Consulate Appointment & Plane Tickets!

So our Travel Liaison in China has our plane tickets reserved. She is supposed to call today to confirm everything! So exciting!!!

In order to have our consulate appointment on a Monday thru Wednesday, we needed to leave on a Sunday, so we have chosen November 14th to leave!! Just 2.5 weeks from now!!! oh my!!!

We plan to have Maria on the 18th and Kimi on the 21st. We will spend Thanksgiving in Changsha, Hunan. It would be nice to visit Hengyang (Kimi's city) on Thanksgiving, then on Friday we will head down to Guangzhou for the medical and consulate appointment. We will fly from Shanghai to Chicago on Friday, December 3! Check this out... we leave China at 6pm on Friday, and arrive in Kalamazoo at 10:35pm pm Friday... Too bad its not only 4.5 hours of flying! ha! We are going to be some TIRED puppies! Our greeting party isn't going to be too happy about the arrival time... but they will get over it! The boys will be ready to see us, that is for sure!!!!

Our Consulate Appointment (CA) is November 30th! So will will be gone for just less than 3 weeks.

We have been marching along like crazies over here. Jerry started some jobs this week and will have them done by the 5th. Then he has to bid a big job the next week and we will be outta' here!!!

We are still praying for our Motorhome to sell!! Please pray with us! we only need about 5k more to do these adoptions debt free! That would be so amazing!

Last weekend, a lady with a little girl at Maria's orphanage emailed me and said she might have a picture of Maria. There was a little girl in the background that looked like Maria... Sure enough it was!!! I wasn't sure at first but after looking at it about a million times and then Alex and Jerry looking at it too... we decided that it most definitely was her! She looks SOOOO LITTLE!!! and... still shaved! goodness!

We also have their car seats installed. Good grief! that's a lot of car seats! The boiys have been sitting in the girls' seats and after we return home i will be turning Maria's around to face the rear, but for now since people will be using our truck while we are gone they will stay this way. The boys will be staying with Jerry's parents, so i will install the boys' car seats in their car, so they don't have to change them around all the time... I think they will be spending a weekend with our friend Bonnie's family, so she will just take our truck and the boys can ride in the girls' seats again. I get nervous about car seats not being installed properly so the less they need to be moved the better!

Aren't the girls' seats cute!? They are very nice, very well built and can hold a child up to 85 pounds!!! The girls will be in there a long time!!! haha!


I have been trying to decide which cute clothes we will be taking for the girls... My friends Heather and Kim have given us a bunch of clothes and they are all cute!!! I need to take a range of sizes since we aren't sure how big they are exactly. They are both light as feathers but "tall-ish" Maria has little feet, size 4 will fit for a while, Ann of Red Thread told me. We had her send them each another care package last week.

This was Maria's stuff. Plus 3 pictures. One of the family here and one of herself and one of Kimi!


This was Kimi's package. She got a sweater jacket instead of a whole outfit. Isn't the sweater pretty? I can't believe how big her shoes look! :) She got the three pictures too. In their letters i told them about what we were going to do when we got to China and picked them up. About taking a train and the airplane, stuff like that.

I can hardly wait to leave and get them! But i have soooo much to do before we leave!

What a Day!!!

Today the most wonderful miracle happened to us! We almost always file an extension on our taxes... don't ask me why, habit, maybe? Well, our CPA called to ask how much of the refund to deposit into our HSA account, since the amount of the refund exceeded the limit on the HSA. The whole reason I wanted it deposited there, was i thought it wouldn't be that big of a refund, since we didn't make much last year and we didn't pay much in taxes. I mean i was expecting less than a thousand dollars. But God had other plans! Some of my friends know that i disagree with the stimulus packages that our government administration has been doing, but today God worked something for "good to them that love God to them who are called according to His purpose" Romans 8:28. Because when i asked how much our refund was... the answer was something over 9000 DOLLARS!!!!!!!! He explained why... and i was just stunned!!! After i hung up with him, I just started bawling!!!! I had to call Jerry of course, who was elated, too!! We now have 24,000, we only need a few more thousand!!! Woohooooo!!! I never even dreamed up this one, and i have thought of a lot of weird scenarios!!! This is so amazing! I am overwhelmed!!! This video describes how i feel today!

This is a picture i took of the boys holding our LOCs, back in September.

Travel Approvals!!!

Lyndsay called today and said she had exciting news!!! of course i knew! I was sitting in the floor of the motorhome wiping off the base of the couch. So exciting!!!! She told us that the TAs were dated for September 26!! But since there was a big holiday for like a week in China, it took a while to get out. So... we can make plans!! Jerry just got some remodel jobs for Speedway, so we plan to leave when those are done, which puts us at the 17th of November, so a little later than we originally wanted, but we are sooo happy we can't even put it into words! So we will get to spend Thanksgiving in CHINA!!!!! I am sad to leave the boys here, but Jerry's sister and family are coming up for TG so they will be busy and have a blast. I think we will be gone just less than 3 weeks. Wow!!

woooooooohoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Praise God!!!

I just have to write... We have been fund raising... mostly by selling stuff that we have. But this last couple of weeks Jerry has been getting scrap metal from his job, he is demolishing a gas station, and we had decided that any thing God gave us from scrap we would pay tithe on and the rest would go into the baby-fund. Well... he has received about 5500 dollars!!! Isn't that amazing!!? He is working hard though in order to get it all... stuff like wiring, he has to pull all out of the conduit, then he had to take apart a walk-in-cooler that he sold to someone, and a giant carbon filter system he sold to someone, as well as taking all the aluminum off the building. He doesn't mind, he is happy for the opportunity. We sold all that stuff at our sales and got about 2500. Then we cashed in our little roth Iras, those were just sitting there with a whole 4500 in it (we invest in physical assets now instead of paper), it hit my bank account today!!!!!! YAY!!! Then... this is the most amazing! Some friends of ours, that we haven't spent any time with since last year called out of the blue and said they wanted to help!! We were so happy, not just because they were helping us, but because they want to help some orphans! Both Jerry and i cried when Jerry got off the phone with them... well on Wednesday, Jerry called them, because they had said a couple days before that they had plans for us... we were happy to get the chance for more work, so Jerry called them to meet the husband and pick up the plans (as in prints for a job) He handed Jerry and envelope with a check in it for our fund and then jerry asked about the plans... confusion ensued... hahahaha! they had been talking about plans to help us!!! we laughed, they were probably thinking we were so bold to be asking for the money!!! when we thought we were asking for plans to bid on a job!!! So we left and headed down the road, i finally opened the envelope and there was a check for 2000 dollars! I could barely get the words out and i was bawling, i mean sobbing... i couldn't even talk and it took me about 10 minutes to recover... meanwhile the boys are in the back saying "why are you crying momma?" over and over and over... and since Anthony copies everything Alex says... its a lot!

I just thank God for those friends and their desire to help some little orphan girls become orphans NO MORE!!! I pray that God will give them that money back over and over so they can continue to give it for God's GLORY!!!



Today, i received an email from a new friend that has a friend in China, that volunteers at Maria's orphanage, yesterday she emailed her friend asking if she knew Maria and today we received an answer back...

"I know her, in fact, I've played with her several times. She is a cutie and I think her delays are due to institutionalism. She waves good bye, blows kisses, walks well, etc.....a very cute girl. The ayis told me about 3 weeks ago that she was going to America and they seem very excited for her."

That just makes me cry with happiness and sadness... i want her now! and i am so happy she is walking!!! Her waving and blowing kisses just melts my heart! She sounds so sweet, even without mommy. :)

Soon... baby... soon.