Merry Christmas 2008

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPBA9-wyZE

HERE WE GO!!!!!

We should be getting pretty close to being next to be matched with our child. My daughter Miranda has her baby shower this weekend and me and Alana has been shopping for that. She has had so much fun picking out the baby clothes for her niece! That is just too funny, Aunt Alana.... :-) Alana had a great Thanksgiving feast at school. She is so excited about Christmas as we move into the holiday season. She really GET'S it this year! Me and Rick got to go out without a child for the first time in 2 years and 1 month. Alana was so ok with it as she ask one last time if we were coming back to get her for sure. She said "daddy you leave" and shut the door on him as she proceeded to jump into Papa's arms. She had a wonderful night with Papa and granny.
Debby

Halloween 2008

Alana's 4th Birthday at Old McDonalds Farm Nov. 4, 2008

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I'm going to catch you!

Our all time favorite !!! Slippery fish!!

Willy the whale

Too much candy!

Halloween 2008

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Fall Festival Oct.2008

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Dew Berry Farm Oct. 2008

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Oct. 2008

Well we have been busy with the Fall season. I am back at work and Alana is settling down nicely in school. Her speech is getting better every day! We went for her check up and the doctors decided this is not the time to do the revision due to her delay in speech. He didn't want to loose any time the surgery might require for healing. We spent last weekend in the pumpkin patch at Dew Berry Farms. The girls had a blast. Boy was it hot! Alana will be having her 4th birthday Nov.4th, and she is sooooo excited! She gets it this year where as last year she just went with the flow. She will be having it at Kids In Action, and she wanted Wally and Eva theme. Go figure. I tried to talk her into princess or mermaid to no avail. It is so hard to believe she has been home 2 years now! She is the joy of our lives. We got a call from channel 13 news again and they want to continue her story on her 4th birthday. So I guess we will be filming again. UG! Anyway we have not heard any new news about our referral and don't expect to until July-Aug of next year. Hope all is well with everybody.
Debby

Old Mcdonalds Farm Oc.t. 2008

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AWANA'S Sept.2008

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Meet the teacher day

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Same picture but I loved the slide show

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MEET THE TEACHER

Ok today was Alana's meet the teacher day. She has already been in the school for 3 weeks but was only in daycare while us teachers put our rooms together and did lesson planning. I feel like for 3 weeks now I have not gotten to spend much quality time with her. I feel like all I ever say to her is for the last 3 weeks is " hurry up", "were late", "got to go", "let's move" ect! So even though I could hardly move I was so tired we decided to have a after school picnic to day to celebrate. She had such a blast! Here are the pictures.
Debby

Tea Time for Alana and Friends June 2008

Flower girl June 2008

I finally got Alana's flower girl movie from June uploaded. She did so great and was so beautiful, sweet and if you ask Trent BOSSY! I am so proud of myself for figuring out how to change the format. Enjoy. Debby

Sept. 1, 2008

Well where do I start? We have finished our home study and it is in Taiwan now getting translated. We heard from Morning Light and they said we would probably be matched this time next year! I am sad at the wait but it is great to at least have a target date. So new news? I will be having a grand daughter in January! YEAH!! I have went back to work now as a pre-school since we have a wait to help with the funds and pass the time! Alana will start at my school next week. She is very excited! She started Gymnastics last week and is loving it. One of her best friends moved away and she has not been taking it very well. We miss Abigail soooo much! She just started AWANAS and is a cubbie and really likes it but is not to keen on learning the bible verses but love being a Cubby.

The month of June

It has been such a busy month. I am so sorry I have been so bad about doing updates. Alana finished swim lessons. She is now in gymnastics. She just finished her first vacation bible school. We have had playdates with her Chinese playgroup and we painted a 4th of July plate. We have been to the zoo now twice. We made a trip to the mall to Build A Bear so she could make a bear for her new sister or brother. She is so excited to have her brother Sean home with us now that he has gratudted. He is very busy interviewing for jobs. She has fallen in love with his best friend Adam! She won't get off his lap when he is here. I have to ban her from the room with them so he can get a break from her! We did Pump It Up on Thursday. Last night the 4th of July we went with some of the families from Alana's playgroup and spent the day at a 4th of July festival. They had all sort of booths and jumping and sliding blow up for the kids to play on. She ate more junk than she has ever had. Nana Ann and Aunt Jennifer and baby JoJo joined us as well. So we had a nice little group and all the girls had a blast. Then we watched the fireworks and after we went to one of the families house so the kids could do sparklers and watch more fireworks. It was a late night. Today we go into town to have dinner with Alana's Aunt Disa
HAPPY 4TH JULY EVERYONE!!!

Our little princess

Alana was an amazing flower girl last weekend! She is such a beautiful sweet little girl. We are so blessed! She did great. She has finally made the connection of Chinese/nonChinese. We were at a Chinese resturant getting a late dinner and our Chinese friend Cherry was taking our order when Alana's eyes got big and she yelled "you Chinese"! She then points to her self and said "LaLa Chinese" She spent the rest of the night making sure everybody in there knew if they were Chinese or not. When we got to the car she crossed her arms and gave me this evil look and said " LaLa mad at momma" I was shocked as I didn't do anything so I say why! and she informed me " because you not Chinese" :-) I said yes but this is how God made me and He loves me and gave her my so sad look and smiled and said "it ok momma, I love you too".

