NEW PICTURES OF HALEY!

Apparently, Haley had just woke up from her nap and was NOT a happy little girl! She was "showing attitude" as Wyatt's mom said!! Hmmm.....a girl with attitude....sounds like she'll fit in just fine here!!

I woke up this morning to a very nice email from a family who is in Hefei right now to adopt their son, Wyatt. We have emailed each other back and forth for a while now and have commented several times on how Haley and Wyatt always seem to be so "close" to each other in photos! This morning, it became clear WHY!! Haley and Wyatt have been living with the same foster family! So, they have been (in a sense) like brother and sister!! No wonder they're so close!!!


I also heard for the several"ith" time how "small" Haley was! I am really starting to worry!! Mostly because I don't think ANY of the clothes we've bought for her will fit!!

This is the first look we've had into Haley's foster family!! What a treasure!! Wyatt is on the far right (next to foster dad) and Haley is next to him! I'm not sure who the other two children are. I'm almost certain that the boy on the far left (next to foster mom) is Ruth Clark's son (AJ), but I'm waiting for her to verify that!


Wyatt giving the "peace" sign!

FINALLY....a "hint" of a smile from Haley.....

....a "close-up" view of Haley & Wyatt! I'm almost SAD that I will not see any more pictures of these two together!! It has been somewhat of a "tradition" to see pictures of them together! Wyatt, you've been a GREAT foster brother to Haley! Thank you for looking out for her!!

I have always admired how nice Haley is dressed, and how well-done her hair is every time we see pictures! We are very fortunate that our little girl is so well taken care of!!

Oh how I wish that my dad could hear this new Bob Dylan song....he would LOVE it! THIS ONE's FOR YOU, DAD...the hardest "workingman" I've ever known!!

If you're not from Wisconsin, you've probably never heard of Leinenkugel's! The Leinenkugel "wear" was very much a trademark of my dad! Leinenkugel's and Green Bay Packers! That's about all we ever saw him in.....except when it was hunting season!! Happy Father's Day, Dad!! WE MISS YOU!

LOA HAS BEEN RETURNED TO THE AGENCY

We received the LOA from our adoption agency this morning. It arrived bright and early by DHL. We did not have to sign one of these when we adopted Lauryn. We had to sign the LOA and indicate by checking a box whether we accepted the "adoptee" named (AKA Haley). Of course we accepted!! I went to the post office this afternoon and returned it to our agency via overnight express mail. Good grief, can you believe it costs $16.50 to send a PIECE OF PAPER overnight?!! Well, at any rate...it was well worth it!!

Then I went to Shoe Carnival and picked out a pair of sandals and a pair of tennis shoes for Haley. I bought one size bigger than Lauryn's feet! I hope they fit!!! Worst case scenario, they don't fit...she gets to pick out her OWN shoes in China...and Lauryn inherits the shoes I bought today when she grows into them! Other than shoes, I think little miss Haley is all set!!

I guess it's time to get out the suitcases and start getting a jump on packing! I don't like to be "rushed" at the last minute!! I'm definitely a plan-ahead kind of person!!!

Does anyone know how long it takes to get TA once the LOA has been signed and returned?!

WE HAVE LOA!!!!

We got the phone call today from our adoption agency!! The one we have been waiting for!! We have LOA!!!

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I can't tell you how much this has brightened our day!! We had spent most of our day on the telephone with our insurance company, setting up appointments for estimates on my husband's truck and our camper, and being interviewed by our local newspaper! YES!! We'll be featured in our newspaper tomorrow! Our neighborhood was apparently one of the hardest hit. A reporter came to our door and said she saw the tree that had fallen and damaged our vehicle and our camper, and asked if she could interview us!

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And, then there was the awful job of cleaning out all of the food that had thawed out in our freezer, cleaning out the refrigerator, and just cleaning in general! The reporter told us that some people will be without power until Thursday (I can't even IMAGINE)!

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So, when the phone rang and it was someone from our adoption agency, I just started jumping for joy!! Finally something to be HAPPY about!!

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For all of you who voted on our daughter's middle name, thank you! We said that the voting would run until the time we received LOA. Since that day was TODAY......the winning name is Haley Renee.

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Thank you for all of your well-wishing and congratulations!! It is so GREAT to have such wonderful friends out there in blog-land!!

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Our little princess is coming home soon!!!! FINALLY!!

This is a picture of Haley and Wyatt (taken by the Berter family). Today was Gotcha Day for Wyatt!! CONGRATULATIONS!!

TORNADO

Some of you have emailed me to ask if this was truly a tornado, or just a bad storm! It was a confirmed tornado. This was the second one we've been through since we've lived here! The last one was in 2001. This one caused quite a bit more destruction than the one in 2001! There were more than 150 trees (big trees) that were uprooted and blocking roadways. The street department is working 24 hours a day to clear the roadways! They hope to have all roadways cleared by Sunday (06/15/2008). There are still over 8,000 people without power here in the City. They are hoping to have all power restored by Friday morning (06/13/2008).

