2 Year LID Recap

Ok, so I didn't do anything as exciting as Lisa but we did have a good time last night! We took the kids to this place and made a bear for Meili. Our original plan was to do this after referral as a 'welcome home' gift for Meili from her siblings, but we thought it would make for a fun 2 Year LIDversary celebration and, from what I hear, we'll be grateful later on to have one less thing to worry about between referral and travel. We had hoped to make a panda or the 'Year of the Mouse' rat thing that we saw online but our store had neither so we ended up with this.

Meet 'Xiao Fu'-She wasn't the cutest bear there, but was really soft and baby-friendly, we thought. The Hello Kitty outfit was as close to an asian-inspired look that we could find. T did get very excited at one point that he found a Chinese outfit, but it was in fact Mariachi garb-nice try, T.

The kiddos picked out her body and outfit-

Then they took her over to be stuffed-

But first, they each picked out a heart and the B-a-B girl made them do all sorts of silly things with it-warm it up, kiss it, make a wish, etc. Poor T played along but it about killed him-

Once stuffed, the boys gave Xiao Fu an air 'bath'-

Dressing her was quite a challenge-

But processing her birth certificate was even worse-

Finally, she was done and we headed out for some dinner-

Earlier in the day, we had a LIDversary miracle of sorts. First, some background... There is not much that I enjoy more than home improvement projects. (I should clarify that it is not so much the process of doing them, but the finished product that is so great.) The paver project in the front yard has really been a highlight of 2008, so far. Matt has just about finished the other side of the driveway and things are looking great, which makes the 10 foot section of cracked and crumbled sidewalk that has been in front of our house for 3+ years look even worse now than it ever did before. For the last few days, it has really been bothering me and I've been trying to figure out how we were going to be able to afford to fix it. Combine this with the news that the orphanage 'donation' in China will likely be increasing by $2000 by the time we travel...

Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when several large trucks pulled up in front of our house and a worker from the county knocked on my door and announced that they were here to fix our sidewalk!!!

For those of you not experiencing this yourself: When you set out to adopt a child and expect that it will take 6-8 months, the day that marks 2 years since you began waiting can be a weird one at best. I felt like this news was just the distraction that I needed yesterday. What a blessing.

I don't have a before picture because I was caught so off guard but here is what it looked like at the end of the day yesterday. The workers should be coming back today or tomorrow to pour the concrete. It's going to be great to be able to walk out to the mailbox everyday and not be reminded of the eyesore in front of our house.!