Drum Roll Please......

Introducing....

Kathryn Xunuo (aka, Kate)

Isn't she beautiful and perfect? She is 21 months old now, and hopefully we will be with her before her second birthday. She has a repaired cleft lip and an unrepaired cleft palate, which we will have repaired here. We are just ecstatic.

Dana at AHH just called to let me know that they got our Letter of Acceptance today! They are putting it in the mail and we will receive it tomorrow. People, this is HUGE! These things can take months and months, and we got ours in only 10 days. Praise God! He is being so faithful to get us to our daughter quickly. I pray that our Travel Approval will come quickly also. We need/hope to travel in September because there is a huge trade fair in Guangzhou in October, which would make travel difficult then.

Tara's a Photoshop Rockstar!

This week I have been working on making a little photo album to send to Kate in China. I wanted it to have pictures of us, with captions that her caretakers could read to her. The problem is, I wasn't sure how to write mommy in Chinese, and then once I figured it out, I couldn't get it to work as a caption. Evidently Photoshop doesn't recognize Chinese characters. Go figure. Anyway, my friend Tara came through for me (again). She had done this for her son in China just a few months ago, and talked me through the steps on the phone. Tara, you are my hero!

So now that Tara and I have worked so hard, I wanted to share some of them.

Are those three handsome boys or what?

PA!!!!

Our agency emailed us today to let us know they received our pre-approval to adopt Kate today!!!! This is a step that the CCAA sometimes skips over, but it happened so fast that we are in shock. We didn't even know for sure that our Letter of Intent had been translated and sent to them, much less that they would have time to Pre-Approve us. We are hoping that our Letter of Acceptance will come just as quickly and unexpectedly. We are praying that they will have time to process us before the Olympics, since we don't know if the CCAA office will be open during the games. Many businesses/offices that are non-essential to the games are being closed to free up transportation and other services to those people who will be going to the Olympics. They are also hoping that this will reduce the air pollution in and around Beijing. Either way, we are so thankful that our PA arrived so quickly and evidently without any kinks. Now if our American paperwork can also be processed that quickly...

In other news, it has been a busy week so far. On Saturday we went to my aunt's house to celebrate my grandmother's 80th birthday. We read a list of 80 reasons we love Ninnie, such as "She makes green beans so good that you want to eat them for breakfast" and "She loves to ask a lot of questions." Some of them were pretty funny. Ninnie is an awesome lady and wonderful grandmother, and it was a lot of fun to celebrate with her. We got to show her pictures of Kate for the first time, and she was very happy for us. Kathryn is actually named after both Ninnie's mother and daughter, and Tim and I have always loved the name.

While Tim is away at camp this week, the boys have started taking swimming lessons. I always swore that my children would learn to swim when they were small, but somehow the busyness of life got in the way, and they were pretty afraid at the beginning of the summer. I have been working with them some to help with the fear, but I felt like they would respond better to someone else. Will still gets pretty nervous when the lesson starts, but Ben holds his hand until he gets used to it, and then he does fine the rest of the class. They have been blowing bubbles and practicing going under the water. Today the teacher helped them to go to the bottom and pick up rings. Pretty big stuff for lesson #3! I don't know if they will be able to dog paddle and tread by the end of the class, but at least they are getting over some of their fears.

Also, for those of you who don't know, Ben has learned to read over the summer. And he is doing an awesome job. It just started clicking for him, and he is learning new words left and right. He will read to anyone willing to sit still for more than five minutes. His favorites are Dr. Seuss books, especially the Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Green Eggs and Ham. But every time I go into the playroom he is sitting there with another book. I love it!!

He is definitely ready for Kindergarten. I know a lot of people think I am nuts for waiting an extra year to send him, but it has been such good year that I wouldn't trade it for the world. He had a great experience at preschool, and he honestly wasn't so interested in reading this time last year. He really needed that year to grow and mature. And maybe it was good for mommy too. But now he is going into school prepared and already ahead of the game. I am unbelievably proud of him. I am also proud of how quickly Will is gleaning from Ben's skills. He pays attention to books and can sound out lots of individual letters. He likes to tell people he is reading Fox in Socks, but he is really just repeating what he has memorized. Still, it is very cute, and it won't be long before he is reading independently. He starts preschool this fall. I can't believe how big my boys are!

Jake-up Make-up

This is what I used to call my brother when I was really trying to tick him off, and it usually worked. He hated this nickname. He would usually start screaming and chasing me around the house. We fought like cats and dogs until I moved out of the house. Good times.

Somehow, he has grown up to be a wonderful man with a wife, a job, and big dreams. Instead of fighting, we became friends. He is someone that I trust completely with my children. I trust him to listen to my secrets, to give me advice, and to be a constant connection to my past, present, and future.

