2 Weeks Home!

Hello Everyone,

We have been home for 2 weeks now, and everything is going wonderful. Rayanna is so sweet and so cute. She is adjusting very well to life here with our family. She has started daycare with Jesse and Rebecka and is learning new words everyday. All the kids are getting along great but unfortunatly Joe has to leave to return to Rhode Island tomorrow. The two of them have bonded well and have thier own relationship of teasing each other. Rebecka and Rayanna are sharing a room and sleeping together and so far so good things are going well. The only problem I can forsee in the not too far future is Rebecka getting aggravated with Rayanna's messiness. Rebecka is very neat and clean with her room and her stuff and Rayanna is not at all. Take it off, drop it and leave it. Done playing with it, drop it and leave it. Not wearing those shoes, just leave them there. I have alot of teaching ahead of me to get her to clean up after herself.

We are so blessed to have two wonderful girls and two wonderful boys. God is sooooo good!!!!

We went to Green Meadows Farm today with the girls. The boys went 4-wheeling with Uncle Leo. So daddy and I spent the day with the girls and took them to visit a farm, it was really fun and we got to hold alot of the animals. The girls rode a pony and milked a cow. We held the baby chicks and ducks. It was really cool and we all had a blast.

Who Dare Say I Don't Have a Beautiful Family?

Since I am the one doing this blog I don't have to put my silly face pictures, But you can enjoy these.
Love,
Jaclyn

What?..You've never eaten out of a toilet?

We ate a place called The Modern Toilet Diner. It was really cool, you sat on toilets and the tables were glass covered bathtubs and the food was served in mini toilets. The ice cream was served in a squat toilet. I really wish you guys could get the chance to use one of those. You don't know what your missing...LOL. The drinks were even served in mini urinals. It was really fun if the gross factor doesn't bother you.
Love,
Jaclyn

Anyone Up for a bit of Snake?

I am not that crazy. But as you can see of few crazy people in our group ate fried snake. We went to a place called snake alley where in days past i guess it was a pretty seedy place where there was alot of "adult" entertainment and the killing of snakes for public view and drinking the blood and other odd stuff. Now they have cleaned the place up and except for a few "adult" shops along the strip it wasn't too bad. But they do not kill the snakes in public anymore although you can still pick one and have it "prepared" any way you like. We skipped the blood.

A Fancy Dinner

Here are a few pictures from our welcome dinner with Stephanies family. The food was so beautiful and tasted as good as it looked. Now I realize it may not look so good to some of you, but to us it was amazing!
Love,
Jaclyn

American Idol Fans???

Iwas a big American Idol fan until Bo Bice lost a couple of years ago. Then I didn't watch it again. But last night I got to see Bo Bice in concert in our city of Ocala with my best friend Shona. Even though I had just gotten home from Taiwan I still loved the opportunity to do this with her. Bo is still as hot as he was then. It was pouring rain for the first part of the concert and being in Florida of course it was outside. Even being a drowned rat seeing him was awesome.

Love,

Jaclyn

We're Home!

Hello everyone. We made it home safe and sound, it was a very very long trip home. We left Steph at the airport in Taiwan and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were lots of tears and promises to see each other again. She will always be our daughter in Taiwan.

Rayanna has been doing very well and is nothing like what we were told. Which doesn't really surprise me. She is very active and happy and has not gotten car sick at all. Which is all the opposite of what we were told. We made it through customs with her passport spelled differently than all the rest of the paperwork. I'm not sure if I mentioned it but all through the adoption and all the paperwotk her name was spelled Xiao-Mei with an "X", well when we picked her up all the court documents were spelled with an "S" instead of the "X". doesn't surprise me either, whats a little more aggravation from this process. The good news is she is ours and here in America and we will deal with the spelling of her name later. She was afraid of the dogs when we first got home but has gotten over that already also. She is talking alot with Rebecka in Chinese and Rebecka is translating, we need to get them speaking English and not so much Chinese for now while she learns.

Here is a few pictures.

Jaclyn

Time to leave...

I wasn't even able to write the title of this post without my eyes filling up, so i'm going to make this short. We will be checking out of the hotel in one hour. Stephanie and her sister will accompany us to the airport and we will say goodbye there. The good part is we will be leaving with our new daughter! We will arrive in Tampa at 6am on thursday morning.
see you soon.
Love,
Jaclyn