Saying Goodbye to Stephanie...

We had a party for Stephanie on Sunday also. My family came over to say goodbye. Everyone has really fallen in love with her. She is such a special girl and we are all going to miss her very much. My parents really love her also and consider her a grandaughter.
We will be leaving at 3 AM tomorrow morning to take her to the airport. I think she is excited to go home and see her family. We will be leaving for Taiwan in 10 days, so saying goodbye may not be too bad this time, it will be when we leave Taiwan that will really be the heartbreaker for us. I pray that we will see her again someday. She will always be our daughter in Taiwan. She tells us she loves us as her parents and we will always be her "American Mom and Dad". She assures us she will be back to visit us someday and I hope that she will.
WE LOVE YOU STEPHANIE! LOVE MOM AND DAD

Goodbye Stephanie :-(

Yesterday our church had a going away party for Stephanie. Steph has been playing the piano at church while she was with us. Everyone was so wonderful giving her cards and well wishes, really letting her know how much they appreciated her while she was here. Thank you so much to David and Linda for making Steph feel so welcome and loved.

Planning Planning Planning....

Well I'm working really hard trying to make plans. Do you know how hard it is to find a hotel room for 6 people? It's very hard. After searching the internet and calling hotels all over Taipei and only coming up with 2 hotels with a family suite to accomodate 6 people at the tune of about $400 a night, We had to make other plans. Eric and I couldn't put the boys in another room, which is what the hotels wanted us to do is buy two rooms. We have decided to take my brother Leo with us to stay in a room with the boys and we will be staying at a cheaper hotel for less than $200 a night for two rooms. The name of the hotel is The Feeling. It's very nice and highly recommended from other budget concience travelers. WE are all excited and happy my brother will get to join us also. So the hotel is booked and the airline tickets are purchased. Joseph will be flying into Tampa on the evening of June 19th at about 11PM and we will board a plane at 6 AM on the 20th from Tampa and start our journey. It's such a blessing that all of us will be together to welcome Rayanna into our family. I think this is an experience the boys will remember forever and of course Rebecka is so happy to be visiting her orphange again. I wonder if they have ever had an adopted child return to visit. The next 5 weeks will hopefully go by fast, even though there is alot to prepare. They still have not figured out what they will do about her passport, but the orphange apparantly thinks they will get it straightened out before we travel without having to do the POA. Hopefully that will be the case.
Stephanie will be returning to Taiwan on June 10th but she plans on spending as much time with us as she can while we are in Taiwan. She lives in the same city so will be close by and she already has many places she wants to take us. It will be a bittersweet departure from Taiwan this time. Although we will be leaving Taiwan with our new daughter, we will also be saying goodbye to Stephanie for a very long time. We hope we will see her again someday, but are sure we will keep in contact with her. She has become like a daughter to us over this past year and we will forever love her.
So we are in the final countdown, what a journey this has been and the best is yet to come!
Love,
Jaclyn

WE'RE GOING TO TAIWAN !!!....

Finally...11 months and 14 days after starting this journey to our daughter we will be recieving Rayanna Xiao-Mei Carlisle into our Family on June 23rd,2008. It's hard to believe the time had finally arrived, we were beginning to think it was never going to happen. Although we're all happy to recieve the call on Wednesday it didn't come without a new complication. Seems that although Rayanna's birth mother signed off her rights to allow Rayanna to be adopted she still held Power Of Attorney over her as her birth mother. When we adopted Rebecka the orphange had POA because there was no birth family involved. If you remember when we started this adoption there was a delay while they located Rayanna's birth mother to sign the paperwork, now although the courts say we are legally her adoptive parents the problem comes in with getting her passport. From what I understand they need either her birth mother who still has POA or her adoptive parents to file for the passport. Her birth mother is nowhere to be found and her adoptive parents are here in America. So, initially when we got the call on Wednesday, they wanted us to get on a plane next week fly to Taiwan and stay for 2 weeks while we applied and waited for her passport. For many reason that was not a good idea, What if there was a problem, we can't get stuck in Taiwan! The kids are at the end of the school year and we all are planning to go. That would be right in the middle of exams. So I told them I didn't think that would be possible. Our agency said we may be be able to do the paperwork via mail, it will take longer but they have agreed on letting us pick up Rayanna on June 23rd so we can wait for the kids to get out of school. So as it stands now we will be leaving on June 20th to head over there, but we still have to figure out how to straighten out the problem with the passport before we go.
But at least we are seeing the end of the road and in 6 weeks Rayanna will come home forever.
Love,
Jaclyn
Mom to Joseph 15, Jesse 11, Rebecka 11, and Rayanna 9

No News is Bad News..

Actually it's just no news at all. It's been over 3 months since we've had our court hearing. My adoption agency says nothing is wrong it's just taking a long time. And if you ask any of us it's taking an excruciatingly long, ridiculously absolutally unnessesary long time. Some day maybe the Judge will have mercy on us, until then we sit and wait and wonder how our little girl is doing growing older each day in an orphange when she could be here with her family. Maybe the judge just never thought of it that way. << sarcasm...............

WE LOVE SUSHI !!!

Last night we made homemade Sushi. All of us in the house love Sushi. Although it's easier to buy it , it's really fun to make. For those of you who are thinking "gross", The ingredients inside the Sushi are all cooked, nothing raw. We use cream cheese, cucumbers, avacado, and crab or shrimp, sesame seeds and of course rice and seaweed wrappers. YUMMMM!

This weekend we have a couple of Stephanies Exchange Student friends that are staying with other families in the area staying with us for a couple days. We went to Homasassa Wildlife Park today and it was the other two girls first time seeing the Manatees. It was nice to see them all enjoying themselves. Considering how tired they all were after staying up all night. They slept (what little they did anyway) out in a tent in the backyard.