Chinese New Year

Lucy Love,

We have a new holiday over here.. and we are celebrating it all because of you.
Even though you are far away, you are constantly on our hearts and minds.  Often Daddy and I will hear one of your siblings say "when Lucy comes home, such and such" or "she will do this", "we will do that with her", "she will sit here", " I will share my toys with Woo-cy"

This past week we have been celebrating Chinese New Year with some of our China peeps..

Last Saturday, we drove down with your bothers to Peachtree City, (Zoe was at a friend's birthday party)  to celebrate with some others from our agency.  They put together a night of food, fun, and celebration.  There was a wonderful Chinese meal, a photographer, games and a dragon parade for the kids..

They even took our picture :) We wore some red for China :)

This is our social worker, below~ Bekah Benke.. We were so glad to see her because we miss seeing her now that we are done with our Home Study.  She is our favorite social worker..  LOVE HER~

got to meet her husband and two of her cute sons.. She is a great momma and I can tell she finds humor in things too.. She must, because Henry said a couple of the darndest things and we still passed our home study.  Next time I see her I hope it is at the airport!!

Let's see here are a couple more favorites.. This is Jessica Walker.. 

She is also adopting from China through Lifeline right now.  We met on the Facebook page for Lifeline China families and I finally got to meet her at Created for Care a couple of weekends ago.

She has a son, Jian Jian waiting in China..

So here we are.. two mommas waiting.. 

and not we did not color coordinate on purpose but I think we look pretty cute ;)

Last but not least, here is my friend Andrea, the one that I have mentioned before.. She matched the China families with their children.. what an awesome job.. and she is so good at it.  She facilitated our LOI and gave me the news that we had Preliminary Approval to adopt you.  She cares so much for each momma and it is evident. 

Here she is pictured with most of her family, including little Emma Lael, whom she brought home a few years ago.  What a cutie.. Loved meeting husband Kent and daughter Natalie.. precious family..

Oh and I almost forgot! Our China in country director's daughter wrote the kids' names in Chinese characters and wrote the English translation of how you pronounce their names in Mandarin.

Here are the names for all of our four children.. WOW!! :)

So, that was last weekend.. Then yesterday, we celebrated with our North Metro China families.  

I cannot even begin to tell you what a sweet time this was.  We gathered at Rob and Denise Mc Dowell's house.. he and his wife Denise have two beautiful girls from China.

We had some Chinese food and lots of amazing TEA selections.  There were chinese decorations and the other little girls who are already home from China, dressed in the traditional outfits.  

The women had such a wonderful time visiting inside and drinking hot tea while some of the littles played. The big kids ran around outside while the dads traipsed through the woods and did man stuff.  

At the end, the kids did sparklers and we took pictures. 

My friend Rebecca took this cool picture of our family.. and I am holding out a picture of you so that one day you can see that we celebrated Chinese new year before you came home. 

I mean look at these PRECIOUS China adoptive mommas that the Lord has blessed me with in this season.  All of them new friends that I feel I could have known for much longer.  Part of that Red Thread.  Beautiful women with beautiful hearts.

And here are all the children of those mommas.. 8 out of the 15 pictured here are adopted.  

And really that number is 10 because the picture frames represent two more!! You, Lucy Love, and one more Radicchi who has yet to have been discovered.  But Jesus holds you two in the palm of His hand.

Crazy Babies doing silly.  Love it.  Finn is not amused. 

Until Next year.... 

We're Waiting here for You!!