Anniversary Wishes

I just wanted to add a quick note tonight about my husband. What kind of wife would I be if I didn't talk him up now and then, right? :) I am blessed to be married to the love of my life, my best friend, and an incredible father to our little girl. I won't spend a lot of time here because I don't want to embarrass Ron, but I just want to say "Happy Anniversary" sweetheart. Thank you for 9 wonderful years.

Gotcha Day (6/4/07)

Geocaching (9/9/07)

I wanted to share a wedding photo, but would you believe we were married before digital cameras were very common? I don't have any wedding pictures in electronic form. :) Feel a project coming on? Add it to the list I guess.

September (and before)

Once again I find myself with some things to catch up on. Here are some short snipets of some of the things we've missed on the blog updates over the past couple of months. Remember that you can click on the photos to view them larger.

Hope has a special friend named Lucy who joined her family recently from Columbia. She is such a beautiful little girl...and seemingly always happy. We were finally able to get the girls together in August (18th). Get a glimpse of these brown-eyed beauties...
The Girls!



A couple family shots


Mommies too! Hope is signing DADDY in this shot because we were telling her to look at "Daddy" so we could get everyone pointed in the same direction.

Hope got to meet more of her cousins at the end of August (19th). Scott, Brenda, Kerstin, Austin, & Logan were in town for a quick visit. Here are the young ones at the end of a night of HARD playing. Hope would be the one with the slightly mussed up hair in the middle. Do ya' think she played hard? :) We don't see family enough! Thank you guys for stopping to see us. Hey Austin...I don't think Ella has been the same since you left. :)

Eric and Mandy are married! WELCOME to the family Mandy! We had so much fun celebrating with you. Hope is a dancer to her very core. What a fun day. The weather was gorgeous! The ceremony was beautiful! Mandy was glowing, and I've never seen Eric so happy. Congratulations to you. We love you very much! (Sidenote...to any family reading this, I could use some help with photos. We didn't get nearly enough that day. Does anyone have the cousin photo with Eric and Mandy in it? Apparently it didn't make it on our camera. How about some of Hope dancing??? Help?)


The sisters and their husbands ~

Hatcher cousins ~

Hope with Uncle Mark & Aunt Andria ~

Favorite Shot ~

Now for Hope's 15 mo. appointment update. Hope saw her Dr. on the 20th of Sept. She had 3 vaccinations, 2 in her left leg and 1 in her right. What a little trooper she was. For us, holding her still for 3 shots was nothing compared to the 5 hour blood draw appointment we had when we were first home.Officially, Hope has gained 2 lbs. and has grown almost 2 inches in the 3 months we've been home. I'm so thankful that she's helathy. On American growth charts, Hope is now in the 50th % for height and the 10th % for weight.

(Another update on her growth...as of last Thursday, Sept. 27th, Hope has 12 TEETH!)

Last weekend (on the 23rd) we were honored by the Heutmaker family with a "welcome home" shower. Hope has been home for almost 4 months. It is remarkable to think about how she's grown. We feel so blessed by this little girl and during the party it brought such joy to hear her laughing with her cousins and playing with her family. I am in awe of her every day. Not a moment passes that I am not In awe of her resiliance, in awe of her smile, in awe of her inquisitiveness, in awe of her brilliance, and in awe of how just when I feel my heart couldn't be more full, I take another look in her direction and feel a new surge of absolute love for my little daugher. Thank you so much to everyone who came to the shower last weekend and shared the day with us. And, thank you Lisa, Tami, and Jennifer for hosting such a special afternoon in Hope's honor. Here are my favorite photos from the afternoon.


I'd like to close this post with a couple more photos. Hope has been able to get together with her travelmate Olivia (who also shares her birthday!) a couple of times. They are so cute together! Hope even recognizes Olivia when she sees her photo. Sweet. Anyway, here they are the last time we were together...



Random hat photo - Uncle Brian & Aunt Tami were over one afternoon and Hope had all her hats out. We thought we'd have a little fun. I think we all thought this was way more funny than Hope did.

Well, you're a step closer to being updated on our lives. Watch soon for some geocaching photos and an update about our weekend in Arena. Sorry I can't keep going tonight. I'm off to bed. That 4:30 alarm seems to come so quickly!

Wild Man and Sidekick

Here is a great video of Hope and her cousin Mitchell playing a couple weeks ago. You'll get a chuckle out of this. The crazy laughter you hear is pretty contageous.

Celebrate!

This is Hope's "Yeah" face. Though this was taken a couple weeks ago, I thought it was fitting.

"Do you want to go find the moon tonight?"

"Yeah." :)

HAPPY MID-AUTUMN/MOON FESTIVAL EVERYONE! Admire the (almost) full moon tonight if you can. It is a pretty overcast night here, but maybe we can see the full moon tomorrow. I'm hoping in the future that we can do more to honor this holiday. For those who aren't familiar, the Mid-Autumn Festival is second only to the Chinese New Year for celebrations in China. According to the reading I've been doing, there is amazing rich history and legend surrounding this celebration. I'm hoping that someday we'll figure out how to make mooncakes and we can all sit outside for a little moon gazing of our own. Tonight just wasn't the night for us. However, it is still so important for us on this day to contemplate the vastness of creation and the amazing gift we treasure in Hope. To think that she has journeyed so far to join our family is nothing short of a miracle and we are incredibly blessed to have her in our lives. We will be forever grateful to her birthmother and family, her orphanage care givers and "aunties," her second/foster mother and family, the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs), and all those who have touched our hearts and gently nurtured and encouraged us throughout our adoption quest. On this day, we can follow the moon and think that maybe, just maybe, there are others in the world strongly connected to us because of one small precious girl, who will also gaze at the moon and whisper "thank you."