6:35 P.M. /Monday, June 9th
See the nice BIG dent in the middle of my husband's truck (hood)?!

Never a dull moment around here, folks! Yesterday at 6:00 p.m. I turned on the news because I wanted to see if we had a storm warning (it was thundering in the distance, and I could see periodic flashes of lightning). The "weather lady" said there were no warnings for our area, just a thunderstorm WATCH until 8:00 p.m. As I sat back down to my computer to work, there was a really loud bang! I thought "Okay, I need to shut my computer off and go downstairs"! So, I did. I no more than got to the bottom of the stairs when I looked out the window and saw the trees BENT over and blowing things sideways!! I let out a yell to the kids who were watching television in the living room "LET's GO, GUYS.....DOWN TO THE BASEMENT"! Just then the power went out and everything was dark (we could hardly see in front of us). When we got down to the basement, we heard TERRIBLE wind and things banging around (it was very scary)! It was hard to try and stay calm for the kids' sake when I was just SHAKING inside! Dad was at work, so....we were on our own!!

The kids kept crying and asking "Are we gonna be okay, mom?"!! I reassured the kids that we were in the safest place possible, and the whole time thinking "Oh, Dear God....please don't let anything happen to us"!

The storm seemed to pass quickly (other than the very HARD rain). When the coast was clear, I went upstairs and looked outside. All I could see were trees down everywhere! I called my husband at work and told him that he needed to come home! He had a very hard time GETTING home because of all of the downed trees and power lines everywhere! But, he finally made it and....we were all REALLY glad to see him!!

We were without power from 6:00 p.m. last night until 8:30 this morning! Thank goodness we're all used to camping and "roughing it" because that's exactly what we had to do last night...ROUGH IT.

Look at how dark and "creepy" the above pictures were just after the storm hit! And notice below how bright and sunny things are about an hour later!

This was taken AFTER the fire department came by and put up the "Caution" tape so people couldn't come down our street!

This was one of the many neighbors who came out to offer their help! He went from house to house cutting up trees and branches! I think he MOST DEFINITELY deserves the "good neighbor" award!

Hey, who's this handsome guy?!!!

Rudy was in "stick heaven"!! So many to choose from!!

These are just a couple of the MANY holes and dents on the top of our camper! As far as our own property goes, the camper took the brunt of the damage"! Not so sure about that camping trip we had planned for the 20th!!



Well, we are truly thankful that we are all okay! Material things are just material things and they can be repaired or replaced! And, I'm also thankful that our power has finally come back on.....when I'm at home, I prefer all of the necessary amenities!! I'll save the "roughing it" for CAMPING!!

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On May 12th, we had an earthquake here!! On June 9th we had a tornado! Do you think maybe we should pack up and LEAVE for the month of July?!!

HOW THE REVIEW ROOM WORKS!

Another family received LOA today who had a LID of 03/31/2008 (three weeks after our LID)!! As I continue to boo-hoo about the handful of others receiving LOA who have submitted their Dossier paperwork after we did, I am learning how the Review Room process works with CCAA.

Apparently, each review person has their own assigned agencies, or maybe even their own assigned country.

Sometimes one review person has twice as many files to review as someone else does that month, but the next month they may have half as many!

This means that one reviewer could be several months ahead of another reviewer, and may stay that way until their agencies have a big month and they get slowed down again. It is normal for one reviewer to still be working on February while another reviewer has made it to April.

Though this may not seem "fair".....it makes perfect sense as to why we haven't received our LOA yet and others with different adoption agencies have!

Yes, it's frustrating! But, we are all too familiar with having to be "patient" with international adoption! Our time will come!!

It has been 12 months since we received PA to adopt our little girl! I guess we should have started the paperwork BEFORE we received PA, but we didn't want to get our hopes up with all of the changes CCAA had made to the adoption process and their new requirements. I'll never forget the day that we received the email from our adoption agency saying "We received PA for you today"!! It was a very JOYOUS day!! And then we began the LONG process of trying to get our Dossier together....one delay after another! It has been QUITE the adventure! And, this is one adventure that I'm ready to bring to a closure! Some "good news" about our LOA would certainly be very welcomed right now!! That would definitely start the ball rolling in the direction of "closure"!! Come on LOA!!

This photo was emailed to me by Annemette Krag from Denmark who met Haley in October of 2007! Thanks for the picture of our little princess!!

Haley's sisters and brothers are anxiously awaiting her arrival (well, aren't we ALL?)!!

WHAT A BUSY DAY!

