Merry Christmas from China

This picture is a holiday greeting sent to our agency from Mae's orphanage. Sadly, this is the largest picture they have, so we don't get to see very much... just a glimpse. Cody and I think Mae is the little one on the top right. Look at those cheeks and tell me what you think.

Mae sure does have some sweet cheeks. (:

LOA!!

We got our Letter of Approval from China!!! It was delivered to our home Saturday afternoon. The Letter is an ornately decorated page written with Chinese characters. It is such an overwhelming feeling seeing our baby girl's beautiful Chinese name written on the page that we get to sign and send back to China.

They want to make sure we still want her... they don't know how many exclamation points and underlining I wanted to do here. I have to use self control... but yes. WE WANT HER!



Can I just show you something I discovered... here are the dates on the papers that came (our Letter of Acceptance and our Letter of Intent) December 15th is Cody's birthday and September 15th is my birthday. I think that was pretty sweet of our Heavenly Father, don't you? "Every good present and every perfect gift comes from above, from the Father who made the sun, moon, and stars." James 1:17 My mom said that God has made it very clear that this child is meant for us. I agree, there is not a doubt in my mind that this darling's path to us was chosen for her before she was even born. This time last year we had no idea what was in store for us... and really we still have no clue the blessings that are about to come with being her parents.

Panda Present

I saw this giant panda and couldn't resist him... So Mae has the first present under the tree and I'm betting the biggest too. He cracks me up because he's about three times bigger than Mae is, but I think she'll like his fuzzy, giant size. (:

Christmas + Mae

Cody and I decided we needed a special ornament on our tree to represent Mae. When Cody asked me where you find ornaments I said, "like Hallmark" and he said, "no, Anthropologie". He's my man for sure! (: So on Black Friday, we went ornament shopping and Anthropologie was the perfect place. We got these sweet mittens that I adore. My thought is this could hold a small note that we can write to her and each year she could pull it out and read it...

Everything I do holds such different meaning and Christmas this year will and already feels so differently. We wish we were waking up Christmas morning together with our baby girl but she is here in our hearts with each moment. I don't know how not to think of her. It is a crazy, anxious feeling but so wonderful too.

On another note, I've filled out the paperwork for our i800 so I'm ready the moment we receive our letter of approval. I'm so ready!