I found this photo/description on yahoo news. Isn't it beautiful?


A resident crosses a bridge shrouded with fog at a park in Beijing February 21, 2007. A dense fog covering Beijing cut visibility to a few dozen metres and paralysed flights in and out of the national capital on Wednesday, disrupting China's week-long Lunar New Year celebrations. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV (CHINA)

In the mail

Andrew loves getting mail and packages. He was so excited to come home from school and find a package on our front doorstep.

Enclosed was a bird's nest sent from Auntie Glenda. Andrew pointed out a shoestring, Christmas ribbon, lint from a dryer and a piece of a candy wrapper the bird had used. He didn't want to mess it up, so he didn't take the plastic wrap off.

When he took it to school and pulled it out of his book bag, he got a great surprise. It had a beautiful blue egg inside that with all the jostling, had worked itself to the outside of the nest.

Andrew thinks this is the best package he has ever received!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!

We had a blast yesterday. We went to the China town area and saw a great show. There were plays, drums, singing and throwing candy and money (which hurt when it hit your head!). Andrew's Chinese teacher met us there and gave both he and Anslee red envelopes with money and candy.

We tried authentic Chinese food ~ which as we found out while we were in China is nothing like the Chinese food we eat around here. :-)

After the show we went outside to watch the dragon dance.

Anslee and Andrew both fed money to the dragon. Anslee ran ahead and ran straight to the dragon to put her money in the mouth. Then she kept running back to us to get more money.

Chinese New Year lasts for fifteen days, so we still have a lot of celebrating to do!

A new building

Anslee's orphanage in Fuling is being relocated and built higher up a mountain. When the Three Rivers Gorge dam is completed her old orphanage will be completely under water.

They are still asking for donations to complete the building. If you would like to help, click here for the details.

This is a picture of the entrance when we were there. I'm sad we won't ever be able to bring Anslee to the orphanage to see where she lived for the first ten months of her life, but the children who are still there will have a much nicer place to live.

Our neighbors

Anslee and Andrew love playing outside. We have had such a mild winter until now that they have been able to play outside a ton. Yesterday and today have been bitterly cold (for Georgia!)

so they have been inside. If it is not going to snow, we are ready for spring!!

Exciting news...

My sister and her husband are going to have a baby!

My nephew is going to have a sibling!
That will bring my parents a total of 12 grandchildren!

I am so excited!

Can you tell by my use of exclamation marks?

Terri

Reality check

I love my sister! When I am having a rough day she always makes me feel better because her day is always much harder!
I called her yesterday and was telling her about all the things I had on my "to do" list for that day. She listened and gave me advice. Then I asked her what she had done yesterday. She gave me her usual huge long list and then said when she and her family got home last night they were checking on all the farm animals because it was really cold (17 degrees).
The pigs and the sheep were missing. They had to treck all through the woods looking for them. When they found them they had to be herded back to their pens and enticed to enter. It took about an hour in below freezing temperatures! My chores look much easier after hearing that.
I remember one day after talking for a while she told me the day before that one of their goats was dying during kidding. They had to put the goat down, deliver her babies by c-section, run to the house and get a lamp electric cord, and strip the wiring out so they could intubate the babies.... Can you imagine starting your day like that?!

Anslee helping with chores on the farm.

Andrew feeding chestnuts to the pigs.

I'm off to start my easy day :-)

T

Disney World January 1st - 6th

We had so much fun at Disney World. In the five days we were there we visited Magic Kingdom, MGM, Epcot and Animal Kingdom. We spent the majority of the time at Magic Kingdom and MGM.

We made a huge mistake our first day at MK. We took Andrew and Anslee on Snow White's Scary Adventure ride first. Anslee was petrified. Afterwards we rode the carosel, It's a Small World, and Peter Pan and she would hide her face in my shoulder. That entire day she was sure something scary was going to happen again. By the second day she was much more secure that we weren't going to do that to her again.

