We leave TOMORROW!!!

I can hardly believe I am typing those words, it doesn't really seem real!  We have had a few little hiccups in the last week and a half before travel-I just went to the dr. today, Jackson went yesterday, and Ryan had a health emergency last week (having to do with his eye, nothing life threatening!). But thankfully we are all doing well and Ryan and I are getting ready to travel!  The illnesses have just interferred with cleaning my house so unfortunately my parents are going to be staying at a dirty house.  Luckily they'll love us anyway :).  SO many last minute things to do but I think we are pretty much ready now. 

Our general schedule:
Wed May 1- leave in the am.
Arrive in Tokyo, then fly to Hong Kong.  Arrive Thursday evening their time. 
We'll stay in Hong Kong until Sunday the 5, then take a train to Guangzhou. 
Monday May 6- meet Claire in the afternoon!!!!
Tuesday, May 7- we officially adopt Claire!!!! 
Tuesday May 14-leave Guangzhou to go to Hong Kong
Wednesday, May 15-leave HK and arrive home that same day (due to the time change)!  Too bad it can't really go that fast since we'll be traveling with a 20 month old :). 

Our flight from here to Tokyo is about 12 hours, I've never been on a plane that long in my life! I'm mostly worried about how Claire will do on the airplane so please say lots of prayers for us on May 15! :) 

I'm hoping to blog while we are in China so you can follow along on our trip!   Only 6 days until we can hold our daughter for the first time!! 

Showers for Claire!

We have been so blessed by the support from our family and friends throughout this adoption.  Everyone has been so excited for us, especially as it gets SO MUCH CLOSER!!! 

 

I was so lucky and very grateful to have a few showers thrown to welcome Claire!!

 

The first one was hosted by my mom and sister.  It was BEAUTIFUL.  I wish I had taken a picture of the invitation but I didn't.  I have it saved but time is very very limited now so I'm not going to go back and post it :) 

 

 The shower had a Chinese theme and it was just gorgeous and so much fun.

 The party favors-aren't they perfect?  The chopsticks say "oh happy day!" and, in case you don't know, the cookie is in the shape of China.  Laura made them, aren't they adorable?  There's a heart on them where Claire lives. 

 More beautiful decorations.

 The other table.  My dad served all of the ladies a yummy Chinese lunch!

 The lady of the hour, Claire!!  (I keep calling her Claire Bear so that's what I keep wanting to write! :))

 Me with the hostesses..Elizabeth helped to host too.

 Bad photo but I had to post a picture of the desserts, everyone got their own little cake and there's a chocolate fortune cookie on top!

 I look pretty crazy in all of the present opening pictures but I just had to post a picture of these adorable pink toms!!

 Most of the ladies who attended!

Then my friends from MOPS hosted a beautiful shower for me!!!

 So so cute!  The colors are the colors of Claire's room. :)

 Adorable!!!

 My two wonderful friends who hosted this beautiful shower, Leanne and Summyr!!

 My MOPS friends!

The third shower that I was lucky enough to have was hosted by my wonderful friends Kristen and Shelby, who also happen to be neighbors!  So they had the neighbor ladies over and a few friends from Cooper's school. 

It was such a fun theme, and perfect for a girl...princesses!!!

 I had to post a picture of the gift table because see that quilt on the table?  Kristen made it for Claire!!! Isn't that amazing?  I love it and it matches her room perfectly!

 Almost all the lovely ladies who attended the shower!

 

I'm a table leader at MOPS and at our last leader meeting they had a little shower for me where I received some cute things and diapers!!! I forgot to take pictures, but I didn't want to leave them out! :)

 

As I said, we have been SO blessed with support and I am so so thankful.  You should just see the beautiful things we received at the shower!  I have many pictures but I decided instead of posting millions of pictures of clothes, you'd probably rather see Claire IN them.  And very soon you will!! :)

Easter Activities

We did just a few little activities to celebrate the miracle of Jesus!   Although most of our activities were mostly with eggs and egg hunts.. need to work on that next year :)

 

We made some bunny cupcakes...

 dyed some eggs with the cousins...

