***Three little Princesses***




Betsie, Julia and Abbie





Playing so well!

Some swim time fun!



winding down watching
"Enchanted" before bedtime.


Before leaving this morning, attempting to get a good photo. lol












We had our little reunion and it was oh so good to see everyone! Jen, you have a beautiful family and I loved finally meeting Rachel and Mary Evelyn! They were all so much fun! Julia had a blast this weekend and is still talking about staying with Abbie and playing with Betsie.

And I knew Julia was tall but I am so used to seeing her with older kids and her being the same size that it really hadn't registered how tall she is for her age until we were back together with these girls. They are so petite, but let me tell you all 3 have energy to spare!! I think Julia has earned a new nickname "Leggs!" LOL For having 3, 3 year olds together in the same house all day you would be surprised how very little crying or anything like that went on. They did remarkably well together and Abbie was a super little hostess and shared her toys and things very well. It took just a little while for them to warm up to each other but once they did, there was no separating them. :)

Thanks to Donna and Kevin for hosting us this year and we hope that we will be able to do this again in the future and hopefully more of our travel mates will get to make it next time. :)

There are lots more pictures on dropshots

***Daddy's Birthday***






the candle Julia insisted Daddy needed on his cake


Helping Daddy blow out the candle


Birthday kisses


Enjoying the cake!















We celebrated Daddy's birthday earlier this week. Julia got to be a big helper and help mix the cake. Mama was just happy it didn't burn! This was the first baking attempt in the new oven and the last 4 1/2 years with an uneven oven had me nervous! So it's literally been years since I've made a cake and hey I managed the peanut butter frosting from memory! Not bad and I'd have to say Julia enjoyed making it too and scraping the bowl for left over frosting ;)

She had a very long day of waiting for Daddy to cut that cake though, but she managed. She was very excited to give him his presents and wish him a happy birthday. Very cute!

We are gearing up for our mini reunion this weekend and getting to see some of our travel mates from our trip to China. We can't wait to see them again and see the girls together again.

Oh and notice that pose on the last picture?? I'm not sure where it has come from, but she has been doing this lately whenever she sees the camera out. She asks for her picture to be taken and then strikes this pose. LOL

***Storms, potty and life in general***


I think that we were the least hit area in Florida by Fay this week. Thankfully for us, but please keep other areas of our new home in your prayers. Some areas are still getting pounded with rain and we could still see more over the next few days but today is sunny and clear.

Sorry I haven't posted much, but we have just been taking things day by day, watching the weather and getting settled in. I spent nearly every day this week waiting on some delivery or another, and why is it that they can only give you a 4-5 hour window of when they will be by? Most will call again just before they show up I've discovered but still. So we sat home all week and waited.

On the up side, Julia seems to have made a connection with the potty and is now going on HER OWN! I had begun to think we would never get there, but this last week she has done really well. We are very, very proud of her! (and oh so relieved too!) Now how will she do when we go to travel next weekend?? that will be the next trick. For now I'm just happy she has been doing so well. Now if we could just get her to go to bed easier, but we are making progress there as well. As she goes to bed, she will say "go in my Princess bed and when the sun comes up and the birds sing...THEN you can get in Mama's bed" some nights the sun seems a bit early, others she's pretty much on target. But at least she is starting out right and laying down in her own bed to go to sleep. And it "seems" like at least that the number of times we are having to tell her to get back in bed each night is getting a little better too. Small steps but in the right direction.

Other than that, we have finally got DVD players hooked back up so little miss has been catching up on her movies. LOL This will be a good thing today as Daddy starts to paint the living room! She and I will be locked in here (bedroom) with books and movies all afternoon. He did get her new ceiling fan hung up in her room earlier this week so one more step to her room being complete. Now I just have to find some curtains, for both rooms ;)

***16 years ago today****


At this time I was running around town with my niece in tow doing so many last minute things to get ready for our wedding ceremony. Little things that probably could have been left to other people but no, I was doing my part and Ray was doing his. Neither of us has ever known when to just let someone else do something. By the way actually at this point in time I was locked out of my car in the hotel parking lot. Thanks to the Father-in-law we were quickly back in action. I don't even want and I never wanted to know what he must of thought of me that day or what his son was getting into. Thankfully he never said anything and was very calm. I'm glad one of us was.

This road we have traveled has had some unexpected turns and has certainly taken us places we never dreamed of all those years ago. We've had ups and downs but we have weathered them together. I can't imagine taking any of those steps with anyone else by my side. We have learned to walk in faith, trust in love and depend on each other. And just in case we had ever forgotten, Julia has reminded us how to laugh even harder each day.

