Sweet pictures

Time flies.....

I had completely forgotten about this blog, until today! Our little munchin from the last post in 2010 isn't quite so little now.

 

 

 

 

 

We are leaving for China tomorrow!

The last two months have flown by. We have been surprised how fast all of the documents and paperwork have gone through for our adoption. Because we can not use Facebook or blogspot while in China we have set up another adoption blog for our trip: www.youbelong.net/thepauls. The password is paul.

Our son Cameron Lee Xu Jian Paul

Adoption Update

We finally have some good news!

As many of you have probably heard, Alan and I accepted a referral for a little boy from china about three weeks ago. He just turned one on the 24th of February. I will post pictures as soon as we are allowed. We are waiting for our official approval letter from China before we can post his picture on any blogs or social networking site. So here is our journey up till now:

• Spring 2006 Apply to AWAA for china

• March 2007 we are DTC ("Date to China", which means that our dossier has been completed and sent to china)
  
• April 2007 LID (we get a log in date with the CCAA, the Chinese adoption organization)

• June 2008 Renew Immigration paperwork, homestudy, fingerprints
  
  
• November/December 2009 Renew Immigration paperwork, homestudy, fingerprints
  
  
• February 2010 Apply for Waiting Children program through AWAA (Special needs children)

• February 10, 2010 see referral for our little boy
  
  
• February 11, 2010 sent in EA. or electronic acceptance to CCAA

• March 4, 2010 received PA or pre-approval to adopt little boy

Still waiting for:

• RA or referral acceptance, we will get this when someone at the CCAA looks over our dossier and says that we can officially proceed with the adoption of our little one.

• TA or travel acceptance, once we get this we will be able to start on our travel plans with our agency

How much longer do we have to wait???? Probably 2-3 months.

I am still having a hard time processing the reality that in a few months we will jump on a plane and when we come back we will be parents. Please pray for us!

I also had the surreal experience of signing up for the registry at the babies r us website. I only have a couple of items because I really don't know what I need...so I will need some help from some of you experienced moms out there to help me with that!

I also want to thank the Lord who has been so faithful to encourage us through the wait time. I am thankful for wonderful friends who made the time pass more quickly...or at least more enjoyably!

Family happenings and adoption update

Fall is in full swing. To celebrate fall happenings, like school picture days and Halloween I thought I'd share some fun old photos.

So Alan and I were engaged here but not married. We saw Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein masks at Savon's...and couldn't resist. Okay..maybe you had to be there.

I was three here. I think my brother was Casper.

I'm not sure what year this was but I 'm sure I loved the tutu outfit.

Again, not sure how old I am here. But at least this is one of the few school pictures that I actually like and am willing to share with the world.

As far as our adoption, please continue to pray for us. There were a lot of rumors that a speed up in referrals would happen in the fall and so far that is not happening at all. We were waiting until December to see how things were panning out. What we know so far is that we have been waiting for 31 months and the wait continues to grow. We are currently looking into some other options and again would covet your prayers. We both still want to be parents and still want to adopt from China. We want to make good decisions about our adoption, not just desparate ones, if that makes sense. So..no great news but we are trying to move forward a little bit at a time.

Smoke Days

We started school this week. Today we were all wondering if school would be cancelled because of the smoke from one of the local fires. I don't remember having so many fire issues when I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley but they are becoming a regular occurrence in Santa Clarita. So in addition to rainy days, and snow days (for kids in Acton/Agua Dulce), now we can add smoke days. The air quality was poor all day but the kids seem to do okay. Here are a few pics from the school playground and around my house.

Update: I found out that they cancelled school at noon right after I left for the day, so the kids had a half day due to the fires the first week of school. Unbelieveable!

The sun around noon.

A little better around 3 pm

Summer is here!

I have really been enjoying my summer. In June I spent quite a bit of time spring cleaning and we had a garage sale. In July we left for our vacation up the coast. Pictures will follow. For the rest of the summer it seems like things will get a little busier. My mom is having surgery in early August. I will be helping out with volleyball camp like usual and school inservice starts around the 21st or so. I am not ready to start back at school yet.

A note about our adoption, we passed our 2 year LID anniversary in April. this means that our paperwork has officially been in China for a little over 2 years. Our dossier has also made it through the review room which means somebody went through our documents and they were okay. You can pray for us that God would give us direction about our adoption as we wait. The current wait time is about 40 months but it grows every month. We are considering some other options as we wait. There is the waiting children program in China which specifically is adopting children with minor medical conditions. We have been thinking about fost/adopt too. We have given ourselves until December to see if there is any speed up in the referral process before we dive into any other options. In the meantime we are trying to educate ourselves about these alternatives.

