Please Pray for Emma

Emma is scheduled for heart surgery on Monday morning. If you haven't been to her family's blog, visit to read her story. Emma was recently adopted from the Ukraine at 5 years old and her heart defect would have been corrected much earlier had she lived in the US, so this surgery has some higher risks involved. Please pray for a successful surgery and recovery for Emma.

Happy 11th Birthday Kai Wei!

Summer is birthday season in our family. It starts off in May with Tim's birthday, and then Jonathan and Rebecca both have birthdays in June. So, Kai Wei has had a lot of time to see what our birthday celebrations are like and to decide what he wants. For weeks now, he's been telling us "For my birthday, you buy me...." or, "I want cherry pie on my birthday" (That's what Rebecca had on hers since my parents and the boys went cherry picking just the day before and came home with over 20 pounds of cherries). He asked for xia (shrimp) and long xia (lobster) and has been counting down the days to his birthday since the end of June. He asked each of us, with a whole lot of joy and a bit of disbelief, "You wanna give me dongxi?" (dongxi just means things- he doesn't always remember the word present yet).

So, needless to say, today he was quite excited. The morning started off well. We let him open one present- a super soaker. My Mom got smaller squirt guns as "party favors" for Jonathan and Daniel and our cousins Matt and Abby, so the kids all went outside and had a squirt gun fight. After that, I think the day got a bit long for Kai Wei. He told Rebecca, "my birthday so slow!"

As the pile of presents on the hutch grew it got harder and harder for him to wait. My Aunt Beth and Uncle Doug and their kids Matt and Abby are staying at our house right now, and our grandparents and Aunt Jan and Uncle Mark also came over for dinner. We started off with shrimp for an appetizer, as per Kai Wei's request. Kai also had a lobster to himself. My Uncle showed him how to get all the good meat out and Kai had a lot of fun and was quite impressed by the meat in the tail. He was nice and even shared the little legs with his cousins and brothers.

After dinner we teased him that he couldn't open gifts until Saturday, but he didn't like that idea. It was so much fun watching him open his gifts. He was so excited and cute about everything. Instead of tearing into the gifts he carefully cut the ribbons off and slit the paper with scissors and stacked it all neatly. He might have been methodical about opening them, but he was so enthusiastic once they were opened. His eyes shone and he made the cutest comments. He was happy with all his presents and couldn't quite believe how many there were. As soon as they were all opened he wanted to go play with his lego sets and had to be coaxed back downstairs to blow out candles. He didn't even eat his pie until a few moments ago when he came down and told me, "me too much dongxi. da da da books. da da da lego. Me and Daniel long time bu hao bored"
(hmm, we really do speak a lot of Chinglish around here- in other words "I have so many things! A lot of legos and a lot of books. Daniel and I won't be bored for a long time!")

Super. That's the way we like it. :)

A busy summer...

What have we been up to lately? Well,

We went to a street fair. Kai Wei was grumpy about coming (I don't think he had any idea what we were talking about and was sure it was going to be "bu hao" (bad). I thought he would be all smiles once he saw the rides, but he wasn't. I think, as much as he talks about wanting to go to the amusement park, that he was a little nervous. But, he and Daniel LOVED this ride.



They weren't so sure about this one when they got off. Daniel looked ashen faced and Kai didn't want a snack because his tummy hurt. They were still excited to tell us about it though.




Walking hand-in-hand with Mommy




Tim graduated from high school and we had a party.


As you can see, the boys were not too happy about posing for pictures after several hours of sitting through the ceremony.