FINALLY!!!!!

You are not going to believe this but we finally got unstuck from this adoption process!!! After we got all our paperwork done, we were told one of the new laws the US started at the beginning of the year was you now have to do a background check at every place you have lived since you were 18 years old!! I have lived everywhere. Since this is a new requirement none of the offices know what they are doing yet.Some still have not sent us the forms and we have asked twice! They tell us they will send them,then we get nothing. We have been doing this now over 2 months! But the GOOD NEWS is our home study agent finally realised since Taiwan is not HAGUE Compilent so we don't need to be doing this!!! Thanks for finding this out now!! I am so sorry for everybody else because they have to do this. Good luck!! But now we have wasted the last 2 months and we could of been done. I am so frustrated as we are only updating our home study not doing a new one and we are already at 7 months and no end in site! It has taken us longer this time to update it than it did to do the thing the first time around! But at least we can move on now.

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Our Flower Girl

As many of you know by now Alana will be a flower girl in her Aunt Ashly's wedding the weekend after next! We are so excited! Her big brother Sean took her out and took some really great pictures with his very expensive camera. They turned out so cute. They grow up so fast and with what is going on in China right now with the earthquake and with Steven Curtis Chapman's little girl being killed you just want to grab on with all your might and keep them safe. I love this age and my prayer would be I never waste a minute of it!
Debby

Flower Girl

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May Update

We have finished the background check and now our home study agent will come to the house to do the in home checkup. Then we can proceed to our finger print appointment and work on getting this thing in the mail! We have been very busy the last few months. Alana took swim lessons last week and did really well.

Hey everyone,
We got to take Alana to Disney World in Feb. for a week. She had a blast. She really loved the airplane! We are back on track with the home study now that I have my driver license back. It was lost when we were at the Rodeo. So since most of the paperwork had to have my license number on it we have been at a halt now for a few weeks. But we got my new one this week so we will pick up where we left off. We just got our referral letter from our pastor and I think now all of the referrals are in except for 2. We can now go this week and get the police check and do the finger printing. We got Alana's passport last week so at least that is done and we got her doctor visit and she is free of any disease. Now we have to do ours. We are getting there. We sent off a package of baby clothes for Deana Pan who is the missionary we are working with. Her and her husband Luke are expecting a baby girl in May. I know funds are tight as the church they run in Taiwan is very small. Here is the link to their web page. ( http://mlchome.org/default.aspx ) So we were excited to send her some baby stuff. It makes me feel a little like there is a connection now from here to Taiwan. Sean just got home yesterday. He graduated from Law school in Dec. and took the bar. He then treated himself to a backpack trip to China and Japan for a few weeks to see old friends he made when he was attending Beijing University. He flew back to his apartment and sold off everything and is now home for awhile while he starts his search for a job. He will also be looking at town homes and will be getting married after Diptie graduates in Dec. Alana is so excited to have him home! Poor Sean! She follows him everywhere! Well that is all the news we have we will keep on trucking on and hopefully soon we will see a end.
Debby

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Homestudy is now started!

Today I talked to our home study agent and we have a list of what she needs to get our home study done. So all three of us will be going to the doctor next week to get a physical and make sure we are free of disease. We will work on getting the letters of recommendation we need and a updated letter of employment and a new financial statement. As well as new fingerprints and police statement. Also we will start the in home check ups we will need. Soooooo I will be spending the next week running and cleaning. But at least we are STARTED and on our way!
Debby
PS: Today was a "I'm so excited to be getting a new baby" day for Alana day. Her best friend is in China right now getting her new baby sister. We watched the video of their Goctha day and Alana saw her best friend Abigail holding her new sister and she jumped up and threw up her hands and did a dance hollering yeah, yeah, yeah!!!! And was singing a song called" I can hold her, I can hold her".... Then we talked about how someday soon she will be going to China also like Abigail to get her brother or sister and she was so excited.
Tomorrow who knows..... but for today she likes the ideal!

Down Memory Lane 2006 Our Adoption Of Alana

Wow I was looking at pictures of Alana on gotcha day in November 2006 and look at her now! We move forward with this second adoption with so much anticipation and excitement. It brings all the wonder and joy back to me as I look at the pictures of the babies from Taiwan who are waiting for their families and wonder what our child will be like? Who will they be, what will their personality be like. Will they cry on gotcha day, be full of smiles? Or will they be like our Alana ChuanLe who just shut down for 3 days and didn't show any emotion of any sort. Then like the sun rising after a month of darkness on the 4th day she laughed out loud and smiled the biggest smile I have ever seen. Then she looked around like was that me. It was all down hill after that. What a wonderful journey we had and we are so blessed to begin a similar journey again.

Debby

Journey begins! March 17 2008

Well last night we got word that we have been added to the waiting list with a orphanage in Taiwan. We are number six waiting for a little girl but open to a boy also. We asked for a one or two year old. I can't believe we are doing it again! I am so excited. Alana is not to sure how she feels about it. One day she is excited and all she can talk about is getting to hold her baby then the next she just says "no baby mama" and pouts. We are told as soon as we get our home study in we could be matched as they don't go in order. They take 4 of the families who is the best match for the child then pray about it until they get a answer. So it could be as soon as 2 months or as long as the end of the year or longer. We will see. Keep us in your prayers as we start this wonderful journey again!
Life is good!
Rick and Debby