Day 2-Hollywood Studios!

We headed to Hollywood Studios on our second day.  Poor Laura was sick (had strep most likely!) and couldn't go with us so now she'll know exactly what we did!

 

Cooper was SO brave and rode the Tower of Terror!  When we went last year he was terrified of it, and this year he was scared at first and then enjoyed it.  Here he is with cousin Elizabeth.

 

 We took the kids on the Starwars ride, it was awesome.

 Dad, Elizabeth, and Tom rode it too. 

 We went on the backlot tour, it was really amazing at this part.  They were showing us how they can make things catch on fire and then had all this water come falling down.  We were in this open truck/tour bus thing and the people closest to the water got a little wet.  I was sitting on the inside and I had all three boys sitting next to me.  My mom took pictures of how they reacted-they all immediately squished back against me leaning as far away from the water as they could-they were pretty scared. 

 We met some characters while we were there!  Jackson did NOT want to meet them, but the other kids did!

 Jackson however did want to meet Phineas and Ferb!

 However when we tried to take the pictures he refused. :)

 The favorite ride at Hollywood was the Woody ride!

 Jackson and I sat across from Cooper and Ryan so I could take a picture.  I admit..I love this ride too!

 All of the kids outside of the woody ride.

 When we arrived back at the hotel I had the  kids pose in front of the water, if you look VERY closely you can see the Cinderella castle peeking out in the background.

This is the kids' favorite thing about our hotel.  The mini table/chairs in front of the television!  It makes eating pretty easy for the parents too :)

First Day at Disney World!!!

My parents are the best and took our family (and Laura's family) to Disney World this year!  This year was the easiest year we've had there!  Jackson being 3 1/2 made it so much easier this year.  He didn't need to nap and we just made sure he got to bed at a good time so he was happy and well rested! :)

 

We met everyone at the airport and needless to say, the kids were excited!!

 

Here are all the kids getting ready to get on the airplane!

Jackson was so cute pulling his little suitcase.   :)

The boys did wonderfully on the airplane and then we took a bus ride to the hotel.  We sat in the back row and the boys were a little squirrely...

After we dropped our stuff at the hotel we immediately headed to Magic Kingdom!

 The teacups are one of our favorite rides!  This was the FAST teacup  (Elizabeth (my niece), Tom (my BIL, and Laura hopped in here too)

 This was one was pretty fast too, I rode in this one.  (Ben-my nephew, Cooper, and my dad) Jackson, Ryan, and my mom sat this ride out.

 One of the new Dumbo rides!!

 I look a little crazed..Jackson was totally flipping out and wouldn't ride on Dumbo!  I did get off, I didn't force him to ride.  Some days he was so willing to ride lots of rides, and some days he did NOT want to do the majority of the rides.  We just went with the flow! :)

 I just thought this photo was funny.  We went on one of our favorite rides at Magic Kingdom-the Buzz Lightyear ride.  See how into it Ryan is?

 There's Laura and my mom, then Ben and Cooper.  We rode on this ride, I don't know, maybe 10 times?  Maybe more?  Ben and Cooper had to ride together every single time. 

 Magic Kingdom at night!  We hurried over to get a place to watch the light parade.  It was beautiful!

We headed back to the hotel and got ready to get up bright and early for another park!

Guess What...

Just 1 day after I posted about our long awaited LOA, guess what happened???

 OUR LOA CAME!!!!

Thank you thank you for any prayers you said...the power of prayers is amazing! :)

Our agency overnighted some paperwork we need to complete the next step in the process, so I'm hoping we can overnight our next step on Monday!   The LOA is the big hurdle in this process so it's all downhill from here, yay!!!

I believe now our timeline is 2-3 months to travel, so I'm praying for the beginning of April...that's a longshot but can't hurt to hope!

100 Days

We have now been waiting 100 LONG days for our LOA.  (This is the letter where China says that we can officially adopt Claire.) 

We need this letter in order to continue all of our other paperwork and get our travel approval. 

100 days is a LONG time to wait.  People can get it anywhere from 40-100+ days, but 100+ days is not very common. 

Our agency found out a few days ago that the reason it's taking this long is because the agency who issues the LOA lost a receipt that we sent to China back in August saying that we paid for our dossier.  Because of that one little lost receipt, they didn't complete our paperwork.

The most frustrating part is they never told us!  A few weeks ago my agency inquired about our LOA and we were told it was "in process."  We were never told we were missing any paperwork! 

Needless to say I am getting very tired of the wait and very frustrated, and mostly just dying to see our girl!! 

Please please pray that our LOA will come any day now, especially before the Chinese New Year which starts I believe February 10, and will go on for a week. Everything shuts down during that time.

Thank you!!!!

Cute Cute Brothers and First Lost Tooth, and some Birthdays!

One of my friends has two older daughters with these two babies that they never use anymore and she decided to give them to us!  We are slowly starting to gather girlie toys and clothes :). 

 

 They are the most interesting dolls because they actually move their mouths to suck, they burp, cry, giggle, and sleep!  It's crazy and I was actually having fun with them!  Jackson LOVED them and was kind of obsessed with them for awhile.  He would carry one around with him and actually let them sleep in his bed!  We talked about how he was learning to be a good big brother to Claire.

 Cooper recently hit a major milestone!   His first lost tooth!  It started to be loose Christmas Eve and on January 2 it fell out!

 Sorry for the slightly bloody look-this was literally after it fell out.  He was eating an apple at dinner and it just came out!

 He had to call Ben and tell him all about it.  Ben's already lost at least 3 or maybe even 5??  So Cooper was pretty happy to catch up.

 I convinced Cooper to practice being a big brother and to feed the baby.  You can see how he felt about me taking a picture of him :)  I just had to get it on record!

 Love how sweet he was with the babies!

 

We went to our little friend Holly's cute birthday party!

                                           LOVE the cake and all of the cute decorations!

                           We also had our little friend Blake's birthday!  Another cute party!

                                   These boys just sat and ate and ate and ate!  It was hilarious.

Emma and Evan's Visit!

A few days after Christmas Cousin Emma and Evan (along with their parents of course :)) came to visit.  We had a great visit!  One day everyone came to our house for dinner and the kids made quite a mess!

 

Christmas!

The pictures posted all crazy so I'll just label them and you'll get the drift! :)

 

Christmas eve we went to church and afterward we took a few pictures.  There was a band playing and my boys started dancing around and trying to tackle.  Needless to say it was time to leave right after this!

 

 

We always take a photo in front of the Christmas tree.

 

We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house right after church to have dinner and open a few gifts.

 

The boys helped to open a present for Claire!

 

Our tree Christmas Eve.

The stockings are hung ready for the boys to wake up!

 

 

The boys are ready to see if Santa came!

 

Cooper LOVED his bike!

 

Jackson with his presents.

 

Cooper with his.

 

My favorite gift that we gave the kids...because it included Claire!

 

Christmas day after we opened presents at our house, we hurried over to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  The kids enjoyed opening more presents!

 

Jackson received this tricyle and he LOVES it!

 

It started snowing on Christmas Day!  A Christmas miracle!

Jackson wrote "cooper" on a present for him! This is upside down, oops.

 

Christmas Eve morning the boys exchanged presents.

 

 

Cooper gave Jackson some army trucks.  He obviously loved them! :)

 

Cooper loved Jackson's present too.

 

Christmas Eve we all went to church together.