Happy Chinese New Year!!

Yesterday was the Chinese New Year; it's the year of the snake. We love celebrating the Chinese holidays with our daughter.  Mae gets very excited about them.  She has a book we read at night about the Chinese New Year celebrations that we've been reading for a few weeks now... and we decorated the house with a very cool paper dragon and lantern.

Xīn Nián Kuài Lè -- That's how you say "Happy New Year" in Mandarin.

We had the awesome privilege to be invited to a Chinese New Year party by some friends of ours.  When my friend Wen first invited us I really didn't know what to expect... but I pictured 3-4 families getting together, not 30 families. (:  It was so FUN!  We were the only ones not Chinese... except for maybe two husbands.  

 My friend Wen is in the lovely yellow top.  We made some very neat paper lanterns... see the green and red in the picture?  It is the Chinese character for Spring 春 since we are celebrating the spring festival. I took mine home and now I have a template to make more next year.

We ate rice cakes, they gave Mae red envelopes filled with money and we watched the children sing Happy New Year songs.  All the little children and most of the adults were dressed in their beautiful Chinese Silk outfits.  Soooo many beautiful little outfits. (We didn't have Mae in hers at first but we ran home and got it... that's why it is still creased from being folded.  oh well, there's just not too many opportunities to get to wear it and we weren't going to miss one!)

 Mae played on the playground with all the children and had a great time until it was time to eat... My girl's favorite thing.  And EAT she did!!

 Let me just tell you, the food was out of this world.  There were many dishes there that you just can not order at a restaurant.  We had a great day and hope we will be invited back next year... and Ian will be able to be with us too!

 Our little family.

And our sweet friends.

BIG NEWS...

we have a SON!!!

We are overjoyed to tell you about the little boy we are adopting. His name is Zhou Tian You (pronounced Joe Tian Yo). “Zhou is his last name, “Tian” means sky or heaven and “You” means to protect or bless.  He is from Pingdingshan in the Henan province, the same province that Mae is from, just two hours south of her orphanage.  

We have decided to name him Ian—dropping the “T” in Tian. He is a very handsome little guy, who seems to have a lot of spirit. He has big eyes, long eyelashes, and he has one deep dimple. His birthday is April 26, so he is 21 months old right now.  We are already so in love with him and long for him to be part of our family. 

Also, we have prayerfully decided to add TWO children to our family. This time it is our hearts’ desire, if it all comes together, to adopt another little girl as well. The timing and the circumstances are all in God’s hands. We will be going to China this year to return with either one or two new little ones to love and welcome into our family. We hope to travel sometime between August and October.

You have all encouraged and stood alongside us as we brought Mae home. You have prayed for us and have shown us so much love and support. We would love to ask that of you again as we undertake this new adoption process. The paperwork alone is nearly a full-time job! 

Before we adopted Mae we had a letterpress business that we loved, but it took a lot of our time. In addition to the letterpress shop, Cody worked a regular, full-time job during the day and Kristen was busy with her graphic design business. We spent our evenings and weekends at our shop printing long into the night. Once we started the adoption process, we realized that we would have to find some margin in our lives to raise our little girl. So, after many hard conversations, we decided to sell our beloved letterpress shop.  The proceeds of the sale went to help fund the adoption. We were also blessed with generous contributions from Kristen’s grandfather, who adored Mae.  

This time we are attempting to raise, from friends and family, a portion of the cost of the adoption. We will do this in three ways:

• We have designed two T-shirts, one for adults and one for children, that we will ask donations for. 
• We are also going to make some items to sell. (If you are “crafty” and are able to make items that you would be willing to contribute for us to sell, we would love that!) 
• We have a donate button on our blog for those not interested in a T-shirt or the other items we will offer.

We are asking you, if you are able, to support in one of these ways. 

Here are our tees:

Panda Tee
Toddler & Youth—$18
Women's — $22

Rescued Tee
Youth—$18
Men's & Women's — $22

We think they are very cool, by the way. Also, we’d love for you to spread the word. We want to see the message of the T-shirts catch on to raise awareness of the significance and the beauty of adoption. God’s Word tells us that we are adopted into his family. How amazing is that!

Above all, we ask you to please pray for all this adoption entails—the details of the paperwork, the specifics on the children, the timing of our trip to China, and, most importantly, for the children waiting for us. Even though we will be rescuing them from life in an orphanage, it is the life they have always known. Their world will soon be turned upside down. But we believe that love will win in the end, because we serve the God who calls us to love. 

Thank you so much for helping us be the arms of his love. It’s a privilege for us to answer God’s call.

Psalm 13:5 "I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me."

Catching Up!!

It has been so very long since I blogged.  I hate so much time goes by in a flash.  We had a very sad event happen in our family and I haven't wanted to blog about it, so I have just avoided this... but time has passed and made it easier to say that our precious Griffin passed away in October.  There is not a single day that I do not miss him and Mae missed her best friend.  He is in almost ever picture we have because he was always by our side.  His life and presence was such a huge part of us. He lived to love us.

