Waiting, Waiting and MORE WAITING!

We had a nice webchat with Sarah Grace several weekends ago. Sadly, the video wasn't working for them to see us. We could see us and we could see her :-) CUTE as ever. She did a great job communicating with us without even being able to see us or speak much of our language. She really must be getting used to this webchat thing. She is probably, as we are, tired of it too. It will be so nice to just be in person and give her a hug and get to know her and laugh with her. She is a very energetic and fun loving girl.

However, it turns out we are needing to wait a bit more. I keep reassuring myself that God knows what he is doing and that he is ultimately in charge of the details. . .But I'm really thinking she needs to come home! The problem that has now arisen is that since someone has claimed her as his daughter (the law in Taiwan apparently is that if you claim someone is your child and you register as their father than you legally are the father--no DNA required. . .)SO, now that she has this father registered there are legal complications for her to be classifiable as an orphan. So we wait and let the powers that be settle things. . .

We are still hoping to travel some time in October. But I'll believe that when I see it!

In the meantime we WAIT.

Guess What?!

I was checking email yesterday when I saw one from our agency--it was about a webchat and I was explaing that to Kai-Wei, who thinks all things concerning Ssu Ya must mean she is coming home. So once more I had to say no, not to come to America, just to talk to her on the computer. THEN, I noticed another email with the subject, "Good News!"

SO, one year, two months, two weeks and six days after receiving our referral for Ssu-Ya we have gotten the final ruling! YAY! We can travel to Taiwan in October! We can hardly believe it is true.

Dana will not be traveling this time--as he can't take the time away from work again this year, but Annie checked at work today and she can go. We are hoping to travel around the second week in October, but will firm things up after we talk with them in Taiwan a bit more. We have a webchat scheduled for Friday. We don't know if Sarah-Grace knows yet.

Praise God, we're so excited!

Good bye summer.

Labor day weekend has come and gone, the kids have started back to school, and the air feels crisp and cool in the mornings and the evenings. Kai Wei started 5th grade on Wednesday. So far he says school is "little bit too easy". We'll see how long that lasts. He likes his teachers and is making friends and even learning some of their names. He tells us American names are hard. He was excited to ride the bus and buy a school lunch. I'm not sure how many academic things they did in the first week. He hasn't had any homework yet, so we'll see how things go once they really start working.





This weekend we went to a culture and arts festival that included dragon boat racing. It was really fun to watch, though the teams from our local Chinese association didn't do too well. They don't own any dragon boats, so they don't practice at all, they just participate the day of the event. There were 20 teams there from across the state and out of state. We also headed down to the "Indian Powwow" and watched some dances and the boys got to sit in a dug-out canoe.

Yesterday we had a pool party at my Aunt's. I didn't have my camera with me, so everyone involved is spared the embarrassment of having photos of them trying to ride on beach balls bucking bronco style in the water posted to our blog. :) I couldn't take any photos of our family kickball game either. Between my Aunt who would scream and then run in slow motion every time she kicked the ball, several athletic competitive teenage guys, and a few non-athletic types like me who only played because everyone else was playing it was a very entertaining game. My Aunt and her family just moved in a few weeks ago and we're sure they're happy to no longer be living in our yard (they spent a few weeks camped out there in their pop-up while house hunting) and we know we are happy to have them a lot closer than 4 hours away!