handsful

Our newest daughter! Our referral call came in at 2:39pm, just as I was about to crank the truck to leave Office Depot with the kids! Here is her information:

Name: Ling Qing (“clear” or “sunny”) Qin (“hardworking” or “diligent”)

Birthdate: 7/4/06 (yes, our little Independence Day girl, born 3 days before Marley, Payton, and Ethan’s birthday!)…so, she’s 16 months old at referral time.

Province / Orphanage: Anhui / Bengbu City Children’s Welfare Institute

We’re over the moon excited, joyously happy, and exhausted! We’ll be sure to post more about the call, etc. tomorrow. Check out the “Lainey Info” page for another picture of her and a map to see where she is! Thank you to everyone for their good wishes, thoughts and especially the prayers. We are truly blessed!

** The boys baseball team lost their 2nd playoff game. They were a little bummed, but they’ve recovered. They have a last game on Saturday. It’s been a great season, and has made Ethan fall even more in love with the game of baseball. Payton likes it too, but he’s waiting for basketball season. :)

** We haven’t received a call about Lainey yet. Apparently, there are a lot of kids on this list (good news!), and it’s taking them a while to get through the translations and match children to families. We are anxious, hopeful, and trusting God to add to our family in His time.

We hope so! I found this lamp at our local thrift store, $1. (Incidently, found the exact same lamp days later at Target for $15…I love a good deal). I bought a shade for it, and hot glued these cute pink and green flowers around the edges. So, NOW her room is ready. Phone would you please ring?

Our adoption agency updated their website today to say this…

“CCAI is delighted to announce that we have received a new list of Waiting Children! We are working hard to translate and verify our Waiting Children s information and contact families. We will consider each child s case individually, so we appreciate your patience as we work carefully through our files. If CCAI has a potential match for your family, we will contact you!”

Could Lainey be in those files?? We are praying she is!! Stay tuned…

Fall in Florida…lizards on pumpkins!

Today marks 1 year since we turned in our Medical Conditions Checklist, to be matched with a waiting child. Our agency is due for another list of children ANY DAY now, so we are praying that November 2008 is our time to finally see Lainey. As soon as they announce the new list, I’m back to the craziness of mentally adjusting the time to CO time (“well, it’s 5:30 here, but it’s only 3:30 there, so they could STILL call…) and back to jumping everytime the phone rings. So, if you call me and I sound a tad bit disapointed? Don’t take it personally :)

We received a gorgeous baby blanket that was handmade by Jennie, an online friend of mine. I “met” her more than a year ago, when we were both turning in our China adoption paperwork. We’re both with the same agency, and both hoping that our new daughters are on the next list of waiting children. (The list is due any day, by the way!)

Jennie has a side business with her sewing, and I emailed her the other day to order a blanket for Lainey. She replied, telling me that she had already decided to make one for Lainey as a gift to her! I was so touched that she wanted to do this!! She asked me what colors we liked, and I told her the nursery colors. The blanket goes beautifully with the crib set and I just love it! The flowers are flannel, and there is a SO soft pink bumpy chenille on the back. Jennie, I hope to meet you in person some day…maybe even in China!

Below is our quilt in progress:

The final arrangement

Me, looking down on the quilt from the barstool, making sure it’s just right!

My friend Rhonda, who is making our 100 Good Wishes quilt for us, came over tonight to lay all the pieces out in order so she can begin sewing! She had already cut them all down from the original 8″ to 5″ squares. The white background is actually a vinyl backed table cloth…the squares clung to the flannel white side, so when we were done getting them in the right pattern, she just rolled it up to take it home. Clever!

The quilt will have sashing between each square, a border fabric, and binding fabric around the edges. She’ll be sewing it in her spare time (ha…she works part time and homeschools her 2 daughters). She promised to have it done before Lainey comes home, which is good enough for me. Can’t wait to see the finished product!

Not much going on with the adoption right now, just waiting for our agency to announce they have a new list of waiting children. We pray that it comes sooner than expected! They’ve just about finished their existing list, and have placed almost all the children. Unfortunately, there are always those children who aren’t placed through our agency. Their files are then sent on to other adoption agencies where they have another chance at finding their forever homes.

In the meantime, we’re busy with school and all the kids activities. We’ve had tons of rain lately, which has opened up a leak in our guest bathroom and caused the gutter over our garage to sag just short of falling off completely. Randy was especially excited to come home from his out of town trip to all THAT.

Oh, and the dog tried to “off himself” yesterday. Well, actually, he decided to peruse the “things to take to China” bin that I keep in Lainey’s room. I buy things for our trip, a little at a time, so we’re not scrambling to get it all at one time. There was a bottle of baby Motrin drops in the bin and Jack thought that would make a splendid after dinner snack. Thankfully, one of our very best friends here is a pharmacist and he was able to tell me that Jack drank the equivalent to 3 adult Motrin, so he’s fine. Guess I’ll be keeping the lid on that bin from now on.

Tomorrow is Friday! We have 2 baseball games this weekend, plus the usual around-the-house jobs and…Randy’s favorite…errands. Happy, happy, joy, joy! ***update, 10-5…the weather forecast is rain, rain, and more rain. So, not sure about these scheduled ballgames OR my bathroom ceiling. :(