that's past;

To have the strength to let go your hold

Of the not worthwhile of the days grown old;

To dare go forth with a purpose true

To the unknown task of the year that's new;

To help your brother along the road

To do his work and lift the load;

To add your gift to the world's good cheer

Is to have and to give a Happy New Year.

Calling All Squares!

This picture above is the "Bai Jia Bei", or 100 Good Wishes Quilt. In China, the 100 Good Wishes Quilt idea is about wrapping your new child in the good wishes and hopes of friends and family. We did this tradition when we adopted Maggie and it turned out so beautiful. I attached a picture of it here:

We would like to do this for Ethan as well, to "wrap" him with the love of our friends and family and also celebrate the traditions of his homeland. We already have some squares and wishes, but need a lot more to get to 100! If you would like to help, please email me and I'll be happy to send you our home address! No square is too much and no wish is too mushy!

Merry Christmas to All...

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! Ours was really nice, and it was so much fun to be able to watch Maggie really love the holiday. She had so much fun and got so much stuff! The play kitchen was a big hit, along with the new Dora books she got. My dear brother bought her a drum and music instrument set - thank you very much! But she loved playing with her cousins too, and seeing her family. I also received a beautiful necklace from John (thanks for the help, Hayley!) - perfect timing after getting our Letter of Acceptance for Ethan! Here are some pictures from our holiday:

My new necklace!

Maggie opening her kitchen from Santa

My new Dora game!

Maggie with her cousin RJ

Decorating Christmas cookies with the cousins

The Munchkins - how cute are they?

Maggie and Uncle Tom

Us versus "It"

Santa would be visiting our house a few days early this year, so Thursday night we decided to put Maggie's present together. We got her a play kitchen on sale, and we were so excited to give it to her! At 9:00 at night, John brought the box inside, opened it out and proceeded to pull this out. ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME?

Three and a half hours later, after watching the movies "Elf" and "Animal House" (and almost losing our fingers from using a pocket knife to break the pieces off), we finished!

Next time, we are going to pay to get these things assembled.

WE GOT IT!

We heard from our agency yesterday afternoon - we just got our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China! That means that they have officially "matched" us with Ethan, and have approved the adoption to move forward! This means we can expect to travel sometime at the end of January to get Ethan - yippee!

But now we have to get in gear and get ready for his arrival! YIKES!

Christmas Cookies - according to Maggie

First, I have to mix the dough and put lots of flour on the board. Proceed to wipe my hands covered in flour onto Daddy's pants and my pants/shirt.











Then I roll out the dough. Insist on doing this step by myself, since I am 3 years old.















I use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Again, I need to do this by myself, as Mommy and Daddy don't know how to do this. My favorite cookie cutters are the candy cane and star.















I put the cookies on the cookie sheet and Mommy bakes the cookies for 6 minutes.














I let the cookies cool before frosting them. I try very hard not to eat the frosting directly from the bowl, but sometimes my willpower is not so strong. Hence, the red frosting around my mouth - which makes me look like The Joker.









I finish by putting sprinkles and sugar on the frosting. Somehow a good portion of the sprinkles end up directly in my mouth during this step - yummy in my tummy!

The final product!









Can we do this again tomorrow?

Snow

At 11:00

At 12:00

At 2:00

Please... No Autographs

Why do you people keep following me? It's so embarrassing to be recognized like this...

The More The Merrier!

A good friend of mine who I met when we were going through Maggie's adoption made a huge announcement yesterday! She is such an inspiration to me - she helped us so much in our decision to adopt Ethan. I can only hope to be half the mother she is - congratuations Stef and Chris!

http://www.sophiemakessix.blogspot.com/

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

"Mary Had a Baby Boy" (sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb") as presented by Maggie's class at her Christmas Concert today. Overall, the concert was a success - there were only 3 or 4 wailing kids out of 15 kids, and no one fell off of the stage. Please hold all applause until the end.

The Loveliest Sight To See...

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Preschool Style

So I walked into Maggie's classroom today to pick her up, and walked in on concert practice. The pre-schoolers are having a Christmas concert this weekend, and they were about to start singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Setting the scene - 10 kids between 2 1/2 and 3 years old, belting out Twinkle Twinkle at the top of their lungs. Not singing it - screaming it, yelling it as loud as they could...

The concert is going to be very interesting - I better bring my earplugs...

The Official Start of Christmas Season

On a cold and windy Saturday night, we bundled up and headed out to the zoo for our annual Wildlights night. It isn't officially Christmas until we see the 3 million(!!!) lights that are put up all around the park. The workers usually start putting up the displays in October, since there are so many of them to put up!

