Taiwan ROCks the Windy City

I will finish our China trip soon, but just returned from chicago and Taiwan ROCks reunion.  It was amazing and I am speechless at some of things that happened(good) while together.  I will try and share it all soon, but wanted to share some pics.  I will say that TECO which is the Taiwanese govt agency that we all deal with while we are in the process of adopting.....well they were contacted by one of our moms(thanks Suzy) well they came to have lunch with us and brought goodies for the kid's as well as Taiwanese instructors to teach the kids about some culture.  Going forward they would like to participate by offering a full day of culture camp for the kids at our reunion each year.  So to say we are excited and terribly humbled is an understatement. We were even interviewed by several media sources including the world wide press!!  I have NO idea what I said and now am nervous what came out of my mouth!!  LOL

We also raised $1400 for Ronald McDonald house Chicago and St. Lucy's orphanage in Taiwan

The weekend was truly amazing and magical.  We saw old friends and made some new ones and we can't wait for next year.....2013~ we are going to Cali and we are going to Disney!!!  YIPPEE!!

Hayden holding the tail of the lion.

at check in with two of H's favorite mamas..tiffany and lisa.  She is holding her dog pepper that she picked out at American Girl.  If you wonder what Hayden LOVES right now it is all things AMERICAN girl!!!  Will post pics of our lunch there!!

from left to right Tiffany, Me(Hayden's hand) Lisa C(hostess this year) Lisa R, and one of our other mamas that made a lovely Matilda Jane donation to our raffle.

Our chairs and Director Ger.   Suzy and her sweet girl are right next to the director and because of Suzy we are hoping for a lifetime relationship with TECO!!

foster siblings reunited and their relationship has been sealed at this point....serious love fest between these two!!

look at these two!

two little monkeys jumping on the couch(no one fell off, so that was good) LOL

Sleepover with Tyler!!

Crafts with Paigey and Tyler

Time to get this party started!!!

Hayden loves Tyler, but I think his sister Lauren would lose out in a vote:) 

This is pretty much how H spent her weekend!!!

Between Paige and Hayden....hopefully Lauren got her little sister fix:) LOL

Zai jian

Well the time has arrived.  The bags are packed and I guess we are as ready as we will ever be.  We hope you will follow along as we travel this amazing journey.  The last time I prepared for this trip my arms longed to hold our daughter and now 3 years later I am packing her toys, movies, snacks and clothes as we make this trip together.  We are looking at a total of 2 days of travel.  The first day being the longest....about 27 hours(15 hrs on the big flight) and only about 2 hours on the second day. 

Not sure how our Internet will be the days we are traveling, but hopefully can update at some point on the road.  We should be up and running by Tuesday or Wednesday next week.  Don't forget we will be 13 hours ahead of you time wise(well those of you on central)

The hardest part will be leaving daddy.  We are celebrating Fathers day today.  We have given him some great gifts and had a great family breakfast and we have a few errands and yard work to do today.  But today will be all about daddy and spending our day together. 

Thanks for all the votes of confidence.  This is a journey that we think is incredibly important to our daughter.  We are not afforded the ability to spend a month in Taiwan, but we do in China.  She is going to be bathed in LOVE, culture, heritage, family and most importantly language.  I want this to become so normal to Hayden that she can love both worlds and embrace her culture and heritage and hopefully witness how important those things are to her parents.  I want Hayden to be so proud of where she is from and love that she gets the best of both worlds.  We are VERY blessed to have this type of opportunity. 

So as they say in China Zai jian.....goodbye and we will see you soon:)

It only took 3 years!!

Re-adoption and recognition of forgein adoption is mostly a formality.  But we really needed to do it to also officially change Hayden's(Hazel is her daily preference at this point)name.  This secures us a Texas birth certificate and we need that to apply for her passport....which we will need soon. 

We were lucky in that there is a local mom who is a family law attorney that is also an adoptive mom who does these pro-bono, we just had to pay the filing fees.  She was awesome and if you live in my area and in need of this or a family attorney let me know and I will pass along the info to you!!
It was awesome, she was AWESOME!!!!

So we went this morning....not the best morning as David is still very much recovering from his surgery and Hayden was diagnosed with strep(first time ever taking antibiotics and had hoped to go a little longer with not taking them)  But her throat is on fire and she needed to be treated.  So getting up at the crack of dawn and getting to court was NO easy task.  I literally had to dress all 3 of us:)  But so glad we have it done and hopefully that birth certificate shows up quickly so we can get this passport application sent off.

We had a wonderful judge who was VERY cheerful and sweet to Hayden.  He sent Hayden with the court reporter to a room to pick a special treat....a big chest full of stuffed animals.  She picked the cutest bear with a rainbow sweater(yay another stuffed animal) Then he took pictures with us.  It was really awesome and feels good to have this behind us and glad we got to have a little ceremony and fanfare.  Everyone clapped when he announced Hayden's name.....which of course she LOVED!!!

