Still Waiting

If you want to know why I don't write in this very often, it is because writing in this is a little painful. It makes me miss our baby even more than I usually do. I think about our baby all day long, whether it is a conscious thought or just in the back of my mind. I always know that I am waiting to go get her and make this real. My plan to keep myself busy is working really well. I started a new project for the orphanage our daughter is at now. We found out that there are 45 children living the orphanage (aged 7-18)who are not able to be adopted for one reason or another. I was given a list of names and ages of the children and asked the MOM's Club that I am in to help me out. I asked people to volunteer to fill two gallon ziploc bags with things for each child. I wrote a list of suppestions for the different age groups and emailed the members of the MOM's Club. I sent out the email two days ago and already ten people have volunteered to fill a bag for a one of the children. We went shopping to fill two of the bags the other day and had a great time. It was fun wandering up and down the aisles trying to figure out the best things to send. Practical things and fun things.
I am excited about doing this project. It's a great cause especially since we will be able to personally be able to hand carry the bags to the orphanage. I hope we are able to have someone take pictures of the children getting their bags too. That would be great for the people who filled the bags to see. Especially since a lot of the families who are doing it have children who are helping to fill the bags. I plan on doing this for other orphanages as well once we have filled bags for each of the children in this orphanage. I won't be able to hand carry the bags after this trip, but I know at least one of the caseworkers for our adoption agency goes over there four times a year and can bring them for us.
We are sponsoring a 15 year old girl from the orphanage. We received her name, birth date and a picture. She is a beautiful girl! My teenage daughter and I went out and bought her a bunch of things last week. It was really, really fun. We found a pretty traveling bag to fill with things. We were planning to send the bag with another family who is traveling to her orphanage next weekend. Once we got home we realized we had bought too much because the bag was really heavy! We decided to bring the bigger, heavier one with us and filled a smaller bag and sent it to the other family who is traveling. I sent a small purse from Victoria Secret and filled it with a small, really soft, stuffed bear, two pair of cute underwear, a few candy flavored lip glosses, a small eyeshadow kit, sparkly lip gloss, several hair accesories, a necklace, a pretty container with mints, a couple packs of gum, tic tacs, a candy necklace and deodorant. Thank you for bringing it for us, Charisa!
It's been 6 and a half weeks since we got our referral. Of course I asked my caseworker when we would travel seconds after she gave us our referral. She told us we don't talk about travel until ten weeks after referral. The next time I talked with her I asked again and she said that the orphanage our little girl is at moves more slowly than the others. It takes longer before travel and longer once we are in the country. I looked over the list of how long people who have adopted from the same orphanage have been there in the past and 30 days is not unusual. I never would have thought I could adopt from Vietnam if I would have known I would have to be away from my children for a month! How is that even possible?! I don't really know. I'm getting myself mentally prepared to be in Vietnam for 30 days so I won't be going crazy if it happens, but I know it will be amazingly hard to be away from my children for that long. Especially my younger ones. They change so much and so quickly!

I'm Finally Writing Again!

I cannot believe how long it's been since I have written. I did feel guilty about not writing but I am always doing so many things at once and I wanted to concentrate when I wrote for this. Anyway, want to hear my travel news? Me too. I don't expect to hear anything about travel until the end of September though. I think my caseworker said something like, "We will start talking about travel in ten weeks," when I was given my referral. I am really bad at suspense. Really, really bad. Like I am one of those people who had to find the Christmas presents as a child because I couldn't handle the wait or suspense. Did it ruin the surprise on Christmas morning? Of course it did. But it was fun and it did make the wait before Christmas a lot easier so it was definitely worth it. I didn't jsut do it once either, I did it several times. Until my family members found out and set me up by wrapping gag gifts for me. You think it would have cured me. I'm sorry to say that it didn't. I think this goes beyond character flaw, it's more deeply embedded than that. It's more like one of the things that was determined when my parents chromosomes matched up to create me. It's not any more in my control than my eye color. So, if I can't handle the wait for Christmas and birthday presents (did I tell you the story about how I found out what I was getting on my birthdays?) you can imagine how hard it is to wait to travel to get my baby.
The only real way for me to handle the wait is to keep busy. So I am coming up with various fundraisers in order to bring clothes, supplies, toys and books to the orphanage when we go get our little girl. I am hoping we can raise enough to make some kind of difference. I have several different fund raising ideas in my head and I am trying to work a few of them out. Ray and I have bought over 60 pairs of pants and about 15 shirts. I hope to bring 60 complete outfits (shirts, pants, socks, and hats). I also want to bring things for the children at the orphanage who are not adoptable for one reason or another. I was told there are about 45 children between the ages of 5-18. I have heard that etch a sketch pads, art supplies, books, Polly Pocket Dolls, and math or word game books are great to bring. Now I need to work on getting a bunch of things like these and getting them there. I am also planning to bring money (here is where the fundraising comes in) and buy things like baby blankets, formula, shampoo, toys, books in Vienamese for the older chidren, balls...when I get there.
We got new pictures of our little girl last week. It was a little sad, because she actually looks younger in these than the last ones they sent us. She looks like the flash from the amera startled her. Poor thing! She had been missing hair on the top of her head and it all grew in. We received eight pictures with her referral and just received four more, which is great. I am hoping we get some more in the next couple of weeks since a family from our adoption agency is waiting to travel.
I will write again in the next couple of days. I want to include pictures of the things we sent in the care pakages as well as the first gift we received from our Cyber Shower.

