Heartfelt song and video

Please skip over to our family's charity blog, Two Homes One Heart, to check out a really amazing song/video. It speaks exactly the words and feelings of my heart! Enjoy!
www.twohomesoneheart.blogspot.com

Homestudy is COMPLETE!

WOW! I'm so excited to report our homestudy is now complete. We started our first meeting on August 22 and last night (Sept 17) we finished it. Our SW is going to write it up ASAP and she has told us Provincial Approval takes about 2 weeks. We requested a girl between the ages of 2.5 - 3.5 at time of referral! The next step (after Provincial Approval) is to have our file sent to our Agency - Kids Link and have all our documents translated and prepared for Ethiopia. When this is done, the file will come back to the Province (not sure why? So the Provincial Adoption Coordinator can review its translation????) and then it will be sent to Ethiopia to be matched with our child!

So, the scary part is we need to have $12,500 ready to send with our file when it goes to Ethiopia. Without these little "faith testers" life just wouldn't be any fun now would it?! We are praying God will help us be diligent in saving any extra money we have and will make our little fundraisers very successful! Unfortunately, all I can think about is the excitement of being ONE STEP CLOSER to our daughter!

We are hosting a Yard Sale to help with some of the costs. Included in our adoption fees is a $6000 donation to the orphange where our daughter is currently living. 100% of this donation will go to help our daughter and all the other children and provide necessities to care for them on a daily basis. This is the money we are hoping to raise through our Yard Sale and other small fundraisers.

When: Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
(Raindate September 29th)
Where: Calvary Temple Parking Lot (Ch’town)
Time: 8:00am – 1:00pm

A great selection of furniture, bedding, boys & girls clothing (in great condition!), adult clothing, DVDs, games, lots of toys, books and many household items!!!

Enjoy lemonade, cookies and other great treats
at Caleb, Dylan and Alyssa’s “Lemonade for Hope” stand!

Mmmmmm....Yummy!

Pease join us in sharing our love!

DANCE!

Alyssa started her first step/tap dance classes. She loves to dance and was so excited to go. She was very shy when we first took her in and then she saw the little girls dancing and clapping with step music playing and it took her about oh....10 seconds and she was dancing with them!!

Caleb started guitar lesson this week and can't wait to get practicing. I hope he's a great musician like his dad! (don't have a picture - sorry Caleb!)

Dylan is in his 3rd week of hockey camp and he has about 2 more weeks to go and then on to try-outs. He loves hockey!!!

A picture in our local paper...

The other day I didn't get any pictures for Alyssa's 1st day at Chinese school but apparently The Guardian did. How exciting to open the paper and see Alyssa and Wendi! Wendi has been an amazing support to our family - she has made us some delicious chinese food and is always willing to share about Alyssa's culture and country. I was really happy to see Alyssa's picture was with Wendi!!! The caption reads "Wendi Dai shows three year old Alyssa Li some books in Chinese at the orientation for the Chinese Language and Culture School of PEI. The school is being offered at the Murphy Community Center in Charlottetown to help children learn the Chinese language, culture adn history, and to cultivate a sense of national spirit."

Chinese School...

Alyssa started Chinese school yesterday. It is going to be held every Saturday morning from 9-11:30. She was a bit shy yesterday as she's not used to being around so many people but by the end of the school time she was practicing writing chinese characters with her brothers and meeting some other children. There are about 30-40 children from China participating in the school so we are really glad to have Alyssa exposed to more of her culture and a chance to learn mandarin!! I didn't get any pictures, though...

On the adoption front...our SW had to cancel our homestudy meeting this week but she has still assured us she will have the homestudy written and handed in to the Province by the end of September. Unfortunately we are still waiting for Chris' fingerprints to come back from Ottawa. Mine were returned in two weeks but we've been waiting more than 2 months for Chris'. We can still send our dossier to Kids Link so they can start working on our file but we can't send our dossier to Ethiopia without the fingerprints.

More later....

The three kiddies...

Back to School

Well, after a great summer with the kids it is time for school. The boys were very excited to get back to school and see their friends. I guess "mom" can only entertain them for so long before I'm not cool enough. Hmmm.... We did have a great summer and we did many different activities but getting back into routine is always nice.

Caleb - 1st day of Gr. 6!

Dylan - 1st day of Gr. 4. I can't believe I let him go to school with that hairdo but we both have very different opinions on what looks "cool" for Gr. 4!

Alyssa and I set up a little "classroom" in our Rec. room for Alyssa to go to school. We are learning lots of fun things like ABC's, shapes, colors, weather, seasons, sounds, etc... She is beyond excited about having school with me. Today she was calling me "teacher" instead of "mom". Too funny!

We talked with our SW and we only need one more meeting and we will be done our homestudy meetings! YAY! She also said she wants to work as quickly as possible to get it written up and submitted to the Province for Approval so we are thrilled about that!!!! Keeping our fingers crossed to have it sent to Kids Link by the end of September!!!!!

We are having a huge yard sale on September 15th (8-1) with many families joining in to support us. The tentative location is Maritime Christian College on University Ave. I'll let you know if it changes. We are also having a food concession with tons of great treats - caramel popcorn, regular popcorn, candied apples, water, pop, etc... Our kids are doing their lemonade stand (see picture below) and will have lemondade, homemade cookies and popsicles for sale! Too cute!

Alyssa at her lemonade stand - she made $54 in 1/2 hour.

Alyssa in her new dance outfit. She begins step & tap lessons next week. She is so excited!

Rollerblading dudes!
Dylan
Caleb