We along with hundreds of other families braved the cold and wind, and oohed and aahed at the displays. We got to see Santa's reindeer, but they were hiding in the corner and wouldn't cooperate for a picture. We also tried to see Santa, but the line was waaay too long and it was getting a little late for Miss Maggie. So instead, we headed over to the miniature train display. It was double the size of last year's display, and so cool! They actually have stations around the display that let the kids control the train whistles, lights and even let smoke out of the chimneys.

Girls Night!

Two of my bestest buddies Stacy and Amanda came into town Friday night to visit and do a shopping excursion on Saturday. I really think the shopping was just an excuse to come see Miss Maggie - she had the BEST TIME EVER!!! She had 2 new minions at her beck and call to play with - who wouldn't love that? I really miss them - I think my New Years resolution will be to make sure we get together more often and not let so much time pass between visits.

Oh Christmas Tree

We put up our Christmas tree on Sunday, and put the lights up outside too. Maggie loves having the lights on - she asks to turn them on every morning when she wakes up. I think there is going to be a battle royal when we have to put this away after the holiday!

Some pictures from Thanksgiving...

And a good time was had by all...

Update on Ethan!

We received a little update on Ethan. He is doing really well with his foster family, and is trying to learn to stand on his own. His favorite thing to do is to pick up toys and throw them down - 100% pure boy! I cannot wait to see that sweet face in person. We are still patiently waiting for the approval to come from China, which I hope will come sometime in January. Good thing the holidays are here to distract us in the meantime...

I have also had the pleasure of working with a group called Grant Me A Chance. They are a non-profit group that helps adoptive families like us raise funds to help offset the expenses with the adoption. People always ask us how much it costs to adopt a child - and it can cost up to $15,000. Since Ethan's referral was so sudden and unexpected, we aren't as prepared as we had thought we would be. But Grant Me a Chance offered to post Ethan's story on their website to allow people to donate towards his adoption! I have also included the ChipIn link on our blog as well, so if you would like to donate - you can just click on the ChipIn icon and follow the steps from there.

Raking leaves...

Thanks to 2 gigantic trees in our front yard, we usually end up bagging 20-25 bags of leaves every year. Luckily, we had an expert assistant helping us out this year...

We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan...

We're from O-HI-O!!

GO BUCKEYES!

Ethan's Story

For Maggie's birthday, I decided that instead of toys or something that she would lose interest in a week- we would sponsor a foster child through CCAI's Charity Outreach program. Now don't worry - Maggie got plenty of fantastic toys and things from her grandparents and cousins! But I really wanted to give back to the country that helped us become a family. So, we got set up with the foster family program.

I received quarterly reports on the children that we sponsored, and rejoiced every time our sponsored child was matched with her forever family! This occured several times throughout the year, and I received a new match each time. Our latest report was sent to us in July 2007 for our newest sponsor. He was this little boy who had these heartbreaking eyes - John said they were "brutal", and that was the perfect word. He was so tiny and looked so fragile! I read in his report that he had a tumor on his back, which was removed via surgery. Something in this little guy just grabbed me. On the off chance that we could find out more information about him, I contacted CCAI to see if they would ever receive his file in the Waiting Child program. They emailed me to say that the chance is highly unlikely due to the number of agencies his file could be sent to, but they would let me know if they did see it come across their desks. I was disappointed, but accepted it and hoped that this baby would find his family soon.

One September afternoon - Friday afternoon - I got home from work and saw there was a message on the answering machine. It was CCAI, asking me to call them back right away and "You will never believe what we received today!!" I started to cry - was this really happening? YES IT WAS! Deniece called to let me know that they received Fu Bao Jin's file, and wanted to know if we would be interested in reviewing it! This was truly a one in a million chance, and it was a miracle that CCAI would have received his file in the first place!

After a lot of discussions, a lot of medical opinions, a lot of praying and a lot of support of our family and friends, we accepted Bao Jin's referral on September 28, 2007! We asked Maggie what we should name him, and she replied "Ethan". I have no idea where this name came from, as she doesn't know anyone by this name! But it was decided that he would be named Ethan Patrick Jin Novak. Hopefully we will get to travel in early 2008 to bring him home!

Hello!

After numerous questions from other families asking us what our blog site was, we decided to make the leap into blogging! Since we are adopting for the second time, I thought this would be the easiest way to keep everyone updated with our progress on our adoption and also post updates on our 2-year old. Forgive me in advance - I am new to this, so the blog is a work-in-progress!