Exciting Tidbits

Hope is 15th months old as of yesterday!

As of today, we've been home for 3 months! I can't believe how time has flown by.

Hope's new birth certificate came in the mail today...A U.S. birth cert. with...get this...our names listed as her parents!!! It feels great!

I know that is a lot of !!!!!! in one post but I just can't help it. :)

Have a great weekend everyone.

Beth

Long Overdue!

OK - I just was looking over our blog and realized that Ron has done the last three posts! I definitely have some catching up to do. At the risk of feeling the wrath of some...I'm going to have to do this one quickly and without photos. Know that I will try my best to catch up more soon.

Since I've been back to work I've again found myself with a lack of blogging time. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that people like to check in with us and see what is new in Hope's world and I always enjoy following the journeys of other families so I know that I have some work to do here.

Work is going well. What can I say? I am one of the lucky people who really likes her job. I work with some incredible people and am blessed by someone I work with every day. HOWEVER (and this is a BIG one), I really have a hard time leaving in the morning. My little angel has only been a part of our family for three short months and I just want to be with her all the time. I want to see and experience all of her new daily discoveries. I want to teach her new songs. I want to watch her sleep during her naps. I want to take her for walks. I want to hear her sweet voice as she tries out all her new sounds. I want to keep teaching her signs and watch her little hands and fingers as she tries to use them. I just miss her so much and I would be telling a complete lie if I said that I left for work in the morning without tears most days. All the Moms out there reading this... when does it get easier to say "goodbye" in the morning?

As far as other things in life keeping me busy, I've taken a temporary break from almost all of them. I'm not interpreting often outside of the school day, and I'm not nearly as involved in church activities as I've been. I am trying very hard to keep our evenings and weekends reserved for family time. That doesn't mean that we're always home, but whatever we're doing, we try to do it together. Now that Hope is home, I'm definitely getting better at the "n" word. I don't know if I kept myself so busy before (and I mean pretty much every night) so I wouldn't think about how badly we wanted a child, but now that she's here, "no" rolls off my tongue so much more easily than it ever has in the past. Remarkable things happen when you become a Mom. :)

And - Hope update:
* She is now in a pretty solid 12m. size. She still has a few 9 mo. onsies that fit and she's actually worn two 18 mo. things, but for the most part 12 mo. it is.

* I felt her 10th tooth this afternoon. When I picked up Hope after work and Grandma said only one messy diaper today (we've been having multiple delightful diapers recently), I thought OH!, maybe that tooth came through. Sure enough, hello #10. To backtrack...6 when we met her on June 4th and 8 by the time we got home from China on the 14th. #9 came in a couple weeks ago, a molar on the bottom right. #10 today, a molar on the top right. I can also feel #11 and #12, molars on the left to come in shortly I'm sure.

* Growing Feet! - Grandma and Grandpa just picked up new shoes for Hope, SIZE 4! I know that doesn't seem very big, but her sandals when we got home from China were a 2! She has such cute little toes. ;)

* Signing - Hope's newest signs are THANK YOU and BOOK. She's doing great! I really want to get her on video showing off her signs, but it is sort of hit or miss when you ask her to perform. Sometimes she'll do her whole vocabulary, and sometimes she just doesn't want to sit/stand still long enough to sign two things.

* Speaking of sitting/standing still...YEAH - she doesn't do that much!

* Ron mentioned sleeping through the night...isn't it glorious?! ;) She chose to sleep through the night for the first time since China right before I went back to work! AWESOME timing!

Any other questions about Hope?

Finally - I know I said this post would be sans photos, but I just got this one and I know it is one of Grandpa's favorites. Here's a smile on us...PIGTAILS!!!

What's New

Just in, the latest report at the heutmaker residence is: Beth and I have been trying to get Hope to go to bed with out having to be rocked to sleep every night. Although we miss the snuggle time with her, we know that this is what is best for a family with two working parents. It has been working well and most nights after bath, story time, prayers and hugs and kisses; Hope lays down holds her blanket and signs ILY (I love You). The hand shape isn’t quite right yet, but there is no mistaking what she means.

Better yet is the news that Ms. Hope has slept through the night for three nights in a row. This has happened just in time for Beth to start back to work, she is interpreting at a High School in the cities again this year.

We have been having lots of fun family time and even made a trip to the Minnesota State Fair with Brian and Tami. Hope was a real trooper, we had a long day with lots of walking and tasting many different fried foods on a stick.

Hope even enjoys helping out around the house. Monday she learned about the vacuum cleaner. She was a little scared of it at first, so I took some time and showed her that it is ok. This will be very important in a few years when she gets the opportunity to run the fun machine.

All in all things are going well. the toughest adjustment has been the limited amount of time we have to spend with Hope in the evening. What makes it a little easier is how well she is cared for during the day. Thank you Grandpa and Grandma.