The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I can't believe how enjoyable it is to witness Christmas through the eyes of a child. Isaac's first Christmas home he was too little and had just had surgery to correct his cleft palate. He really wasn't in to Christmas, still adjusting to life with a family, it was probably a bit overwhelming for him. Last year he enjoyed Christmas but didn't really get into it before hand, he just didn't "get it." But this year, he had an idea of Christmas, and anticipated it with such excitement and enthusiasm! It is truly a blessing to witness such events through the eyes of a child!

We started our family celebration with the tree decoration on the 6th. I wish that I had gotten a picture of Isaac building the tree, but I just didn't think of it. I can't believe it, I think we have a future engineer on our hands. I showed him what to do and he put in at least 25 of the 30 limbs. He didn't want help and thought it was a blast to build the "Christmas tree puzzle."

When we finished he wanted to do it again, but settled for helping put the ornaments on the tree.

This year also marked our first visit to Santa Clause and Santa Cow. We were surprised to see Santa at EPCOT when we went Thanksgiving weekend and Santa Cow came to our favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-A. Isaac was perhaps even more excited to meet Santa Cow than Santa Clause!

We celebrated Christmas with the Stopyra family a week early and Isaac was totally thrilled with the presents he received. Auntie Marissa and his cousins picked some wonderful gifts and we now have some Thomas the Train books to go with our trains and movies. Isaac loves his new books! I had never even thought to look for Thomas books.

To keep up with our love of trains and because I was painting a special mural for Aryn, I decided to paint a Thomas on Isaac's wall. He loves it! My niece is helping show off our hard work. She is quite the artist and was a real help when we painted. Now Isaac wants another choo-choo so we may paint James or Percy coming in towards Thomas on the right. I have to finish Aryn's room first and then we can talk one more choo-choo.

My best friend Wendy had some cool trees painted in her room when we were little girls. They were in the corner with a hammock and I always thought they were cool.

Originally I was going to do the same thing, but then I decided on one tree and went a little crazy. We still have some work to do, so I'll be posting the finished product later in the week. We painted little hearts the same pink as Aryn's name that we'll place on the tree like little apples. We're also adding flowers at the baseboards. It's been a real blast to paint for the kids and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

Isaac even got to help sponge on some of the leaves. He is so excited to help out and I think he is going to be a wonderful brother!

And of course, my awesome assistant!!

Isaac loves opening presents. He doesn't care if they are for him or not, so when he wasn't opening one of his own he was helping other people open their presents. Lucky for Isaac most people were accommodating and allowed him to help. Next year may be a little tricky if Aryn wants to help people open presents too. I need to make a smilebox to show his excitement opening presents. It was so much fun!

We leave in 18 days!! WOW!!! I can't believe it. I'll work on another post tonight. I have a beautiful picture of Aryn Rachel that we just received, so stay tuned!!

The Official Countdown Begins!!!

We received new that our Travel Approval arrived on Monday, December 13th. I wasn't even expecting the TA announcement to come via e-mail because when it arrived for Isaac the agency we were using at the time called us. I remember that I had just at Target and stepped over to the benches to talk and give a few dates that would be good for CA (our consulate appointment) so that we could continue to set up our trip and hurry to China to get our boy. This time it wasn't as exciting at all, I mean the delivery.

Our desktop computer has gone on the fritz and I had posted a question to facebook to see if some friends could help offer some advice. I was going to check responses when I decided to check my e-mail first and THERE IT WAS!! We only waited 14 days from the time our Article 5 was issued until we received TA!!What a total surprise because we had been told 3-5 weeks and everyone that was just ahead of us had been waiting at least a month. Craig said he KNEW it would come, I wasn't confident. I wasn't even hoping for it until after Christmas. I had hoped it might arrive in time for New Years Eve so that I could celebrate the New Year knowing when we would hold Aryn Rachel in our arms.

