Another picture of Dylan that my friend Denise took when she visited the orphanage. Her new son, Seth and Dylan were obviously good friends and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get them together as often as possible - they live in NY.

Just thought I’d update quickly on where we are in our journey to Dang Yu Hai. This wait has been very different than our wait for Lainey.

Once we saw Lainey’s picture, in November 2007, we only had 3 months to wait before holding her in our arms in February 2008.

I saw Dylan on our agency’s website, in December 2009. We’re now in September 2010. So, we’re “full term” in our adoption pregnancy :)

Where are we now? Waiting on the US immigration dept to approve our file to adopt Dylan. Our paperwork was received on August 25th. Once we are approved, there are other hurdles of paperwork to jump through. Our file is sent to the US consulate in Guangzhou, China and they approve us. After that, they send an invitation for us to travel, and then we scramble around to get ready!

The travel dept at our agency is estimating we’ll travel in November. WHEN in November will depend on how long the rest of the process takes AND how our travel will work around any China holidays and events…there is a national holiday in October, and games held in Guangzhou in November.

So, there you go. We’ll keep you informed ;)

And, the AFTER.

She wanted long bangs, and had deeper layers cut in back. She loves it! Makes her look too mature, don’t you think? She’s getting WAY to close to the teenage years for me!

Before today, there were maybe 5 shirts and 2 pairs of pants in his closet. And, some of those he’ll have to grow into.

I rose with the birds today, and headed to a Mothers of Multiples sale in the area that I happened to see an ad for. In line before 7am meant I was the first and ONLY person perusing his size racks.

Oh, the adrenaline rush.

An hour later, I had 31 items including shirts, pants, jackets (went a bit overboard there), PJs, shoes, and a couple of books. Got Lainey a few shirts, a dress, and some play food.

Spent less than $2 per item. Yeah, baby. Great start to my weekend!

Someone likes powdered sugar ;)

Marley’s doughnut choice is ALWAYS a french cruller.

The boys look a little tired, hopefully the sugar high would help. Payton scarfed his down before I could even take the picture!

After breakfast and chores, we were off and running. Bible first…next was math (a variety of 7th grade up to Algebra 1), grammar, spelling, and writing.

Lainey is getting in on the action this year…here she is working on a Handwriting Without Tears workbook. We also started our favorite phonics program, Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. As soon as the song came on, the boys ran up to sing along. How cute / weird is that?

After lunch, the kids worked on american history and general science. Abbey is actually enrolled in a co-op Biology class this year, which begins this Thursday.

This year, our history/literature program has a LOT more reading than in past years. Woo hoo! Not all the kids are thrilled about this, but I am :) (Insert semi-evil laugh here)

Unfortunately, Ethan would MUCH rather be reading those comics instead of The Red Badge of Courage. Sorry, dude.

Abbey, on the other hand, is very happy with her foreign language this year. She’s using Rosetta-Stone to learn Mandarin. Randy began this curriculum a while back, and I plan on starting soon as well.

Assuming we can EVER travel to get Dylan (more on that frustration later…), we hope to be able to communicate with him at least on a basic level.

So, all in all, our first day went great. A few tweaks here and there, like I expected…you always realize that something you planned out will work better THIS way once you actually get into it. We’re thankful and blessed to be able to homeschool!

Even with my head in full whirl, I managed to do something last week that I’d been meaning to do for 2 years. Marley’s been helping me - the lover of all things living. Two homeschool conferences ago, I purchased a kit called Nut-Bush. Basically, the idea is you grow peanut plants that can eventually be transplanted into the ground for your very own peanut harvest. Neat, and the kit was only $2. Can’t beat that.

Here it is in the early stages, you can see one root starting to pop out. This was about 2 days after we “planted” them in the red yarn.

A couple of days later, and you can see the roots reaching to the bottom already.

Took this picture just a minute ago. The leafy parts at the top are starting to show. These things grow FAST. Once we’ve got all of them sprouting up, we can plant them in the dirt. Hey…did you know that the peanuts grow underground? But, not on the roots. They grow on shoots that come off the stem and go into the ground. God is so creative, don’t you think?

Marley also has a couple of caterpillars that she found chomping on the leaves of my tomato plant. We now have them in a butterfly cage and are feeding them tomato leaves.

Should be interesting to see how the peanuts and caterpillars turn out :)

Notice anything? No?

