New Year's Eve Blowout

We had a very laid back New Year's Eve.  I told everyone they had to dress up, and, well, SOME of them KIND of dressed up.  At least the girls got out of their PJs.    I also made a rule:  NO SCREENS past 8 pm.  And almost everyone made it up 'til midnight.

 You have to have the great big platter of sliced meats and crackers!

 We did some hanging out with our screens before 8 pm

 Then the bulk of the food came out - potato skins, taquitos, mozarella sticks and gyoza.  All frozen junk food that I didn't have to make!

 I made Abby pose for this.  She got this Barbie movie for Christmas and I think it was her favorite gift.  She has watched it several times a day this week.  She knows all the songs in it already.  And she's asking for another for her birthday coming up in February.

 After the screens went off, the board games came out.  And the goofiness, apparently.  He's 14.  You understand, right?

 Josiah asked to play PayDay.  He didn't it make it past the first month!

 They were all good sports and filled out the 'Year in Review' sheet I printed out.  They actually all gave me real answers, too.

This was Josiah at 9:45.  I let him stay there for about one hour and then carried him off to bed.


Happy 2013!!!!!

It's Been Quite a Wait

Just so you get an idea of how long this wait has been, here's Evie's referral picture.  Compare it to the pictures from the post below.  She's grown just a tad, hasn't she?

Almost that Time Again

So.....
I've been tempted to close down the blog because, frankly, time is very limited around here and I never ever seem to have the chance to update anymore.  I've kept it here because I knew pretty soon I would have another exciting journey to journal and I wanted to have that and Abby's story all in one place.

And the time has come to get my updates going again.

We are getting close.  Very, very close.

I expect to have our Travel Approval from China in about one week.

Which means sometime in mid to late January, I will finally get to hold Evie in my arms and officially call her "my girl". 

It has been a LONG road.  We first found Evie exactly two years ago, and scrambled to get paperwork together to be able to reuse our dossier to bring her home.  That, clearly, did not happen. 

What did happen was God made it clear this was His path for us to follow - to pursue this little girl's adoption.  Whether we knew the end result or not.  And let me tell you, most of the time I did not think we would ever get to finalize.  Yet He kept whispering - one more step, just one more.

And now here we are.  And without further ado.......

Genevieve Grace (Evie)