We received this picture about 10 days ago. (Sorry blog, I just hadn't made it to the blog with the computer issues.) I joked that Aryn was on the phone, "Hello government people? I want to meet my new family!!" Well they got the message and yesterday we were able to book our flights to China. My mother and Isaac will be coming with me. Craig will be staying home to hold down the fort and to help us save money on our expenses.All day on Tuesday and Wednesday I keep checking my e-mail because we were told that we would be receiving our itenerary with the travel dates by e-mail. Nothing... Thursday afternoon I had just checked my e-mail at the start of 5th period, nothing... A few minutes later this boy asked if I had heard when I was going to go yet. I walked back over to the computer, and WOW!!! There it was!! "It's HERE!"

They cheered, "YEAH!!!!"

I opened the e-mail and said, "I meet her exactly one month from today!"

More cheers, I almost started to cry right there in front of my students! It was so exciting!!

So here it is. Our schedule, as we know it.

Thursday, January 13th - We will leave Orlando at 8:20 am and head to China via Seattle, Washington.

Friday, January 14th - We will arrive in Beijing, China at 9:00 pm. No sight seeing on this day, what a bummer! We plan to stay the night with our wonderful friends who moved to Beijing last year.

Sunday, January 16th - We will fly into Fuzhou, Fujian province and will meet Liu, Rong Jie soon to be Miss Aryn Rachel Liu-RongJie. Please continue to pray for her transition into our family. Also pray that Isaac will not be jealous of his sister and that they will develop a strong loving bond. Before we leave Fuzhou we will have completed the Chinese portion of our adoption paperwork and Aryn Rachel will officially be our daughter in the eyes of the People's Republic of China. We already know that she is ours in the eyes of our Heavenly Father!!

Friday, January, 21st - We will arrive in Guangzhou, Guangdong province to complete the American side of our adoption paperwork. This is the city where we spent our entire trip with Isaac as he was born in Guangdong province. I wonder about how feasible it would be to visit his orphanage and allow them to see how much he has grown and what a wonderful boy he is. I would like to do that, but I don't know if it will work out. I guess you could pray that if it would be a good thing, that God would open that door for us both with permissions and financially. I really don't know how expensive it would be to hire a car or what the expense would be to have a personal guide for the day.

Sunday, January 23rd - Nothing adoption related that I know of, but it is my wonderful Mom's birthday and I am thinking about something nice to do. We ate at several great restaurants while in Guangzhou the first time around. Does anyone have a good recommendation for celebrating adopting a granddaughter and your birthday? I would like it to be a special birthday dinner for Mom. (This one is green because green is Mom's favorite color.)

Tuesday, January 25th - U.S. Consulate Visa Appointment. The final step in our adoption process but the first appointment that had to be cemented before we could make any other plans. This is a pretty cool experience, unfortunately we are not able to take pictures and there is so much going on that I don't really remember. I sort of liken it to the Church welcoming a child into the Body of Christ through a baby dedication or baptism. To me, it's sort of like America welcoming the child into her arms. Maybe I'm a little looney, but without this meeting we don't get a visa and our child can not come into the country. It was so AMAZING to see men and women from all over our country, service men and women who give their lives to serve and protect our country who were stationed around the world, all with children coming home to become part of us, part of the American family. Most importantly, a room full of children no longer orphans. A son!! A daughter!! My child!! You can not immagine the emotion if you stop to think about it. God moved on the hearts of each of these families. He provided a way for each of these families to go and bring this child home. He is doing this same thing around the world and in our own country. Adoption really is the greatest thing in the world. It helps you better know and understand the heart of God. (I could go on and I think I will in another post. This post is to share our dates and is getting a little long...)

Thursday, January 27th - Aryn Rachel's visa will be issued at some point... It only took a day to receive Isaac's visa, I wonder why it's two days? I wonder if we'll get it in the morning? At some point on Thursday we will board a train and take a two hour train ride to Hong Kong.

