Care Package

Another family who is with the same adoption agency as we are is traveling to the orphanage our little girl is at and offered to bring her a care package. YEAH! The pants she was wearing in several of the referral photos are ripped and torn. I'm sure she doesn't care but I want to send her some new, soft ones. I wasn't able to find any long sleeve shirts that aren't onsies (they don't use diapers in the orphanage, they only use shirts and pants). I wound up finding several on the internet. I think I bought about ten shirts and seven or eight pairs of pants. I don't know how long I will be waiting to travel so I wanted to have them in case someone else goes in a month or so. It was fun buying them and putting them in the ziploc bag with the letter Ray and I wrote her. Just knowing the woman who takes care of her will be opening the bag up is fun. We wrote her a note that said, "We have sent you some clothes. We hope you like them. We love you and can't wait to come get you. Mommy and Daddy." We asked a friend of ours who is Vietnamese to translate it for us, which was great. We'll include the note, a picture of our baby with her name and the name of the orphanage she is in, two outfits and a hat. I wanted to put in a blanket, but it wouldn't fit. The accepted thing when you ask someone to bring a care package is for it to all fit into a gallon sized ziploc bag so it won't take up too much room. If I am able to send another one I may send pictures of us, but clothes for her are more important. I hope she gets to wear them, but I'm sure they'll get shared with the other children, which is fine.
We went to Home Depot today to buy paint for the baby's room and various other things like window locks. While we were in the store my 19 month old took off while I was in the middle of something. She is really fast for her age. It took me a second to take in the fact that she was racing away and before I started running after her my three year old son shouted, "I'll get her, Mommy!" He took off running before I had moved. As I ran around the corner I was thinking two things. First, what are the odds that both of my two younger children are runners and second, how sweet that my son is being protective of his lttle sister and wants to make sure she doesn't get hurt. As I started turning the corner I saw my son tackle my daughter to the ground (which was cement, I think) and shout, "I got her, Mommy!" Hmmm...so maybe he wasn't trying to protect her, maybe this was just another sport for him. We spent the next ten minutes pretending we were going to get something accomplished while our kids either screamed if we were holding them or took off if we set them down. Finally I gave up and the kids and I waited in the car while Ray stayed and shopped. I think he might have played a round or two of pool as well, he was certainly in there long enough to have.
Once we got home I started doing laundry, cleaning up the house and doing paperwork. Ray decided to install the air conditioning unit we don't need in our garage (we finished off our garage and use it as an additional family room complete with carpeting, paint, crown molding, couches, television...)Suddenly I heard a shout from Ray. He had turned on the air conditioner after he installed it and it made an awful, chopping noise so he quickly turned it off. When he looked closer he saw that our son had shoved a few sticks into the fan part of it while Ray wasn't looking. Nice work, Brayden!