No related posts.
Happy Chinese New Year!
cabin fever
So, we got hit hard by snow this week. We’ve officially hit a cumulative snow amount this winter of over 70 inches. That is pretty much insane. This last storm was particularly massive. We haven’t left the house since Tuesday, and we’re all starting to feel it. We’ve kept busy, but this is getting a bit old now.
This is my van in our driveway. The car buried over there is our neighbor’s convertible. We think the roof collapsed. Why he didn’t park it in his garage is a mystery.
Our backyard where we used to have hedges. We aren’t sure if this storm killed them or not. They are nearly flattened.
This is out our front door, looking at the park. The snow was up to the bottom of the swings.
This was after Mark shoveled the walkway. We are happy to announce that a father of a friend of Ashlyn‘s came by on Tuesday night and performed a miracle on our snowblower only hours before the storm hit us. He is honestly a hero in this house and perhaps made Mark the hero of the block since he was snowblowing into the wee hours of the night last night.
And, how do we spend our time while we are stuck inside?
Drew enjoyed painting his own face to be an army guy.
Mark made a batch of whoopie pies. Pretty impressive.
I worked on yoyos for Lydia’s quilt, and the kids enjoyed sorting them by material and lining them all up. They won’t let me clean them up now.
And, we have finished up Evan’s robot Valentines which are pretty darn cute.
And, of course, we’ve played quite a bit of wii. This is our new favorite game.
Apparently, Drew enjoys role playing the host of the wii game more than playing the game itself. Ashlyn “decorated” him for the role and gave me quite a laugh today. Not a bad resemblance really.
No hold up with our adoption though–we got our Letter of Acceptance via overnight mail on Tuesday afternoon and signed it, got papers notarized, and returned it right away so that the snow wouldn’t impact that at all. Things are moving!
Where she is
Lydia lives in Shaanxi province near where the terra-cotta warriors are. If you aren’t familiar with the terra-cotta warriors, they are funeral art that a farmer discovered in 1974. They date back to 210 B.C. and number over 9,000 soldiers, horses, and chariots, etc. The first Chinese emperor Qin had them made for him for his burial place because he expected to rule a world in his afterlife. We’ll get to visit this site with Lydia. Looking forward to seeing that.
I was able to connect with another adoptive family who visited Lydia’s city just this past summer. Although we don’t see her in their pictures, we can see her exact crib (we could figure it out from the updated pictures we just posted based on the window and the shelf behind her). And, we appreciated the pictures of the surrounding area so that we can get a sense of Lydia’s history.
This is outside of her orphanage. The gardens and the playground look really nice. I wonder if the flowers will be in bloom in April.
This is the orphanage building.
This is the isolation room where all newly admitted babies go first. It’s hard to imagine a little child in that incubator by himself or herself. The word isolation itself grieves me.
This is the babies’ playroom. It’s a cute little area. This is where one of Lydia’s original referral pictures were taken because it has the square flooring under her bouncy seat in the picture.
This is the baby room, through the window there is the isolation room. You can see where we figured out Lydia’s crib is, assuming she’s kept the same crib for the last 6 months. But, the crib is empty in this picture. I wonder where she was.
Meet Lydia Mei!
I cannot wait any longer. I have to introduce our sweet girl, Lydia Mei. Her Chinese name means “beautiful moon.” We know that there was actually no moon visible at all on the day she was found and named. We believe that her face was so fair and beautiful that they had to name her Mei Yue, “beautiful moon.” Isn’t she just perfect?
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 308
- 309
- 310
- 311
- 312
- …
- 371
- Next Page »