Friday, January 28th - We will board a plane and head HOME! Because we are crossing over the international date line it doesn't look like we are traveling very long. We will leave Hong Kong at 10:35 am and arrive in Detriot, Michigan only two hours later at 12:10 pm according to clocks, but it's actually about a 14 hour flight or something like that. We will get to fly over the North Pole! We will make it into Orlando at 8:43 pm the night of Friday, January 28th. Actually when we leave Hong Kong it will be 9:35 pm on Thursday, January 27th for those of you in the EST in the United States so the travel time will be about 25 hours.

TA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW! WOW! WOW!!! I was not expecting TA for another 2 weeks!! I am totally surprised and in shock!! Other families have been waiting about 1 month exactly from receipt of Article 5 to the issue of Travel Approval, but we have been blessed to receive it in two weeks! Our God is so awesome and He totally blew me away because this was above what I even hoped for. We could arrive in Beijing, China on one of these dates: January 7th, January 14th, or February 11th. I am praying for January14th because Christmas vacation starts this Friday and we return on January 3rd. It would be easiest if I can get through this week and prepare things the week of January 3rd to be out after that. Also my mother is getting a new classroom and will be readjusting and getting things settled the first week back from break. So as much as I want to hug my little girl close, I really hope that we can go the 14th of January. We would celebrate my mom's birthday in China! Maybe the Consulate appointment would be on her birthday, now that would be SO COOL!!

Never a Dull Moment

I realized that I've been writing so much about our anticipation to bring home Aryn, that I haven't really written about the most amazing little guy in the entire world. Isaac is such a bundle of energy it takes a lot of energy just to keep up with him and then it takes great talent to capture him on "film" so that we can look back on it. He is a ham with the camera, but he tends to run towards it and out of the picture if given the opportunity. So many photos are of his head and while I've been deleting them, perhaps I should save them to show that he always had boundless energy and so that I can truly appreciate the photos where he actually is in them.

The most exciting event in the past month would have to be our Sunday, December 5th trip to the Centra Care Urgent Care Center for stitches. Here we are waiting to be discharged after the doctor finished patching him up. It turned out that the doctor was able to use a special butterfly tape/glue so that he didn't have to go through the trauma of stitches.

I woke up to Craig calling for me, "Gretchen! Gretchen! We have to take Isaac for stitches!" Isaac had fallen off the arm of the couch where he was trying to get to the computer. Instead of reaching his intended destination, Daddy's lap and the computer chair, he fell catching his head on the desk and getting a nice slice that was about 3/4" to 1" long and about 1/4" deep. Luckily it wasn't really a bleeder and Isaac was a real trooper! So brave!! As the doctor worked on his head he squeezed my hand.

As we waited to be discharged we were able to watch YouTube and found some Signing Time videos and Elmo.

Here are some pictures from our November 27th visit to EPCOT with Uncle Joe and Zoe. Isaac was thrilled to spend the day with his favorite cousin while she visited from New York. He can't wait until she comes back for Christmas!

I love Zoe & Uncle Joe! (He looks so intense here. He really wanted to ride on the edge of the tram and doesn't get it that he isn't big enough according to Mickey.)

"Where's the Fire" is our favorite game! Yeah!!! Zoe was on our team!!!

The ride in Mexico is fun, but playing the bongos is even more fun! Isaac is becoming a very musical little man. He loves to sing and play any instrument he can get his hands on.

The highlight of our day was our visit with Santa Clause! Wow! We were so excited to learn that Santa and Mrs. Clause made a special visit to EPCOT!

Isaac was very excited and we purchased rain ponchos so that we could wait in line to tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas.

Here he is looking up at Santa, I wonder what was going through his mind. He wasn't saying a word, just looking.

Here he is telling Santa, "I want.... car truck!!!" He was so intent. Some people look at this picture and say that he looks scared. He wasn't scared at all. He was very excited and very intent. This is one little boy that knows exactly what he wants! Stay tuned to see if Santa and his elves are able to make a car truck for Isaac!