Some friends of ours went to Disney with us. We met up for most of the meals and would stayed together off and on in the parks. This is a picture of us at the Chef Mickey character breakfast. Anslee couldn't believe that she got to talk to the real Minnie Mouse. She was so excited.

We spent the least amount of time in Epcot. We rode all the rides there. I thought Test Track was really fun but Andrew said his favorite ride was Expedition Everest.

Disney is having a year of Magical Moments where a Disney employee will come up to you at one of the parks and give you a "magical moment". You are just picked at random.

Our friends were picked at Animal Kingdom. They were there when it opened and an employee asked them which ride they wanted to ride very first. They picked Expedition Everest. He took them there and let them choose what seats to ride in. Then you get a certificate about your moment.

We got a magical moment at the tea cups in Magic Kingdom. They picked us to have an unbirthday party. There was a long line for the tea cups she took us in the side announced who we were and we choose a cup and everyone sang happy unbirthday to us. Andrew and Anslee loved it. Keith looked like he wanted to crawl under the seat :-).

We'll go back one day when Anslee is older but I don't think we are one of those families who'd want to go every year. It was a blast but we were all exhausted the last day.

The perfect ending to our trip was going to the beach in Melbourne, Florida the day before we went home.

Catching up on posts...

We went to Breakfast with Santa at the Buckhead Diner. When we arrived there were bubbles being blown off the roof. When we got out of the car Andrew and Anslee had a blast playing in it and pretending it was snow.When we were seated, there was a huge bowl full of marshmallows, a plate full of pastries and hot chocolate and candy canes at each seat.


Anslee loved Rudolph even more than Santa. She "stalked" him the entire time but if he turned around to see her she would run away or hide.

Santa arrived in a fire truck and we all went to the door to see him come in. Then he walked around to each table to visit with each child while brunch was being served. Afterwards Andrew said you could tell he was the real Santa because his beard was real and Santa told him to eat all his breakfast and the real Santa knows he needs to gain some weight. :-)

For desert we were served delicious chocolate reindeer (mousse) and Christmas tree sugar cookies.


We had a wonderful time!!

The Birthday Girl

I can't believe our sweet baby turned two today! This past year has flown by. Tonight we went to the mall and let her pick out something at the Disney store. She found a Little Mermaid figure set that she had to have. Then she rode the carousel and ate ice cream. Andrew wouldn't let us pay for the carousel ride because he wanted to use his allowance to pay for it. He said he would pay for her to ride it five times if she wanted. Luckily she didn't :-) We are having her family birthday party later.

Since we went to Disney World in the beginning of January Anslee has fallen in love with princesses. Ariel in particular. She loved the Little Mermaid and the Beauty and the Beast shows at MGM. Even though she has never shown any interest in tv at all, Santa brought her the Little Mermaid DVD. Now she loves it. She won't sit and watch anything else for even 5 minutes, but will sit and watch the entire Little Mermaid movie. It is hilarious to watch her try to sing along with Ariel.

One exception to her love of princesses is that she doesn't love Belle from Beauty and the Beast. When we watched the show at MGM, she was very upset when the Beast turned into the prince. I think she blames Belle for his disappearance. At the end of the show she kept saying "No beast? Beast gone?" I want Beast!" Everyone around us thought it was adorable. So I told her I would get her a Beast. Little did I know that Disney isn't really making the Beast right now. I've called around everywhere to find one. I can't even get the Beauty and the Beast movie (which I have no idea if she'd sit and watch it anyway). So anytime someone mentions the Beast Anslee says "I want Beast". I'm trying to discourage the word Beast in our house :-)

I'll post Disney pictures soon.
T

I can post!!

This picture is from Breakfast with Santa at Buckhead Diner. More to come...

And Yet Another Test Post

Hi all! This is T's sister, just trying a test post to see if I can figure out why T hasn't been able to post. Let's try a picture:This is T's niece, Bernard. Looks like everything's working on this end!

%^$&^%*)*&^&%$$!!! Why can't I post pictures???
I have some really cute ones I want to post from when we had Breakfast with Santa.