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!

Our girl

We have our referral!!!

I had been thinking we might get our referral mid July, though I had heard rumors of babies being available earlier. I was so excited that it was finally July because I knew referrals for some families would be coming soon. I was laying on the couch trying to figure out if we should go the the park or have the kids play in the backyard when the phone rang. I knew immediately it was THE CALL. I stood up and looked at the clock and thought, "At 6:52 pm we are hearing about our baby for the first time." Jenny asked me if I was by my computer and said she wasemailing my baby's information and pictures to me. I ran to the computer and pulled up my email and saw the email from her. I opened it enough to see her first name and that there were pictures and told her we had it. My husband and I drove to his office so we could print the pictures in color on his brand new printer. I was so excited/overwhelmed/emotional that I couldn't speak in full sentences for an hour or so. WOW! Our baby! They sent us eight pictures, which was great so we could really get a sense of what she looks like. None of them are labeled so we don't know how old she is in them. She has big eyes and is smiling in a couple of them. She is so pretty and looks so sweet! Her pants are torn in the pictures so they are obviously well worn. But her eyes look bright and alert and she looks happy. Now I want to hold her! We were told ten weeks before travel, which means late August to mid September. I am going to have to make myself a long list of things to do to keep busy between now and then so I don't go crazy waiting!
I am posting a picture of her, or rather part of a picture. For those of you who are adopting, you know it is because the chid is not really mine until we get to VietNam and have our G & R. So until it's official, I'll just post this. Once we get to VietNam I will post many pictures of her!

Ray and Stacey in Hawaii Summer 2006

IT'S JULY!!!!!!!!!!

Many of us who are hoping for referrals from our agency have been waiting impatiently for July to finally be here. Did anyone else notice that June lasted entirely way to long this year?! So July is here and several people have received their referrals. It's exciting for all of us because it means it's really happening! We heard about seven referrals being given out over the last several days. We have been able to look at a few pictures and they are all adorable. I think one family has a referral for a baby who is only about six weeks old. Wow!
I have started asking the woman who has done my nails for the last couple of years for help for my traveling. She and several other women who work there have told me a lot. Just little bits and peices of information that probably will all make more sense to me once I am close to traveling. She told me two airlines that were very good. I remembered them until I was halfway home. I was so busy trying to remember which ones were good and which ones weren't that I got them confused. I guess I need to bring a notebook to write things down. She did make a good point. One of the things adoptive families do is bring small gift for the people at the orphanage and people that help along the way (like the van driver and people who set up your appointments while you are there). Several people have said that chocolate is a good gift because they like our chocolate better. Well, she said it will never make the travel with the heat. Hmmm, good point. She said it would be better if we put $10 or $20 in envelopes to give. That money is what a lot of the people really need and could help them. I'll have to ask my agency. It would certainly be easier to pack.
Ray and I went golfing today, which was fun. It's really the only time we can have a normal conversation since we are always with our little ones. Well, I don't know if our conversations are exactly normal. This is an example of one as we are driving in the cart to the next hole.

Ray, "What did you get on that hole again?" As he is writing his own score down.
Stacey, "I got a four." (Hey, this is my story, I could very well have gotten a four on that hole!)
"Hey, flip the scorecard over. I was writing different baby names down on it to see how they look."
Ray, Flips the scorecard over and then quickly flips it back without looking at it. "Yeah." Pause. "I can't believe my last drive. I pulled it! What kind of crap was that!" At this point Ray is careening our cart around a turn so fast I have to quickly hold on to stay in the cart.
Stacey, "I like both names. I guess we'll have to figure out if we like her first and middle names and like their meanings to figure out which one we'll use. I think we should wait until we see her to really make our final decision."
Ray, "Hey, come watch me while I hit this. I think you're going to be impressed." Ray gets out of the cart, takes his driver out of his bag and walks over to the tee.
Stacey, Looks up as Ray leans over to place his tee and ball in the ground, then reaches over and flips the scorecard over to look at the names again. Ray gets in the cart.
Ray, "Okay, now that's how to hit the ball." Flips the scorecard back over and looks at the distance to the green again.
Stacey, "Of course, we didn't do that with the other two. We didn't wait until we saw them to figure out their names. Maybe we should decide before we go. But then we would have to make a decision." Gets out of the cart and grabs her club. Looks back at Ray as she walks away, "What do you think?"
Ray, Looks up. "What?"

So may be we aren't really communicating WITH eachother yet, but we are passing information back and forth and it's a start. We did have fun playing again today. We usually go to nice courses that are just beautiful. Today we went to a course that was literally under construction. It was a rough course. Seriously rough. There was hiking, there was camping and there was even a little repelling during our time out. Not my kind of golfing. Still fun though.