Retail Therapy - Brielle

Okay, so I waited as long as I possibly could...I absolutely HAD to go out and buy my daughter something! I am sure it was not a realistic purchase because we really don't have accurate sizes and if we do travel in November/December the cute spring dresses will be useless, but I could not help myself. I just could not pass up the ladybug dress when I saw it and the daisy dress was too adorable so I went a size bigger for next year! I think the Hello Kitty pajamas will work for travel and John picked out the monkey flip flops! As soon as we can send her a care package I am hoping to send some of the hair accessories. I just needed something tangible for her and the purchase felt so good. We are four homestudy visits down as of Monday and now we just wait for the paperwork so we can send it off to the U.S. government. Again, we begin the long agonizing wait. It is so worth it!

More Easter Pictures

Easter morning at home...looking for a hidden Easter basket.







Easter at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Egg decorating and hunt at Grandma's house!

Today we had our first egg decorating and hunt event. Longji enjoyed the festivities and we of course had a good time hanging out with the family. Tomorrow the holiday weekend continues with church in the morning and dinner at grandma and grandpa's house with another egg hunt. More pictures to come...

1st grade program, floats, Build-a-Bear and Homestudies!

We are busy little bees lately! I am posting pictures from Longji's 1st grade program. It was a song and dance presentation. He also had to put together a fiesta float for the school parade. We made it a spurs theme.















Friday we made our first visit to Build-a-Bear and Longji picked out a birthday present and his very own puppy to build. He loved it!





As for our progress with Brielle's adoption, we are currently two homestudies down with two more to go...one step closer to Brielle!

Happy Birthday Adam Longji!

Longji's 7th birthday was Thursday, March 31st. He turned seven years old and he is officially a big boy now! After school Thursday we had our 12 month post adoption homestudy and our first homestudy for Brielle's adoption. The homestudies went well, but we now realize how much work we have ahead of us. After the visit we went to a favorite Chinese restaurant of ours for a mini-birthday party. My parents joined us for dinner and it was fantastic! Longji passed out cupcakes earlier in the day at school and all he could talk about was the "big" birthday on Saturday.



The weather today was perfect! Not too hot and the cloud cover protected us from the sun. We had close friends and family join us and we had one of Longji's classmates attend. She was a sweetheart. This was probably the biggest event yet for Longji here at home. He has explained to us that he has not had a birthday party before with friends and presents and a cake. We did send him a cake last year, but there are only pictures with him and the nannies eating the cake. He has been to numerous birthday parties here in America and he had great expectations for this first one. On the way home he thanked us in the car and said, "I liked my big birthday party." Oh, he is too cute! Enjoy the pictures!