Valentine's Day

We had a really fun Valentine's Day!  The boys woke up and had heart dohnuts which of course they loved.

 

Cooper's class had a Valentine's party that I was able to help out with, so my mom came up and hung out with Jackson during the party. 
Here is Cooper with his good friend from class.

 Me and Cooper before the party!

 This is one the games we played at the party.  It was so fun!  I brought one home for all of us to play.

 I had a little Valentine's dinner set up with fun treats.  I borrowed the idea from my sister to have a "heart's desire" dinner. Everyone got to pick their favorite thing to eat for dinner. Cooper picked shrimp, Jackson picked avacado, Ryan picked blueberries and I picked strawberries.  Kind of random, huh? :)

 My cute boys posing before dinner.

 We do a "heart hunt" every year where they follow the clues to a little treasure at the end.  Cooper was actually able to read most of the words this year!

 They found their treasure!

Hope everyone had a Valentine's Day filled with love!

Catching Up

Wow, I am behind!  Here's a few happenings in February...

 

Cooper played basketball for the first time.  He had fun! 

 

 A movie night/game night with friends

 Hugs for Cooper from Emily :)

 I came around the corner and Jackson was dressed like this...hilarious!!

 A flying bug got in the house and the boys decided to get it for us!

 We had an early Valentine's party at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The table was decorated so cute!

 Here's Elizabeth and Jackson eating their chocolate heart.  My mom always reads a book about a chocolate heart and the kids each get one every year.

 Cooper and Ben listening intently to the book.

 Little Valentine playdate.

 Jackson has been really into picking his outfits lately and refusing to wear certain things.  Cooper never did that so it's been a learning experience! :)   He also loves to show me some fun faces!

Introducing...Our Daughter!

No, she's not home yet!  :(  But I finally can post her picture on line, since we received our LOA!  I know most of you have already seen her picture, but for those of you who live far away...here she is!

 

Claire Wenxia Ann.  My friend Bekah has a friend from China, and she translated her name for us.  Wen-means culture

Xia-means dawn

 

 We think she's beautiful!!!!  In these first two pictures she's 11 months old.

 Here she's 14 months old.

 I just love her beautiful wide smile! 

These are the only pictures we have of her.  |They're up ALL over our house, pretty much anywhere you look, there she is! :)

She's now 18 months old.  I was hoping to have her home by now, but I know she'll be home in only a few more months!  We're getting closer and closer.  We are now waiting our our I800 paperwork to be sent to Washington, and then they'll cable it to China.  Then we have only one or two more steps..then travel approval! 


We sent her a care package through a person in China, and she sent us a photo of what it included.  I have been reading that it's good to send things that the majority of kids can enjoy, so I ordered a few books that they could keep at the orphanage.  Then the candy is for her caregivers.  The camera and film is so HOPEFULLY we get some photos of her, and then the little panda is for her to snuggle.  We also had her give Claire a photo book filled with pictures of us and the boys, and then we ordered a cake to be given to Claire, plus all the other children. 

The main thing I was looking forward to was receiving pictures of her eating her cake, and then we were able to ask 10 questions to include with the care package.  Talk about difficult-try picking just 10 questions to ask about your child!  Unfortunately the CCCWA (China's adoption welfare center) issued a new rule that the orphanages can only give updates to adoption agencies.  So we didn't get any pictures or questions answered. :(   I wish we had known because we would have asked for that a long time ago!  So we just requested it this week from our agency so I'm hoping we get an update with new pictures soon.  The woman we ordered the care package with was told that Claire did get the care package, and they took pictures of her enjoying her cake.  I can't wait to see them!

We then sent another care package this Friday ourselves.  It was so fun picking out stuff to send her! I tried to pick out a bunch of small toys for the orphanage to keep.  Then the two bags of candy are for the caregivers.  I had to label everything in Chinese.  I used Google translate but have no idea if it was right nor not!  It probably says something completely different than what I want it to say! :)

 Here's her lovey.  I have a second one for her that I'm going to bring with us to China.  I'm not sure if she'll even receive any of this stuff, but sometimes I think they receive it and don't bring it with them.  So I wanted to get 2 of everything that way I can bring it with us and hopefully she'll recognize it and it'll make her more comfortable with us.  I can hope anyway!

 This is a recordable book that we all read to her.  I have another one here at home.

 Then we sent a little photo book for her to see her family. 

I really hope she gets this before we travel to China!  I'll make sure to post new pictures once we get them!

Days 7 and 8 of Disney...our last days!

Phew, this is a lot of Disney, I know. :)  I want to be sure I record everything so I'll remember when I go back and scrapbook it.  Since I've already scrapbooked Jackson up until he's three months old, I'm sure it will only be 5 or 10 years until I scrapbook this trip.  ;)

 

We spent our last two days either playing around at Magic Kingdom, or playing around at our hotel! 

We checked out the few rides we hadn't done yet, like Pirates of the Caribbean (Jackson didn't go so we stayed back and took pictures instead!).

 

 Then went on to do all our favorite rides again.  My mom and I took the boys to eat at Belle's castle restaurant one last time.

 (it's "snowing" in the windows)

 I had to post one of my kids' favorite things at the park-the moving/talking trash can.  A man uses a remote and a microphone to make it appear like it's talking and moving on it's own.  The man hides so you have to really look around to find it.  (Can you see Cooper and Jackson touching it right in front in the red?)  On the last day we were there I got really embarrassed because we were watching the trash can in a big group and it rolled up right in front of me and kept saying "ma'am" over and over.  I kept telling the little girl next to me it was talking to her, she kept saying it was talking to me!  Finally I said yes, and it told me to put my hands on either side of it.  So I did and then it started playing music and moving back and forth-so basically we danced together.  Then it asked me to marry it and told me to lean down and hug it.  There was a really big crowd and I'm pretty sure I was bright red.  I was just so thankful only my dad and the boys were there-if my mom had been there she would have video-taped it for sure!

 Everyone went into another ride(can't remember which one) and Jackson did NOT want to do it so we sat outside with him.

 Of course we had to try the buzz lightyear ride AGAIN!  I wish we had kept track of how many times we rode it.

 On the way out we had to take pictures one last time in the front!

 Finally with Grandma and Grandpa!

Our hotel had this big fun splash area and it was warm enough that the kids could play in it that evening.

 The last day we had until about 1 at the park, and then we had to head back to the hotel.  Cooper was acting really tired and crabby and just not himself, and I finally kissed his forehead and realized he had a fever!  Poor baby!  And of course all of our luggage had already been checked at the hotel-I had all my meds in there.  I was able to buy some meds at the park but they didn't take away his fever at all.  It turned out he had a double ear-infection.  The flight home wasn't too bad, I just felt bad because there was only one of me and I wanted to sit and hold him the entire time but I had to keep getting Jackson stuff and keep him entertained.  Thankfully Laura, Tom, and the kids were behind me because we had a late flight and both Jackson and Cooper fell asleep at the end.  I had to carry Jackson and hold poor Cooper's hand until we got off the plane, so Laura was able to take all of our carry ons for us.  It wasn't very fun but we made him home and Ryan met us at the airport with meds so we were good after that! :)

It was a magical vacation, thank you SO much mom and dad for another fun trip!!!