Merry Christmas!

As we prepare for our celebration of Christ's birth with our families, as we prepare the gifts to be exchanged and the food to be shared, there are those around the world who don't have the easy comforts that we so often take for granted.  We wait to bring home one of them....

We've been saying this for several years now, but surely this will now be our last Christmas with only two daughters.  On that note, this song by Third Day about their adoption journey is quite close to our hearts this year...



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Waiting for Lydia...

Last week we were in New York again since Jim has still been working there.  We wanted to see the city at Christmas and get back to see a couple of the things we missed on our trip in September.  One of the most exciting things we ended up doing was naming our new little girl!  We will name her Lydia Qian Ting.  Her name given at the orphange in China is Ren Qian Ting.  Ren is her last niame, given to all the girls who arrived at that orphanage in 2009.  Qian Ting is her given name, translated to us as meaning "the hope for her to grow up healthily and vigorously, as slim and graceful as flowers."  We will keep her Chinese name as her middle name, and while we were in New York, we decided on a first name of Lydia.  In the Bible, Lydia was a woman whose heart was like the good soil in the parable of the sower.  When she heard the word of God, she received it with joy and believed.  Our prayer would be that the heart of our new daughter would also be like the good soil: that her heart would be softened to the love that we have for her and also the love that Jesus has for her.  When given the opportunity to be loved and nurtured in our home, that she would thrive and grow in that love.  That she would be open to receive God's love for her as Lydia was.


While we were in New York, we found a street vendor doing Chinese name art.  We first saw him in Chinatown, and then proceeded to track him down two more times at different places in Rockefeller center!  Funny how we could successfully find the same street vendor three times in that huge city!  But battling crowds in Chinatown, police officers making him pack up his stand, rain, and then snow...we successfully found him and purchased three name art hangings.  One for Grace, one for Mary Emma, and then finally one for Lydia. 

Getting started on Mary Emma's name.  This was the first night we found him at Rockefeller plaza after seeing him in Chinatown the day before.  This was right before it started raining on him, and right before the police came and told him to pack it up!  Also right before we said,"But wait!  We have two more names we want done!..."

So this was the next night when we came back to look for him again at Rockefeller!  We happened to find him again, in a different place, and this time had him complete the last two names while the snow started to fall!  The name Lydia was a surprise to our girls - they din't know we had a name picked out until we wrote it down for this guy!  For Lydia's name we got purple and green with pandas and bamboo.

This is the finished result of all three.  We loved that they are all different and unique.  And I LOVE those little climbing pandas on Lydia's!

We also had fun doing a little shopping for Lydia while we were in New York.  We're making her more "ours" everyday as we think of how we need to prepare our home for her.  So many things to do, but they are all so fun!  Going through bins of clothing to get rid of smaller sizes we don't need, finding the right size clothing to put in her closet, getting her room set up and ready, pulling out toys for a 3 year old...such fun things to finally be doing after such a long wait for another duaghter.   While in New York we had fun getting a few things for her:

Her name art, a fuzzy panda to take along when we go to meet her (also a board book of Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?), and an awesomely soft coat from a discount store we frequented called Daffy's.

We also made a stop at American Girl to get a single Bitty Twin.  We learned on our last trip to NY that, while Bitty Twins only come in twos through the catalog, in a retail store you can get just one!  So we took the opportunity to get a single twin with almond eyes and black hair.  :)

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New pictures!!!

We got four new photos of Qian Ting this evening!!  Most of the time I can't believe this is really happening, but when I see the pictures I know that it is!!  She's bundled to the neck, as they frequently are in the Chinese orphanges, and she's as cute as can be!

We're moving through the remaining paperwork process are aiming roughly for March travel!

It's been a HAPPY Thanksgiving and a BIG couple of weeks!!!!!!!

Introducing....Ren Qian Ting!!!

We are so happy to announce that we have been matched with a little girl, Ren Qian Ting, who is in Beijing at the Beijing Children's Welfare Institute.  She is almost 3 1/2 years old and we will be traveling to bring her home most likely within the next 3 months!


It's been a big two weeks!  In this time, we were given the file of Qian Ting (pronounced like chee-en ting), reviewed it with international adoption physicians, and decided to submit our paperwork and permanently lock her file for our family!  That was all during Thanksgiving week.  Then this past week has been a big paper trail to get our homestudy updated, our immigration paperwork updated, and begin the process of switching adoption agencies.  Lots more paperwork hoops to jump through and lots of preparations around home in the next few months!

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