And her name is........

We have finally settled on a name (I think) unless we change our minds (again) I think we have finally agreed on ........
Rayanna Xiao-Mei Carlisle

PICTURES......

We recieved some new pictures from our agency today. It is always exciting to see new pictures of her, but they chopped all her hair off. Oh well, she is still so beautiful and it will grow back.

Laura from our agency returned from Taiwan this week. She got to visit with my daughter and a few other girls at Chung-Yi. We thank her so much for taking these pictures for us. Our daughter is the one in the middle wearing blue. She said Xiao-Mei is very quiet and shy, and the girls wanted to know what time it was in America right then. How cute is that.

Although we are not any closer to having our contracts. I was told before Laura went to Taiwan that we not only were waiting on the birth mother, we were also waiting on paperwork from the Taiwan government to get to Chung-Yi. They are waiting on Household Registration and her Official Birth Certificate. Don't ask me why these things are not already done, I have no answer for that. Our agency said they expect these things to be done soon and THEN they will be ready to send our contracts. So, the story is......WE WAIT>>>>>>>>>>

Still Waiting

I am so frustrated, we sent our pictures via E-mail 2 weeks ago. I've spoken to FFC who says they are still waiting on the birth mothers social worker. I don't understand at all why the delay. They want the birth mother involved, but if she doesn't want to be then I don't know why we are waiting for her. The owners of our adoption agency FFC will be leaving this week to go to Taiwan for 2 weeks. I hope they will see Xiao-Mei while they are there and hopefully get some pictures for us. But I am also afraid I am going to be waiting at least until they come back to get our contracts.

Unexpected Delay

I recieved an E-Mail from my Adoption Agency stating the birth mothers Social Worker was requesting more family pictures before she would give her approval for the adoption. This confuses me a bit since I was under the impression the birth mother has not been involved. I'm not sure what the story is, but I will do as they ask. I've E-Mailed the best family pictures I could find. This is very dissapointing since I was hoping to recieve our contracts any day. Hopefully this will not cause too much of a delay.

Rebecka's Gotcha Day Party

Today we had a big Gotcha Day Party to celebrate with family and friends. It was a great turnout and we had a blast. The kids of course enjoyed the swimming, even thought the water was ice cold. (to me anyway). They really loved decorating the cupcakes in an ice cream cone. Instead of having a cake I decided the kids would really have fun decorating cupcakes that I baked inside ice cream cones. It was a big hit and the kids made one for all the adults too. The girls did each others nails (and some of the guests too) . Thank you so much to Tracy and her girls and Penny and Alli for coming, it was so great to have some adoption friends there to celebrate with us. Thank you to my best friend Shona for being there, and everyone who came to make this day special.

Heres to many more Gotcha Days to celebrate!!!!!!

Stephanie

Introducing Fu-Ning "Stephanie" Chang.

Steph is our exchange student from Taiwan, she is from the same city as Rebecka. She will be staying with us for the school year this year, she is in the 11th grade. We are very happy to have her here and she is a big help to us. The weird thing is She and Rebecka do not speak Chinese to each other. Go Figure. We have alot of fun cooking together making sushi and steamed dumplings . she is also a pro at making the perfect rice.

We are blessed to have her with us and will miss her terrably when we have to say gooodbye next Spring.

Xiao-Mei

Introducing Xiao-Mei. We are using Families For Children for this adoption. We have completed our homestudy and our dossier along with our family letter and photo album. I believe it has all been sent to Taiwan. We are waiting official approval from the orphanage and then we should recieve our documents. So the wait begins....