Whew! It's only 3:00 in the afternoon and we've had a very busy day already! We had a great "family outing" day with the kids! We have felt so bad about not being able to do much with them because everything costs money, and....we're trying to SAVE money right now for the adoption! But, always saying "NO" to our kids gets really old, and we just wanted to do something FUN for them....give them a day to enjoy...a day that was ALL ABOUT THEM! For your listening pleasure, I've added one of the High School Musical songs (their FAVORITE movie)! There are actually TWO different versions of this song! A slow version, and a fast version! I kind of prefer the fast version myself (it was a very FUNNY part of the movie if you saw it)! Leave it to Sharpay to totally "butcher" a lovely song!!!

I'm sure many of you have seen on the news (MSNBC) that 41 counties in Indiana have been declared disaster areas from all of the flooding! It has not stopped storming and raining here in over 8 days! Seriously! Thank goodness we don't have the horrible flooding HERE in our town, but it is plenty WET and...not a day that we could spend outside! So, our day began at 8:00 a.m. when dad cooked a nice big breakfast for us all! He even cleaned up the kitchen! Talk about a day that MOM can enjoy too!! :)

This was the only picture of Mom & Dad today!

After all of the showers and "chores".....we whisked the kids off to the mall! We took the kids to Build-A-Bear Workshop....their favorite store in the world! I honestly couldn't even tell you how MANY they already have (probably 8-10 each), but it's never enough! Build-A-Bear keeps adding new animals all the time! So, enough is never "enough" for my kids! Lauryn picked out the Panda. Austin picked out the Monkey. Carli picked out a Bunny. Dylan picked out the Bearemy Bear.

One of the machines got low on the "stuffing" so Dylan, Carli, Austin and Lauryn got to replenish the stuffing machine!! It was the first time EVER that they had gotten to do this! They thought it was fun!

They gave their stuffed animals a Build-A-Bear bath, checked out all of the new clothing....and then we headed to the check-out counter! Today was apparently "Beach Day" at Build-A-Bear. Each of the kids got their own FREE Build-A-Bear beach towel! They were THRILLED about this!

We headed for the big carousel on the lower level of our mall. This is a MUST for all kids if you're at the mall!! It was hard to take pictures once they were on the carousel because it moves pretty quickly! Most of the pictures turned out blurry! But, I was able to catch a few....

Then, it was time to eat! The great thing about the mall is that there is such a wide variety of places to eat in the food court! Lauryn and mom wanted Chinese (bourbon chicken is the greatest!!), and the other kids wanted Burger King (they wanted the Indiana Jones toys that came with the kids meal)!

After we finished eating, we took the kids back upstairs to the little Dairy Queen (new to the mall....HOORAY) and they all got a small ice cream cone!

Then it was off to do some window shopping!! And, we couldn't leave without visiting the kid-friendly wishing-well! Leave it to Dylan to ask if he could get in there and take some of the money OUT!!

On that note, it was time to come home! We had a great time today!! We promised the kids that we would go camping the weekend of the 20th (rain or shine), and we would go to the zoo on dad's next weekend off (as long as the weather permits)! Geeze, we should be getting CLOSE to the time Haley will be coming home BY THEN!! Well, a person can always HOPE, right?!!

HELLO!

I know that I've been posting a lot lately, but it's all that keeps me from going crazy!

You'll notice that I've deleted the names Michelle and Maren from the voting. Neither of those names drew any votes! So, we are down to Renee and Claire for our daughter's middle name! I had to start the voting all over with just these two names because it wouldn't let me delete Michelle and Maren once votes were cast! But, it was plain to see that Renee and Claire were the two popular names among those of you who voted! So, we will leave the voting up until we receive LOA. At that time, whichever name has more votes (Renee or Claire)....that will be her middle name! So, PLEASE vote! We're letting YOU decide....(I'm giving my word this time)!!

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Renee = reborn/new beginning

Claire = bright/illustrious

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My husband pulled the camper out in the driveway and started cleaning it up! We were planning on going camping this weekend, but he found some "minor" things on the camper that have to be fixed before we can go, and......he won't have time to fix them before this weekend (working 12 hour shifts the rest of the week)! So, camping has been officially postponed until the weekend of the 20th!

But, this weekend won't be a total let-down to the kids! We plan on taking them to the zoo! And it's going to be 90 degrees outside, so that should be really FUN :)

Did you know that on this date (June 4th) in 1949, the robin became the official state bird of Wisconsin?! I'm a "cheese head", so I just happen to know these things :)

Anyway, on Memorial Day we found a tiny baby robin that had fallen out of the nest! Apparently the tree by the front of our house has become home to mommy robin and 3 babies! It's amazing this little baby didn't die from the fall! But, we picked the baby up and put it back in the nest! Here are pictures from Memorial Day...

This is the tree to mommy robin and her three babies!

This is what alerted us to the baby robin on the ground! Mommy robin was going CRAZY outside, running all over our yard and making horrible screeching sounds!

This was the baby we put back in the nest!

This was taken today! All three babies are still in the nest!!