Tomorrow Tina is bringing Anslee to school at 11:00am for my class Christmas party. She is going to love it! She came to my classroom the night we had our Christmas pageant and didn't want to leave. The children love "helping" her do things in there and are so excited that she is coming tomorrow. Let's see if I can maintain any control at all.

Andrew's teacher told him yesterday that if you plant a starlight mint in the ground on Christmas eve that some of Santa's magic would fall off his sleigh and turn it into a candy cane. When he told me this last night he said he wasn't going to tell me because he wanted me to be suprised on Christmas morning to see candy canes growing outside. Thank goodness he decided to tell me or he would be one dissapointed little boy!

Here are two cute Santa sights you may want to check out with your children - or by yourself :-)
http://www.noradsanta.org/en/default.php
http://www.claus.com/village.php

I can't believe there is only 5 days until Christmas!
Terri

New rules for Chinese adoptions...

China has decided to tighten the requirements for adoption starting May of 2007. You can read about it here.

Some of the new rules:

No single adults

Couples will need to be married 2 years. If you have been divorced, you have to have been remarried for 5 years

Both parents have to be 30 to 50 years old

Certain medical conditions will disqualify applicants such as: HIV, blindness or low vision, wheelchair dependance, facial deformities, depression or anxiety that requires medication

Severly overweight applicants will be denied (bmi over 40)

Net worth of $80,000 up from $40,000

No more than 5 children living at home

No history of drug use and DUI's will be examined case by case.

Dancing

Keith picked out a Bose speaker to hook my ipod up to so we can hear the music in the house. It is so much easier to put it on the speaker than to try to hook it up to the stereo and the sound is awsome!! I've been blaring Christmas music ~ my current favorite is Chris Issak, but Leon Redbone's Christmas album is my all time favorite.

Andrew and Anslee like my choice in music although I can tell they both think I'm a nerd when comparing me to Keith. When Keith turns on his music they both start dancing and "raising the roof". Yesterday they were dancing over and over to "Jump". Anslee wanted me to keep jumping and if I stopped she would say "jump mama" and point to the floor. When I said it was my turn to pick a song they both were bummed.

Whoever is driving the car gets to choose the music so of course we are usually listening to Keith's tunes. A couple of weekends ago we were driving somewhere and I looked at the car next to us and they were pointing at our car and laughing. I looked back and Anslee is in her car seat dancing and had her hands in the air. She is so funny.

For some reason Blogspot has not let me post pictures the last couple of days but I'll keep posting anyway :-)

A year ago on December 11th

Yesterday was Anslee's "Gotcha Day". I can't believe that she hasn't been with us forever and then again I remember holding her for the first time like it was yesterday.





We celebrated the day by going out for Chinese. Keith got Anslee a silver prayer box bracelet ~how sweet and thoughtful is he?!





Three couples in our travel group already have their dossiers ready and are waiting to adopt another daughter from China. They are so excited about having two children. I think for now we are done having children but you never know what lies ahead...

Terri

Making a Christmas List

Every year I've taken Andrew to Toys R Us to look around and make a tenative Christmas list. This year we tried it with Anslee too. She was so funny. She loooves baby dolls and all their accessories.

We have a friend Julie who gave her two old ones her daughter wasn't playing with anymore. Although they both look exactly alike one has an eye that won't stay open ~ she likes that one the best. When I put her in her crib at night if we couldn't find the one with the lazy eye we'll put the other one in. Even in the dark she can feel around and tell that it isn't her favorite one. She'll throw that one out and say she wants "good baby". So Keith, Andrew and I have to scour the house to find it.

Can you tell she has us all wrapped around her little finger :-)



Terri

Holy Cow!! I can post!!

A year ago today we left for China! From the time we received our referral and saw Anslee's sweet little face for the first time, we were on pins and needles until we left. It seems like it was forever ago.

Test Blog

This is a test

I'm sorry I haven't been posting for so long. For some reason, I haven't been able to write or post pictures. Now I can write but still can't put any pictures up. I'll try to figure out what is going on...