Getting ready to travel to China for Ella

I know I haven't posted since on this blog since 9/09 (not sure where 2010 went), but I am going to try to get in the habit again to be able to document the arrival of our beautiful daughter who we are adopting from China!

For those that don't know, her name will be Ella Wei Ham. She was born on 4/6/09 and abandoned at birth. She has been living in an orphanage in Nantong in the province of Jiangsu in China. She was born with a cleft lip and palate. the lip was repaired surgically when she was 8 months old and we will have the palate surgery once she is home.

We began the adoption process by submitting our application on 5/15/10, received our referral on 9/27/10 and will be leaving for China next week on 3/17/11 and will receive our little one on Mon, 3/21!!!!!! All in all a 10 month process (much shorter than the 12-18 months the agency quoted us at time of application).

Lucas and Noah are very excited to meet their little sister. They will be staying with my parents and not traveling with us. It will be hard to be away from them for 2 1/2 weeks (the longest we have ever been away from them is 2 nights!) But I know they will be in good hands with Grandma & Grandpa :)

I will do my best to keep posting, I am not sure if I will be able to post from China (not sure what you can access on the Internet there). If I can't, I'll send my sister posts & pics so hopefully she can post (thanks Lynn, I haven't asked yet if she will do it)

Here are some pics of Ella taken on 12/31/10.

Noah Sept 09

Where Lucas is always busy, Noah would happily lay on the couch watching Diego & Imagination Movers all day if we let him.

Here he is in his favorite place, on the couch, with his blankie, sucking his thumb.




He has taken more a liking to art lately and had a blast with some sidewalk paint outside.



He definitely has his Dad's sweet tooth, here he is eating french toast with powdered sugar.

Lucas Sept 09

I thought I'd do separate posts for each of the boys.

Lucas has found a few new hobbies lately.

He likes climbing the olive tree in our backyard (he obviously didn't inherit his Mom's fear of heights).







He is also a bit obsessed lately with 2 shoelaces which he likes to balance on top of things so he can crawl under and now is also tying things together.

TV Watching

The boys favorite spot to watch TV is on the edge of the coach. I commented to German the other day that I wasn't sure what they would do once they were to big for them to still sit side by side. Apparently it will be awhile before that happens. Last week our next door neighbors came over to play and the boys had no trouble finding room to squeeze Abby onto their favorite spot.

Daddy's Birthday

On Monday, 4/6 we celebrated German's birthday with chocolate cake.


Noah (yes, his eyes are puffy, he has had really bad allergies)


Lucas

And then there were four...

Last Saturday we babysit our friend's, Dave & Katrina, 2 kids (Brandon 2 1/2 & Amanda 11 months) so they could go out to dinner and a movie for to celebrate their anniversary.

Here are all the boys playing baseball, they actually did a good job taking turns.



Us girls decided to hang out in the shade and watch.



Here are boys "supervise" as Brandon watered what seemed like every plant in our backyard.

Fun With Daddy

While I was at a "sleepover" with some college girlfriends, German and the boys had a busy Sat.

Here they are eating an ice cream "snack" at Baskin Robbins.

Lucas has "ganilla"



Noah has chocolate



Then Noah pushed Lucas around our court on his trike.



They ended the night enjoying BBQ ribs (which all 3 boys love and Mama doesn't so it was a good time to have them).