Enjoy and note that I had no sleep, Hayden has strep and well my poor husband has been thru hell with his arm for the last 6 weeks!!! 

Our wonderful attorney Nora

my silly Hazel

Please notice that Hazel chose to wear her glass slippers to court today.  Only the best for a court appearence.  That is petsy the bear she chose.  Isn't that a cute bear??

Showering our friends

This past weekend was a weekend of fun and friends and long awaited blessings coming true for our friends.  I have a small adoption group that I have been friends with since we started our paperwork to China back in 06'  We have shrunk as a group and now I think we have 27 families that our part of our group.    Most of us have come home with our kiddo's....many from different countries than we started, and journeys and joys have been different but no less exciting and happy for our WHOLE group.  We are finally getting to the end of everyone having their cuties home, but we still have 3-4 families to go that have held strong and waited the long line to China(5-6 years thank you very much) So to get to shower one of them who is about to travel to pick up her beautiful little one named Caitlyn Elizabeth was amazing and such a happy experience.

So off to Austin we drove and had a packed 24 hours planned.  Hayden has been SO excited about Caitlyn's party for months.  Every time we walked into a store she would find the cutest outfit and state we MUST get this for baby Caitlyn.  So all I can say is we showed up at the shower with a crazy amount of clothes for this beautiful girl!!  The shower was amazing....the  hostess' really outdid themselves and planned an amazing afternoon for this family.  Plus; us with 2 other families from our group were together and had a wonderful playdate and dinner together afterwards!!!  Hayden loves our friends and had SO much fun seeing and playing with everyone. 

We wouldn't have missed this for anything!!!

night before when I said we needed to get ready for our trip....this is what Hayden came out of her room dressed in and ready to go!!  Check out those mittens!!

Hayden picked this dress weeks ago for the shower....she said it needed to be pink since it was a party for a girl!!!

The mama who will travel soon in the middle with her mom and MIL and sweet friend C and us!!

Caitlyn's mama and Hayden ready to open gifts!!

Our group....Miss C's boys were at home,

Caitlyn's mama, auntie and grandmother as we enjoyed the delicious food.

The hostess' gave all of the kid's the sweetest softest panda bear.  Hayden has slept with it since!!  What a sweet gift.

One of the cakes(both were delish) and you can see a pic of Caitlyn waiting in China for her mama and daddy to come pick her up!!!

Dinner at C's with M and sweet Drew(who has been home since July and has a big sister from China too)

Drew reminds me so much of Hayden at this age.  Drew would like to become one with her mama!!  I can see the glimpses of her personality and know once she feels secure and adjusted she will be a social butterfly.

Hayden piggyback riding with one of C's twins.

Hayden with her new boy BFF's O and T! They are twins and from China and are super sweet and such nice manners.

Look at how cute!!  Hayden told me today that she missed the warriors!!  LOL

Soul sisters

We have long talked about how many great friends that we have been blessed by through adoption.  Many of these friends are such an important part of our lives and they feel like family.  We have friends that live in our big state that we are fortunate to get to see fairly regularly and that makes us SUPER happy.  We were thrilled to have Debbie and Ellie P come visit us just a few weeks ago for the weekend and all I can say is the girls are soul sisters....total love for one another and play so well together.  Tears were flowing from the little girls as they pulled out of the drive to go back home!  Hayden asks at least once a week when are we going to visit them:) 

Anyway, enjoy the cuties in action.  They had 2 speeds....fast and faster.  2 volumes loud and louder!! 
We enjoyed the food trucks(super yummy food) and the stock show and then celebrated Lunar New Year with Chinese food and the girls wore their silks.  It was a GREAT weekend although it was too short!!!  thank you girls for coming to see us!!

Ellie Brushing the cow

Hayden getting full contact and as close as she could to the cow!!

They held hands pretty much the whole weekend!! 

Look at the full belly laugh on Ellie's face!!  

Two peas in a pod

STUNNING Ellie P

                                                                                   Hayden posing in her silks

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Wishing you all a year of health, happiness, and prospierty.  I hope the year of the dragon brings great things for all:)

Hsin-Hua visit continued.....

I need to catch up, so here are a few more pics from our awesome visit from the Peters family!!  The girls really had an awesome time.  Almost everyday since they left Hayden has said "I miss my friend Hsin-Hua, I want them to COME BACK" 

off to the park in our neighborhood

Hsin-Hua

Monkey

March, march, march

go higher!!

look mommy no arms!!! LOL

whatever it was they were doing it kept them busy for awhile!!

it's raining mulch

Food trucks....Hsin was enjoying her chocolate cupcake!!  This was the MOST delicious food!!!

Heather and I ate at the Nammi truck

Our two beautiful ballerinas off to see the nutcracker!!  THEY LOVED IT!!!

NO don't go friend!!!  Two peas in a pod!!

SO SILLY!!!!