I'd scan an old wedding photo in for you, but perhaps fortunately for me, they are all still packed and I couldn't begin to guess where. Darn the bad luck, maybe next year. ;)

***Company and all tuckered out***




























First company in the new house and you can see how played out Julia was! Day one they showed up just a few hours earlier than we were expecting, so little munchkin didn't get her nap. She was relatively good despite that, just the temptation to get in the water at the beach proved to be a tough one for her. So she ended up with a wet skirt. LOL. No big deal, it is the beach after all. By the way, this is the beach that is closest to us. Finally we made it across the bridge to check it out. Unfortunately we only had a short time there as we were all getting hungry, our friends were tired from traveling and we just wanted to be able to show them that next time they didn't have to go quite so far down into FL to find some fantastic beaches! ;) I can easily see Julia and I spending lots of time down there once we are more settled in. We are having quite a few jelly fish in the water just now so it may be best that we are busy. The good thing is the water is so clear that you can pretty much see them. And talk about warm. Our friends had just been spending time on the Atlantic side last week and could not believe how much warmer the Gulf waters were. :)

We had a short but great visit and Julia had a blast playing with the older girls. You can see though that basically any time she sat still long enough her body would tell her, whether she liked it or not, that it was nap time. Poor Daddy had to eat dinner with one hand the other night. Yesterday it started out raining, much like today, so we hung out here at the house ordered pizza and just visited before our friends had to pack it back up and continue on their journey home. I think we have them 1/2 convinced they should move here. We'll keep working on them. ;)

Anyone else ready to visit?? I'll post some more beach pictures on dropshots just to tempt you.

***And finally a crown for the Princess***







Happy Grammie?? She was. I think I missed my opportunity and should have had the video camera going instead. She does love to get mail and that was before she saw her "royal princess crown" her words not mine. Honestly people, stop encouraging her!!!

While I am on the subject of "Princess stuff" though. Julia and I had picked up a book a while back. "His Little Princess Treasured Letters from Your King" by Sheri Rose Shepherd. I love this book and so does Julia! It has been a wonderful way to open her mind to her King in Heaven. She picked it up today and we read some of the letters, then she took it from me and said "now I'm going to read a story about Jesus okay Mama?" Absolutely baby! Sometimes I just adore how her mind works, other times it works too quickly for me to keep up with.

***New Princess Room****

























Julia's new bedroom set did get delivered this week. This is the first chance I've had to get a few pictures though. We were a bit disappointed to be honest at first. I was very upset to have spent the first 1/2 hour cleaning hand prints off of it from the delivery guys. Some are to be expected of course, I mean they are putting things together and what not, but this was really bad and took some scrubbing to get off. And then of course with the cleaning you begin to see the flaws, some again are minor and to be expected a couple however weren't so we called and the company is sending replacements. So we'll see how that goes. In the mean time it doesn't detract a bit from how much our girl likes her big girl Princess room! So much so that she even sleeping in it!!! Naps and bedtime! This is not to say we don't have the perpetual "go back to bed" statements going on but she is getting into the routine and most importantly she is generally sleeping longer when she does go to sleep. Hopefully we can all stick to this routine! ;)

Oh and she picked these poses, she saw me taking the pictures and wanted to jump in, so this is all her.:)

The room is not quite finished yet obviously, but we're getting there. Daddy still has to hang her heart mirror which she is reminding him of fairly constantly, and we picked up a new ceiling fan for her the other night that was on clearance. Hers has a wobble that we really don't like and we saw this one that is pink (of course!) and has little pink lamp shades on it. Too cute! I also need to pick up some frames for the Cinderella artwork, once I unpack the artwork and figure out what size I need. These were sent free with the Cinderella DVD I purchased years ago, how perfect that is still Julia's favorite Princess. And we still need to find curtains.. so I'm sure there will be more pictures later on, but for now she's enjoying her pink Princess room as she calls it.

***One last Summer Dinner Date***



Enjoying the ice cream with Dad that came along with dinner

Trying to keep hold of Bradon's hand through dinner


Yes, I believe she was trying to reach for a kiss here, fortunately he didn't know that!

Still hand in hand, it was pouring rain and they were wanting to play.

They really are too cute together.















This will likely be the last time we see Bradon and his family this year. They head back to reality and Texas next week while we will of course be settling in here and making new friends. As you can see, they will be missed.

We started out dinner in a totally different seating arrangement but I knew it was only a matter of time before Julia managed to get to sit next to Bradon or as she put it to his mom.. "I want to sit with next to Bradon" and so she did, just before dinner came. Then she insisted on holding his hand, which of course her Daddy and I kept telling her to keep her hands to herself and let Bradon eat. To which Bradon replied in his oh so cute voice, "It's okay I don't need this hand, see? I can eat with this one" PRICELESS! Oh my maybe it's okay these two will have a bit of distance, sometimes they scare me!

And it gets better. She was playing with his hair, touching his face as you can see. I think she did know this was the last time she was going to be seeing him and she just couldn't stop looking. Then as we were leaving, as mentioned in the pictures above it was pouring, and thunder and lightening, so the guys went to get the vehicles and pulled around to pick us up. So we told Julia and Bradon it was time to say good-bye give hugs. Friends, she LEAPED into his arms, literally. Giving him credit for being the tough and strong little guy he is, he didn't go over and he didn't drop her. I however wanted to just die! We will definitely be having some talks about what it is okay and is not okay to do! Goodness she'll be getting in trouble in prek next year if we don't! I know she has a special spot in her heart for Bradon. They always have for each other, him from the time he saw her baby pictures and followed the blog with his mom while we were in China! Her from the time she saw him. But honestly. This was more than I was prepared for. It will be interesting to see how they react next summer when they see each other again after so long.