The big boy cousins




We celebrated the fourth of July

Kai loved setting off fire crackers. He enjoyed it so much that he more or less missed the fireworks. He enjoyed them at first, but once he started playing with sparklers, he was lost in his own little world. He was really excited to see the flares when we bought them. I think they looked like REALLY big firecrackers to him. I have a feeling he was slightly disappointed when we lit them and all they did was glowed. (Every year they sell flares around our lake and everyone lights them. It looks beautiful when all the houses are glowing the whole way around the lake)

Puppet Theater

On Tuesday I took Kai Wei to see a puppet troupe from Taiwan perform with hand puppets. The show was really neat. They used traditional hand puppets for their first show, which was based on the traditional 15th century tales of the Monkey King. The second show they used puppets about twice as large as the traditional puppets and the story (which included a lot of Kung Fu and sword fighting) was a story they had written. Kai Wei really enjoyed himself. It took some coaxing to get him into the group photo with the master puppeteer at the end, but he finally went up and was happy to have his program autographed.



He bought a puppet for himself afterwards and he and Daniel had fun today and yesterday making puppet shows using his new puppet (Guang Gong- he's the one with the red face) and the 2 that I brought back from Taiwan last summer. Here are some snippets from their shows.

Just over a year ago

Take a look at the ticker at the top of the page. *sigh*

Just over a year ago today, I was sitting in an English class in the dining hall at Christian Mountain Children's home, sitting with the little guys and whispering the answers to Kenny and Fanny. We were practicing numbers and letters. Melody interrupted and told me I needed to go to the office, my Mom was trying to e-mail me.

At that moment I was filled with such anticipation. A mix of nervous dread and excitement. Because, really the only way for them to know that my Mom was trying to contact me was if she called. And, I had missed a call from home to the cell phone I was borrowing earlier that day. My parents already knew I was there safely. I had contacted them. So there were only 2 reasons they would call twice in one day: something terrible had happened at home or we had gotten our referral.

So, nervously, I walked over to the office, signed onto my e-mail, and opened it up to this.


The tears started streaming down my face. I was so happy and excited and in love with this little girl I had never met.

I wished so badly that I could print out the pictures of she and Kai Wei and show them to everyone, but I had to content myself with saving their picture as my computer desktop. (I didn't see a printer anywhere).

When we first got our referral, we hoped they would be home in 3-6 months. Maybe even in time for my parents anniversary in October. Then the orphanage told us 6-9 months was more likely, and we revised out hopes to Christmas. Christmas got closer and closer and there was still no movement with Ssu Ya's case. We started telling people "hopefully February or March". Kai Wei's final ruling was actually Dec. 10 and by the time the end of Jan. rolled around and Sarah Grace STILL hadn't had her hearing, we decided we needed to bring him home NOW. So, once he came home in February, we still optimistically told people we hoped she'd be home before the summer. I even bought her winter pajamas hoping she would be able to get some use out of them. Spring passed, summer came and I hoped she would be home by the one year since referral mark. Now it has passed and I just hope she comes home. No deadlines. No more expectations. I just don't want her bed to stay empty, her clothes unworn, the toys never played with. I want my little sister to come home.

Summer Haircuts!

The boys got their hair cut the other day. Now they're ready for summer.

Before:

After:

Aren't they handsome?

Jonathan is away at camp this week, but he recently got his hair cut too. Yet another handsome brother.


Still no news on Sarah Grace (though we did just get some update photos). Penny won't be back in Taiwan for another 4 days still.

Court Update

We heard yesterday that Ssu-Ya was very brave at her hearing. She spoke clearly and stated that she wanted to go to America and start living with her new family. The orphanage has asked us to give an updated "child care plan." A kind of picture of what her life with us will be like and what our family and community is like for the judge. I sent that off along with 24 pictures--emailed. It will be filed shortly with the court. Sarah Grace's representative from the orphanage leaves for a business trip June 17-23, so I doubt we will hear anything before that. Please pray for her too. She has a lot of time and energy invested in this and she has to translate my wordy documents! They have really been supportive of Ssu-Ya at the orphanage and realize how traumatic this has been for her. The judge asked the birth parents both to prove that they could provide for Ssu-Ya. He also wants proof that the man is actually her biological father. We were also told that the foster family appeared as witnesses, but I'm not sure if that worked for or against us.

Well, we'd appreciate your continued prayers and we'll keep you posted!