We will always miss Griffin, he is so special.  Cody and I decided after a few weeks of the house being a little too quiet that we were just dog people and that we wanted to have another dog.  Not a replacement for Griffin, there never could be a replacement, but a new friend and companion.  We contacted a breeder and got Rocket at the end of November, a few days before our NINE year anniversary. Rocket is pure energy.  He is like having four toddlers and a blessed hand-full.

Mae really loves her puppy but at times he can be a little too much.  She always wants to play with him and they do make a funny pair to see.  It seems that they have a little trouble-making in common (;

Christmas came and went in a hurry... I feel like we put a tree up to take it down. But Christmas for Mae this year was so very special.  She remembered a little from the year before... enough to have that excitement.  She understood the Christmas story and we did Santa for the first time.  Christmas is so much more fun with the wonderment of little ones.  

Rocket is into everything so not all decorations went out this year and it was a constant battle to keep the lower ornaments on the tree between Rocket and Mae. 

Santa brought Mae a red tricycle.

And her big present from Cody and Me was a doll house.

Later Christmas day we went to my dad and mom's house to see family and celebrate together.  Mae had decided that she had already had enough gifts.  She was not interested in opening anything else.  She would happily give the gifts that she had picked out for everyone though.  That was quite precious.

**MAE STARTED PRESCHOOL***

Mae started Preschool on Tuesday, January 8th!!! She was really excited to go but just a tad nervous too.  I can hardly stand how cute she is with her backpack on.  It seems so BIG on her.  She goes to school from 9:30-1:30 Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I was going to bust to pick her up and she was smiles from ear to ear.  Her teacher said she did great and that the little girls in her class held her hand and took her around everywhere.  She has Chapel, PE, and Music along with lots of learning, reading and crafts.  Mae is in heaven and we are so glad we started her.

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Okay so that's almost it... we have one other very exciting thing to share.  WE STARTED OUR NEXT ADOPTION in the beginning of November.  We are so excited to add to our family.  So I have been busy, busy with paperwork again.  Please pray for us in this adoption process that it would go quickly and smoothly.  Please also pray for God's protection over our family and peace right now, as this is difficult to be out of control and know your child is waiting for you across the world. We were so blessed in our journey to Mae to have so many wonderful friends and our family so closely watching and waiting for her arrival.  She was prayed over by so, so many people and we know that Jesus was her healer and hope.  HE was there with our daughter even though we were not. 

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Dragon Boat Featival

Our day today included a little Asian experience...

Birthday Girl

Our little Mae is THREE years old now!!!  

Friday was her birthday and we had a BIG day celebrating her. 

She is trying to show me 3 with her fingers... she does a pretty good job but its a hard one to do. (:

Cody took the day off from work.  We went to IHOP for a delicious pancake breakfast.  mmmmm... Mae wishes everyday started off with a pancake breakfast with her daddy.  

After breakfast we went to the Children's Museum in Atlanta and it was fantastic!  Definitely take your kiddos if you live in the Atlanta area... it was better than I had hoped for.  Mae loved every activity and there is soooo much to see and do there.  Mae would have stayed glued to the first thing she did if we'd let her... we kept her going to the next fun thing; each new area was just as fun & exciting as the last.  

These pictures are a miniscule glimpse of all the fun activities: 

Moon sand to sculpt.

 Fishing in a pond and rain jackets are provided so that your sweeties don't get soaked.

Giant building blocks

[ Mae's birthday present this year from us was a baby bed that my sister and I played with when we were little... I painted it blue to match her big girl bed and I made a small quilt that matches her bedding.  So Cody and I wanted to find her a special baby doll that looked like her... and we decided on the popular American Doll Bitty Baby. ] So when we left the museum and headed for the mall...  to go experience the American Girl Store.  We witnessed the crazed girls pulling their mothers and fathers everywhere to show them all the babies and the loads of accessories.  Mae enjoyed watching the girls more than noticing what was in the store.  We showed her the baby and she was happy with her.  She loved her all the way home, hugging her and singing to her very sweetly.  

 It was past nap time here, you can see how tired she is.

 Later, we had a small family dinner with balloons, cake and presents.  I love my family!!!

 We talked about Mae's birthday coming up for weeks before and all she really took from it was that she was going to get "happy cake" -- ALL DAY all she kept asking for her "happy cake"... finally she got it and it made her the happiest of all. (:

Mae was showered with presents... you can see her bed for her baby and a new baby stroller here.  

So the fun could and maybe should have ended there... really my mom said that having parties can only lead to Mae wanting a big wedding one day (;  We were so delighted about a small and perfect party place for Mae's little playmates.  It was at Tuck-n-Tumble gym and it was more than perfect.  

Mae was so happy to run free, jumping and hanging and seeing her friends. 

 But all the fun didn't compare to you guessed it... "HAPPY CAKE!"

 

My heart is so torn... loving the big girl that Mae is becoming but saddend to say goodbye to my sweet baby.  I love the conversations that we can have now and her helpful heart but still missing the little round faced, lovable little one Mae was only yesterday.  I am smitten with this girl and am blown away every day that God chose us to have her.  Happy Birthday sweet girl!