Julia and Julia



I've been meaning to write this post for awhile now, but have had a hard time finding the right words and the time to get them down. For those that don't know, I'll start at the very beginning. Many years ago when we were trying to conceive I had a conversation with Ray's Grandma, asking her permission to name my daughter after her. Ray and I had agreed almost from the time we met on what we wanted to name our little girl. Julia for his grandmother, Marie for mine. So years passed and so did our beloved Grandma but our dream for a daughter never did, not really. As we pursued our adoption we felt no reason to change the name we had picked out. If anything it seemed even more suited, we felt it would give our daughter ties to our family history and a sense of belonging. We didn't decide until we saw her face and her Chinese name that we would keep part of that too. We hadn't even talked about it but as soon as soon as we saw her name we agreed immediately on which part of her name to keep, even without knowing the meaning of it at the time. Some things are just meant to be.

I do feel that Julia is tied to her Great-Grandmother even though they never met. There are a few "Red threads" there all the same. For one I know that Grandma never stopped praying that we would be blessed with a child, though I'm sure she never imagined any more than we did how that blessing would take place. For another Julia was placed in our arms the day after what would have been Grandma's birthday that year. Close timing that and so of course we were thinking of her along with all of our extended family when Julia was placed in our arms. We knew they couldn't wait to hold her anymore than we had and how much they would love her.

Here recently, Julia was flipping through her Daddy's Bible. But she told me she was looking at her "Grandma's book". This caught me quite off guard as the only one we call Grandma in this family is the Grandma Julia is named for. We have other names for each respective grandparent.. G.G., Grammie, Great Grammie and of course Nai-Nai. What really struck me was the only one of them that I would consider especially attached to a Bible would have been Grandma. That is not to say the others have no faith or don't go to church, they've just never struck me as obvious and open about their faith. Nai-Nai to some degree yes, but not quite as much as her mom was. Even I tend to be more spiritual than religious these days. So do I think Julia is talking to Julia?? No not really. lol. But I do think Grandma sees her and I hope she makes her smile.

At the very least the little episode opened the door for me to talk more to Julia about God and the Bible. And maybe that's all it was supposed to do, that's always a good thing. But now you know where Julia's name came from and how much a part of this family she has been from day one. I hope and pray that as she grows and faces questions about her past she will understand it too.

***More Birthday Fun***




























We decided to round out the birthday weekend, yes it had become a "weekend" event, by taking our girl on a shopping spree with her bday money. Can there be any doubt she enjoyed shopping?? Just check her out going through all of it when we got home. Big grins there. It should be stated that she really DID need a few things for fall and the end of summer as she hasn't slowed down on the growing at all yet! So there was a reason other than she just had money to spend. She loves her new raincoat and boots and with as much as it rains around here there can be no doubt she'll get to use them! We had just enough time to catch a short walk on the beach before the particular area we stopped at closed for the evening, it was beautiful. She did really well with understanding that we were not there to get in the water this trip and seemed to just enjoy taking it in as much as we did. There is something very powerful and awe inspiring about just watching the water come in and out, pounding the beach. I was impressed that our girl seemed to think so too.

All in all it was a great afternoon/evening and by the time we got home we were all ready to hit the sack. Before we had left for the day Daddy did manage to finish painting Julia's room, so it's just about ready for her new furniture which arrives tomorrow! Finally I'll be able to unpack her clothes and she will have her new big girl room! :)

For lots more pictures, especially from the beach, you can go here

****A few party pics**



The princess and her court, at least she thinks they are;)


Tearing into the presents





The "Enchanted" cake, she's still carrying Giselle around today. Notice the little fingers reaching for the icing already. Oh yeah that was her.


A few more presents..












Just a quick note, I'll post more later and video later too, but for now. Little miss had a wonderful party. We were unorganized, but when are we ever organized?! But the kids had a great visit together and were so excited to just see each other. They played much too late, had too many chips and too much ice cream, but had oh so much fun. I'm sure you can tell which pictures were before and after swimming in the little pool ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY GIRL

My darling pirate princess today marks your 3rd birthday. Thanks to NASA TV and the web Mama was able to watch the solar eclipse live this morning and it just seemed appropriate somehow that this rare thing happened on your special day. It helped to remind me how special each day with you is. You have continued to bring more laughter and love to Daddy and I than we could ever have imagined. You are definitely our "Spicy" girl with tons of attitude too my Hunan beauty. There is no doubt you will let it be known what you want in life. Though you may not always get exactly what you desire I pray that you see how much life and God have to offer you, that you always live each day to it's fullest, that you stay as sweet and loving as you are right now and that you always have love and laughter. We wish you this and so much more. Happy Birthday.