 (Cooper wrote Jesus on his egg!)...

 went to a fun dinner/magician/easter egg hunt at our friends' church...

and then hunted for Easter baskets Easter morning!  Since the Easter bunny was also going to Grandma and Grandpa's house, the bunny didn't hide eggs at our house this year.  (Much easier on me!)

 

After this we went to church!  Coming up next, all the fun traditions at Grandma and Grandpa B's house!

Claire's Room!!

I had so much fun decorating Claire's room!  It took me awhile to decide what colors and how I wanted to decorate it, but once I found this bedding I knew what I wanted to do! 

 

We have both a twin bed and a crib in the room because Claire will be sleeping in the crib, but we already had the bed all set-up so we decided just to leave it in her room.  That way if I have to sleep with her for awhile when she comes home I'll be able to do that comfortably. :)

 

This is the view from the doorway.  (this room used to be Cooper's room)

 I put the polka dots on the wall-it's actually just white contact paper!  I used my cricut machine to cut them out, and then used a grid on the wall with yarn in order to get the polka dots straight.

Laura made me this banner, it says:  "You did not grow under my heart but in it."  It's a common adoption phrase that I love!

This is a little shelf over her bed-the little Chinese doll is actually my mom's from when she was 10! 

I had to put my little bow-hanger on the blog-it's so fun having bows in the house!!

 This is the wall with the bedroom door and closet door.   I have now changed out the knobs on the dresser to little pink glass knobs.

 The center picture is a picture of China that my sister ordered for me. It has a heart on it where Claire is from, and then it says her name and birthdate.  I love it!  Then on the bottom left little plaque is a card that says "I love you" in Chinese.  The bottom right plaque has a card on it with Claire's Chinese "year" animal-she was born in the year of the rabbit.  I'm going to put photos of our family together on the rest of the plaques.

This is the wall opposite her crib. 

 We put these shelves way high up on the wall to put all of our stuffed animals kind of out of the way. 

 It's hard to see but the sign says "you are my sunshine."  I love that song! :)

 This is her little play corner.  We have a little kitchen for her and then a little cradle-it was my play cradle when I was little.  We'll put all of her little doll stuff back here. 

So that's it!  Very soon Claire will be here to enjoy it all!!!

Spring Break

We had a very relaxing and fun Spring Break!  We didn't go anywhere (Ryan has no days off what with taking a 2 week trip to China!) so we stayed home and relaxed!  We did a few different playdates, hung out in our pjs at home, and did a few fun activities.

 

We finally got out the volcano kit they got for Christmas.

 

We had to construct it first which is why it took me so long to do it...but it wasn't that bad once we got started.  I actually had fun making it!

 The boys did too.

 It wasn't the most impressive explosion-can you see the yellow coming out of the top and trickling down the volcano?  Jackson was VERY worried to explode the volcano so I think he was relieved it was so tame.

 

I also wanted to make one snacky thing with them.  We decided to make this jello.  Fun to make and cute, but I didn't think it tasted very good.  We probably won't be making it again!

Oops, out of order picture, but this is about as impressive as it gets! :)

 The boys played in the backyard a bit and Jackson climbed the tree for the first time!

 Over SB we went over to Grandma's one day to celebrate an early St. Patrick's Day!  Laura and I went out of town to visit our Grandparents over St. Patty's Day so we did an early celebration.

 Aren't these cute?  My mom just cut up a rainbow popsicle and then poured 7 up in it!  Isn't that a great idea?

 Funny boy.

 Cheers!

 She had a really fun treasure hunt planned for the kids.  The big boys (and Eliz of course) actually read the clues!  They are getting so good at sounding out words!

 Showing off one of the cute clues.

Afterwards we had them pose with their treasure..gold coins and a rainbow!

We had a fun Spring Break!