I have really distracted with our aoption issues so on Sunday it was very convicting to be reminded about the centrality of the cross in the life of Christ and how it needs to be the center in our life. The speaker was a pastor named Will Thomas (I think) and as he preached in Mark 8:29-34. He basically reminded us that as believers we shouldn't be shocked about hardship or suffering because this world is not our home. Peter and the apostles thought that Jesus was there to deliver them from the Romans and they didn't understand it when he talked to them about dying. Jesus' plan and the apostles plan were different. So as a believer when I encounter hardship or suffering it's really just par for the course. The question I should ask is am I following God's plan, or am I getting upset beccause God's not following my plan. I think too often it has been the later of the two. If you want to check out the sermon it should eventually be uploaded on the mainstream website: http://www.gracechurch.org/ministries/audiodownloads.asp?ministry_id=28.

Here are some pictures of our trip. There are some more posted on FB.

Spending time with Jon and Maria Szabo and their three girls.

Pescadero State Beach

Point Arena Light House

Patrick's Point State Beach






Half Moon Bay State Beach

Agate Beach at Patrick's Point

In the Goove

We haven't been up to much lately...or up to anything out of the ordinary. We celebrated our birthdays in January. On Sunday we went to Disneyland to celebrate Valentine's Day. School has been busy with homecoming and spirit week and then my Marine Biology field trip. At the beginning of February our church celebrated the 40th anniversary of our pastor's first sermon at our church. I have a few various pictures of some of these things.

Hanging out at home with Alan and Rocky.

Unusual fog this morning.

A few pictures from Disney's California Adventures. Apparently they will be redoing the entrance to this park in the next few years so it will not have bridge and decor it has now near the main entrance.

My intrepid Marine Biology students on our field trip to Carpinteria State Beach. It was a bit cold but I was thankful to the Lord that it didn't rain much that day!

I am also thankful that Alan is always willing to go with me on all of these school related ventures.

Holidays

Thanksgiving pictures. I realize I am a few holidays behind, but what else is new. We spent Thanksgiving with my family. As you can see by the pictures we all have some strange uncontrollable urge to make faces at each other while taking pictures. Maybe it's genetic?

My first time playing Wii. Jennifer and I duked it out with boxing. I did pretty well with the tennis but don't ask me about golf. I don't like golf.

It's fire time again!

Okay..okay...it's been a while since my last post. At the moment we are having a little bit of excitement with the SoCal wildfires. It was a little strange to wake up Saturday morning and see the smoke and then find out that the 5 and 14 fwys were closed. Alan had planned on visiting his dad in Anaheim but those plans got put on hold. I have taken a couple of pictures of the Sayre fire that is closest to us. The first two pictures are from the playground at school this morning.

This afternoon afterschool I wandered down the street because I kept hearing airplanes. It turns out that there are at least three fixed wing aircraft flying almost over our house to get to the fire and then up to Catasic to get more water. They were pretty impressive looking airplanes.

These bottom two pictures were taken yesterday afternoon from our balconey of the same fire.

Vacation Time!

First of all I need to apologise for all the pictures! We had so much fun though, I had to include a good sampling. We decided to go up the coast this year instead of doing a long road trip. The last two summers we drove all over the Western U.S. but we wanted to keep it a little shorter this summer. We stayed in Cambria, Monterey, and San Louis Obispo.






This was the first time we had every stayed in Cambria. We loved it! It was a little cold but it was close to Hearst Castle and we spent a lot of time at the beach.




Just North of Hearst Castle is an area where you can see Elephant Seals. They are usually there in the spring and summer. While we where there it appeared that a bunch of immature males were practicing their sparing. They were very interesting to watch! We also had a number of unusual sunsets courtesy of the Indian fire.



We spent about five days in Monterey. Of course we went to Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.This is an ocean sunfish. They can grow to massive sizes! I think they are really cool fish.


We took some time to sail in the Bay and kayak. We found a company right on Cannery Row so we could put in right near the kelp beds. It was a blast. We actually got to see a number of momma sea otters with their pups. I do have one confession though, I am really uncoordinated so it took me about 30-40 minutes before I felt comfortable in the kayak. I was worried about getting sea sick, tipping over, etc., but I eventually had a good time. I know, I'm a wimp!



We took a drive up to Santa Cruz. We unfortunately chose one of the days when there was a heat wave and it was over 100 degrees in Santa Cruz. We walked around the boardwalk, played video games, walked on the pier and then left.


I had some fun playing games in the arcade. I managed to win about 1600 tickets. Guess what I redeemed them for? A rolling pin, yes that's right, a silicone covered rolling pin. Who'd guess that you could redeem arcade tickets for small kitchen utensils!


Winchester Mystery House-San Jose


On the way back from Monterey we stayed in San Louis Obispo. We stayed at the Madonna Inn like we did for our honeymoon. I know that the Madonna Inn isn't for everyone but I really like staying there. It is really different and fun!





Well, that's our trip. We had a great time. Alan is back at work now and I get to putt around the house for another month or so before school starts. I am taking a summer school class through CSU Bakersfield. This Friday I start "Foundations of American Education". We don't have a lot of other summer plans except to possibly go to the Shakespeare Festival in Utah for a few days and hopefully get our condo some much needed new carpet!!!!