Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

I hope everyone had a grand holiday weekend!  I know we did.  But let me tell you about it!

Sunday we had a family picnic. Our family is pretty big.  My mother has 10 grand kids from two daughters.  9 of them were at the picnic. Here is a picture of my mom and the kids

 

 

Missing from the picture is my brother in law's oldest daughter, her daughter, the big guy in pink's fiancée and the guy in the turtle shirt's fiancée.
Both my parents were there and Matt's parent's were there.  We had 18 total.  A pretty good turn out.

We have a pretty unique family make-up.  My sister has 3 kids, my brother in law has 3 kids.  That isn't real unusual in 2013 America.  What makes it rather unique is my sister married hubby's best friend.  My boys grew up with his kids and considered them family.  We have known those kids since they were born so Ramie and Ron getting married just made the relationship legal. All the kids together are referred to as 'The Cousins'  it's kind of like the Mafia actually it is a mafia.
Dean's wife was/is niece Emily's best friend from high school.  So her assimilation wasn't that big of a deal.  Everyone has nicknames and earning your nickname is kind of a big deal. From oldest to youngest
Rachel=Rachie Babe
Bridget=Bee, Beasely
Matthew=Mattie, Mattikins
Emily=Em, Noodle
Lauren(fiancée to Jordan)LuLu
Jordan= J-man, Daisy Mae
Nicole=Nikki Lee formerly Nikki the Hickie
Dean= Deanie Boy
Donovan=Sweet Petunia
Abby(fiancée to Donovan) AbbyCadabby, AbbyNormal
Shawn= Crash
Lyle= Chipmunk, Little Man
Serenity=The MeiMei
Shawn earned his nickname this weekend at the family picnic. 
The table was laden with all manner of picnic food.  Potato Salad, Pretzel Salad, Broccoli Salad, Baked Beans, Coleslaw, Carrots, Dip, Chips, condiments for burgers and sausages, onions, lettuce pickles olives the works!  We were 5 min from the meat coming off the grill when C>R>A>S>H!!!

 

 

In a moment of Cousin hijinks, Shawn ran backwards into the food table. It was totally turned on its side and ALL THE FOOD crashed to the ground.   The rest of the women salvaged what they could and I walked away.
It will become another of the Cousin Legends.

The Cousins

Matt's Parents and Mattie

My Precious Little Deanie Boy

Not such a Little Man Any More

 

 

Sweet Petunia

Daisy Mae

Mattiekins and Sir PounceALot

The GrillMaster

Salvaged Picnic

Noodle and Gramma NextDoor

Buzz Lightyear Hoodie

Love It!

 

                                                          My Mom, Sister and Crash

Papow

Best Friends

Beasley

Noodle, Beasley and The MeiMei

Now That's a Fire!

Family by Heart

 

Belle

Another picture of Belle

Happy Dance!!!

There are a few significant steps in adoption from China.
The first is finally getting your dossier(stack of paperwork) together and sending it to China, called DTC then having your dossier logged into the system in China, called LID, log in date.
The second is being matched with a child, called referral.
Then there is sending in your Letter of Intent, LOI and receiving Pre-Approval, PA.
In our case we completed our dossier, found our daughter. Then we were LOI, PA, DTC and LID in that order.
Now for a huge step. LOA!  The LOA is the letter of acceptence or letter seeking confirmation.  It is an official letter from China asking if we accept Dang Yu Qing's referral to be our daughter.  It looks like this:

That's not ours but you get the idea.  We signed it and sent it back to the agency PDQ.(pretty darn quick) aka the same day we received it we overnighted it back.

Remember me talking about feeling like we were hitting walls in expediting?  I felt pretty ineffective in my human efforts.  And like I have done so many other times in this process I just kept praying.  But my prayers changed.  I fell asleep each night crying out to God.  He had to do the expediting, not me, not my agency, not China.  He parted the Red Sea, He could cut the red tape. And He did.  We were told LOA would take 45 days from LID.  I was checking my email Monday not expecting much,we were only on day 25.  And there it was. I was caught off guard,25 days from LID to LOA, that is smoking fast. Expedite, boom!
 To quote my Mamow Aggie, "Thank You, Jesus"
We have been told to expect travel in 10-14 weeks.  Let's see what God thinks about that!

“How did it get so late so soon?” Dr Seuss

“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains.”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!    

You have heard me speak about my oldest son.

He graduated from college on Saturday.  I can't believe he is so grown up.

I am so proud of him.  He has big plans and big dreams.  He will be going to Japan in July for a two week service mission trip.

We will really miss him when he goes.  Serenity will miss him especially.  He is her go to guy.

 

After Japan, he wants to find a position in China teaching English.  I guess China is contagious in our house. 

As the oldest brother, he takes that very seriously, leading the way in facial hair.  His brothers live in envy of the happy gnomes living in his goatee.(ongoing joke in out house about why Mattie's beard grows so much faster than Dean and Donovan's)

But at the end of the day, he is still my little boy, my gateway into motherhood.  He is an awesome young man with a big heart, a heart for others both in his house and the rest of the world.  How can I not be busting buttons proud of him?  He is awesome and he is my baby!

 

 

As cold water is to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. Prov 25:25

Yesterday was a rough day.  As most of you know we are trying for a medical expedite for Belle.  I have gathered letters from the Cooley's Anemia Foundation and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia International Adoption Clinic and their Thalassemia Clinic.  I have forwarded those letters to our agency and senator.  Yesterday I called USCIS to find out who our officer was so I could plead out case.  I found our officer has is no longer in the adoption division.  Joy.  I was able to speak to a nice officer who gave me some guidance.  I called out agency and left a message. Then I emailed the agency with a list of questions/recommendations from the IA dr.
Also going on was our dryer just not drying well.  So I was hanging clothes out on the line and it was COLD.  And we all know how I feel about being cold, and that wasn't helping my state of mind any.
Matt and his cousin were outside discussing a building project we want done when they noticed something weird happening around the dryer vent.  Upon investigation they found this:

 

A precious birdie nest.  The nest had completely obstructed the vent.  As sweet as the nest was it had to go.  I am such a softy the thought of destroying the eggs was too  much.  I asked Matt to put the nest in one of our apple trees and hopefully mommy bird will find it.
So now I am feeling really down.  Not only am I pushing a rock uphill trying to get my Belle home sooner, I am responsible for the probable death of 6 baby birds.

Yep I felt pretty crappy.

I went to work with Matt today.  I had one final day and I was done for the year.  At least that was good, I thought. We went to a nice pizza place for lunch and spent some nice time talking about things happening in the adoption community.
After lunch I got an email response from our agency.  Lo and behold I found this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUNSVGJD8mM&feature=player_detailpage

All of the sudden I felt better. 

New Home

I decided it was time to move my blog home.  Xanga was good for a while but seemed to be dying. 
For older post you can go here http://mama-hao.xanga.com/
Mother's Day here was awesome.  It started with breakfast in bed courtesy of hubby.  Then in the afternoon we went to dinner with my mom, my mother in law, oldest son, youngest son, daughter and hubby at http://www.thetavernonthesquare.blogspot.com/  It was C.R.O.W.D.E.D!  Thank goodness hubby supreme had made reservations.
Then in the evening when middle son and his wife got home from work we had a nice little visit.

Meanwhile on the adoption front, we wait.  So much bureaucracy, so much time!
But for now, how bout a cute picture.