Yesterday, they got on a plane to go half way around the world to serve God and people. They will be gone for several years, and I will miss them more than I realized. You see, Jacob has wanted to do this for as long as I can remember. I have tried my best to support him, knowing that he would only be happy if he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do. In doing that, I have seen his occupational choice as a huge adventure - not to mention a place where I could take really cool vacations. But yesterday, standing there at the Cracker Barrel, I realized that I am seriously going to miss seeing him and his wife every few months. I will miss his crazy sense of humor, his intelligent conversations, his insight into my life.

I am also sad that my kids are going to miss out on seeing their super cool aunt and uncle all the time. Even when they were here, they usually only saw them once every 2 or 3 months. And to a 6 year old and an almost 4 year old, there isn't much difference between three months and three years. Their concept of time isn't there. I really don't think they understood what was going on yesterday, even though they adore Jacob and Alison. Especially Will. Will thinks Alison hung the moon, so yesterday he was all grins because she kept hugging and kissing him. He thought it was a great day!

Last night I came home exhausted. My sweet husband cooked dinner for us so that I could rest. When we sat down, Ben wanted to say the blessing. He thanked God for our food, and then he told God that he was really going to miss his aunt and uncle, but he was glad that they were going because "somebody has to do it." My 6 year old may not understand the passage of time, but he does understand God's love for the world and the need to serve Him.

Dear Lord, bless Jacob and Alison as they create a new life for themselves in a new place. Keep them healthy and safe, and give them plenty of opportunities to serve you and get in on your work. Ease any homesickness that they may feel so that they may focus on you and your will. In Jesus' name, Amen.

I've been trying to keep a secret...

But I just can't do it anymore! On Friday morning, Dana from our adoption agency called to tell me that we have finally been matched with our daughter!!!! (I don't think I can put enough exclamation marks there.) She is beautiful and perfect and wonderful, but we really wanted to talk to the doctor first and let her review the file. We also wanted to pray about it and make sure that this is the child that God wants us to have for our daughter. He has answered our prayers in a mighty way, and we are confident that we should accept the referral. The doctor called back last night, saying that there were no red flags. So now we have about a million things we have to do to get ready for her to come home - more paperwork, updated homestudy, and parent education credits we have to earn, not to mention the fact that her room has pretty much been a storage area for the last year and a half!

We wanted to tell our boys first, so when we got home from church today we sat down with them and told them our amazing news. Ben was excited and was very interested in how to say her name. Will, on the other hand, was excited because we celebrated with pizza, popcorn, and milkshakes! We also Skyped Tim's parents. They are very happy for us. We had intended to wait until Saturday to tell my dad in person, but when he called tonight Ben spilled the beans. (That's ok, Ben. I'm just glad you are so happy!) We will see my mom tomorrow and tell her then.

Since she isn't officially ours yet, we are waiting to post her picture and information on the blog. Just trust me when I tell you that she is awesome!

We started this process three years ago, sent our paperwork to China 2 1/2 years ago, and were logged in 28 months ago. In March of this year, we filled out a medical checklist stating what special needs we were open to. At the rate that referrals have been issued from China, we knew that it could be another year or more of waiting, so we feel extremely blessed to be bringing home a child very soon.

I have a daughter!!! Praise God for his amazing blessings!!!

co-blogger

Apparantly I'm allowed to add my "two-cents." (However, I think this is really so Amy can tell me to get on here and add pictures!) Nevertheless, hello from the husband.

Hey! I finally have a blog!

Well, after talking about it for at least 9 months, I am finally posting my first blog post... and I'm not sure what to talk about! Or rather, I am not sure where to begin. I want this blog to be about my family (ok, mostly my kids), what God is doing in my life, books that I am reading, things that I am thinking about, and that sort of thing. I will probably talk a lot about adoption too. I want this to be a place where I can share photos with people who are far away, journal about funny things my kids say, and vent when I need to. Since I have an opinion on just about everything, this shouldn't be too hard.

In case you are wondering why I called this blog "Raising Tomatoes", it comes from a conversation I had with Ben a couple of years ago. He and I were discussing what we should call Baby Sister when she gets here. He got this really thoughtful look on his face and said, "Hmm, I think we should name her 'Tomato' because that's my favorite food." Since both of my boys love tomatoes, I started thinking of my kids with this little affectionate term.

(By the way, no, we are not naming our daughter Tomato. Ben decided a few months later that this wasn't a good idea. One night I was putting him to bed and he said, "I've decided that we shouldn't call Baby Sister 'Tomato'." I sighed a breath of relief and asked him why he changed his mind. He said, "I think if we call her Tomato she will probably cry." Good insight, Ben.)

I'm not sure I expected my first post to ramble so much, but you have to start somewhere. Oh, well, most of you will probably just come here for the pics anyway. (And yes, the Buzz and Woody one is from Halloween, but it is still one of my favorites.)