Does this help? I guess I was fortunate that it didn’t happen until child #5. She’s always loved using scissors and we’ve been careful to always explain “no clothes, and no hair!”. And, honestly, it isn’t so bad that I gasped or anything. It took us all a while to figure out that she’d actually done it. I’m thankful she didn’t go TOO short.

Here are a few random pics from our trip back to FL that I don’t think I posted…

Anne’s dog, Sassy, showing Lainey some love. That dog will lick you to death.

We jumped on the trampoline at Anne’s house. I look like I’m in pain for some reason…and, yes, I’m that un-tan.

Love this shot of her hair!

Sheer delight!

More shots of the Power Up Clubs…

Sometimes it’s dangerous to point a camera at Abbey. You never know what you might get.

Tater and Lainey at one of his clubs.

Lainey agrees (although with difficulty) to sit with Ethan during one of the group teaching times. She was EXTREMELY clingy with me that week, and I was only able to get her to “let loose” a few times at the clubs.

This shot of Marley kinda makes me laugh, she doesn’t look much bigger than some of the younger kids attending the club. :)

Ya’ think smearing icing on someone is a sign of endearment in China? Hope doesn’t seem to mind! Her mama, Amy, sent me this photo. Thanks, Amy!!

We are a little closer to getting Dylan…received our LOA on Monday. Basically, it’s China’s response to our dossier/letter of intent asking us if we REALLY want to adopt him. Uh, yeah.

So, we signed it, filled out more paperwork, and sent it on to our agency. Our social worker should have our home study update (required since we moved) to CCAI early next week. Then, they send it all on to USCIS (US immigration) and the approval process with them begins. We’re guesstimating travel in October or November. I think I mentioned that already, and it seems we’re still on track.

It’s nice seeing a new picture of his sweet face while we’re in the waiting phase.

The big kids in action, last week in their Power Up Clubs. There are 12 pics, with 3 each of P, E, M and A. You’ll have to find them, since it would take too long to add captions under each code. Grrr again.

Enjoy. I’m going to send another nasty nice email to that certain photo site…

Which is all good and bad.  Being “busy” when you’re in sales is a good thing.  But, I miss him TERRIBLY.  This is the longest we’ve ever been apart (I can hear the resounding “Awwwww”s going on) and it stinks.  How DO single moms do it?  My patience isn’t thin, it’s GONE.  Lainey hasn’t slept very well on this trip.  Could be because we’ve stayed in 4 difference places?  Or, I’m getting her so tired during the day going to Power Up Clubs that she can’t settle down at night?  Whatever the reason, she’s been a bit “edgy” lately (putting it nicely).  Which is sending me OVER the edge every now and then. 

Back to our trip.  We promised the kids when we moved that we would most definitely bring them back for Power Up Clubs.  What’s that?  Our FL church doesn’t do regular, old VBS.  The amazing children’s pastor came up with a different idea, years ago, to take VBS to streets..well, in this case neighborhoods.  She plans a whole weeks worth of VBS-type stuff (theme, skits, songs, games, etc.) - asks church members to host the clubs in their yards and invite neighbor kids - builds teams of around 8 youth (7th grade to college age) each - and sends them out to 3 host homes per day.  It’s AMAZING.  This year, there were 67 host homes around Jacksonville!  The kids and adult leaders stay the whole week at the church, and are fed by an army of volunteers who handle the ravenous appetites of hot, exhausted kids each day.  I’m told the food is awesome :)  Oh…if you want to see last years Power Up Club, search for it on the sidebar.  I blogged about our club last year. 

Each of our big kids was on a seperate team!  I wanted to take Lainey around to the clubs so we could see her sisters and brothers in action, so I’ve logged a lot of miles on the truck this week!  We ended up seeing 7 clubs total.  I loved seeing the kids stretch themselves…Marley in FRONT of people, playing a character in the skits!  Each gave their testimony, too. 

Today is the last day of clubs, and tonight is the celebration called Power Surge!  I’ll be taking Lainey, then we’ll gather all (heh heh…any bets that we’ll find ALL of the kids belongings??) of their stuff, and head back to my friend Anne’s house to stay the night.  Tomorrow, we head HOME.  What a lovely word!

Sorry, no pictures…the site that I upload photos from decided to CHANGE all of their settings and procedures and now it won’t let me upload.  I’ll get that figured out asap! 

Next post from NC :)