Travel Approval!!!!

We received our Travel Approval!!!  We received it yesterday, April 9, along with our Visas thank goodness.  That was kind of nerve-wracking-you have to mail in your actual passport so your visa can be put in your passport.  We have that back though so now we're good to go!  We are going to book our tickets tonight or tomorrow, but we think we're going to be traveling May 2-May 15th.  We'll know officially once we book our tickets.   We are so so excited and now I have a million things to do!!! I'm trying to get caught up on my blog so I can blog while in China!  It will be a pretty amazing Mother's Day!! :)

Cooper's Real Birthday and Visiting His School!

On Cooper's actual birthday we gave him his presents from us.  He was excited to have a few more to open!

 

Here was his "big" present- a set of trio blocks that make a castle.  He loves trios!  What he mostly does with them is make his own creations- soldiers, characters from video games he likes, cannons, etc..  Then he and Jackson have elaborate battles. Ahhh boys.

 Jackson and I took Cooper out of school during his lunch/recess time to take him to lunch.  He of course picked Chick Fil A!  Actually first he picked Chuck e Cheese but I told him that's too far away to get any time to play.  Lucky me! :)

 Enjoying a special birthday cupcake that night.

 Playing his new DS, a present from G and G B...probably his fav present!  Jackson has informed us many times that when he turns four he also wants a DS! :)

 Cooper had a night where we could go visit and see all of the work he's been doing and visit his specials.

 This is one of his favorite centers.

 When we visited the library they both found books (I'm pretty sure they were both about the army!) to read.

It was a fun visit, I'm so glad he likes school!

Cooper's 6th Birthday!!!

This year I wanted to do something pretty low-key because I knew we'd be really stressed with adoption stuff.  I actually thought we'd be close to travel, don't know what I was thinking!!?!  Anyway, Cooper LOVES movies, so we went with a very easy party- A movie party!!! 

 

Luckily he has Grandparents with a media room so I was able to borrow a few "movie items" from them.

 

Here is Cooper with the party favors-candy and popcorn of course!

 

I asked Cooper if he wanted to play any games before the movie and he requested pin the popcorn on the bucket.  I realized that we have played this game at every one of his birthday parties, just with a different theme! 

 He was very excited to show he was 6!!  This is the "popcorn bar."  The kids each got a popcorn box that they could fill with popcorn and candy.  For the adults I got ranch flavored popcorn from a local popcorn shop-seriously I could have made myself sick eating so much it was that good-and then a few other little treats.

 Our "movie theater"

 Cooper wanted a popcorn cake-pretty easy!  That is a "6" sparkler on top!

 The majority of the kiddos, waiting to play some games!

 We played a few little popcorn relay races before the movie started.

 See how scared Cooper was of the sparkler-he was so worried it was going to shoot really far and hurt!  So cute :)

 They watched Madagascar 2, and sat for the ENTIRE MOVIE!  I was so surprised kids didn't leave to play in the playroom or anything!

 This is what Jackson looked like after he visited the candy bar :)

 Happy 6th birthday Cooper, we love you SO much!!!!!

Waiting for Travel Approval!! (and a photo!)

I realized I haven't given you all an update recently!

We finally received a long-awaited update on Claire Wenxia Ann!!  Here she is with the cake we sent her.  Aren't the cakes beautiful in China?  I don't think she knows what to think! :) This is the only picture they sent, so I sure hope she was able to have a piece and enjoy it!  We also had the questions answered that we sent so I am very grateful for that.

 

We are now in the home stretch of our wait!!!  We are on the very last step, which is waiting for our Travel Approval!!!! I can hardly believe it is here.  It could potentially come this week, crazy and exciting!!

 

We also have our travel dates pretty well set now!  We can't book our tickets until our TA comes, so I can't say FOR SURE this is when we will travel, but as of now we are looking at leaving May 1 or 2!  That means less than a month!!!! 

 

We will hopefully only stay 12 days, but depending on when our consulate appointment is scheduled we may have to stay 13 or 14 days.  Our agency submits 5 possible dates for our appointment, and we just have to hope and pray our first date gets picked! 

 

I'm now trying to deep clean our house (which Ryan will tell you I've been trying to do for a month.  When you have a child at home with you all day it's just hard to get it done!), making a packing list, looking up info on the internet, trying to get caught up on the boys' journals since I know that won't happen when I get back, trying to get a few girls nights and date night crammed in since that also probably won't happen for awhile when we get back, etc...  It's been busy and fun around here!

 

I'll post when we get our TA! 

 

Chinese New Year

Well, we celebrated a little out of order this year!  February is busy for us as there's Valentine's Day, Cooper's birthday, and now Chinese New Year!  Since we are adding a child from China, one of the things we want to do is try to teach her at least a little bit about her culture and the country she is from.  The most important Chinese holiday is Chinese New Year...so now we'll be celebrating it too! 

This year we didn't do a whole lot.  I put up a few decorations, then we had my parents and Laura's family over for a Chinese dinner. 

Here are the very simple decorations :).  Next year instead of a picture on the table, Claire will be here!!!

 

I made this at a pinterest party right before Chinese New Year (it's now in Claire's room) so it was a perfect little decoration!

 

The one "baking" thing I did was make fortune cookies out of fruit roll-ups.  Quite tasty actually and the kids thought they were fun.   The rest of the meal was frozen from Costco. :)  They make the best food!! 

 Reading his fortune.

 The fortune cookies. 

 We also played Don't Eat Pete again.  The kids had fun with it.  That's all the pictures I took! It was nothing fancy, but we had fun celebrating our girl! 

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!