Our Silver Anniversary

Today we are celebrating our silver anniversary - 25 MONTHS since LID. I'm really not sure what sounds better, 25 months or 2 years and 1 month. Either way it's a long time, but we continue to inch forward.

So...I thought I would "lighten" things up a bit and in honor of our "25th" I would post 25 phobias (it's was part of T's school assignment yesterday, and as their are way more than 25 I will try to post new ones in the coming days as well.) Some are ridiculous, while others are 'real' phobias. Have fun!!

1. Arachibutyrophobia - fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
2. Botanophobia - fear of plants
3. coulrophobia - fear of clowns
4. defecaloesiophobia - fear of painful bowel movements
5. ephebiphobia - fear of teenagers
6. frigophobia - fear of cold or cold things
7. geniophobia - fear of chins (be sure to spell this word with an i or it will mean fear of sex instead)
8. hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - fear of long words (go figure)
9. ideophobia - fear of ideas
10. japanophobia - fear of Japanese OR judeophobia - fear of Jews (there were no other options)
11. kathisophobia - fear of sitting down
12. leukophobia - fear of the color white
13. mycophobia - fear of or aversion to mushrooms
14. neophobia - fear of anything new
15. ombrophobia -fear of rain or being rained on (duh?!)
16. panophobia - fear of everything OR phobophobia - fear of phobias
17. rhytiphobia - fear of getting wrinkles
18. symmetrophobia - fear of symmetry
19. tapinophobia - fear of being contagious
20. urophobia - fear of urine or urinating
21. vestiphobia - fear of clothing
22. walloonphobia - fear of Walloons (not sure what this one is)
23. xanthophobia - fear of the color yellow or the word yellow
24. zemmiphobia - fear of the great mole rat
25. REFERRALOPHOBIA - fear of never getting a referral for our sweet daughter! (just had to throw this one in for fun)

For a more detailed list of phobias, check out www.phobialist.com

Click, snap, flash...stardom!

Well, the paparazzi was out early this morning, just after breakfast, snapping pictures of the "kids". Sure hope I will get some 'royalties' for the ones they "sell off to the advertisements" haha:-)



Triple the fun!

"Hey guys, Do you think I'll grow into this hat?"

It's puppy play time - yahoo!
(so fun to see them wobble around on their still unsteady legs)

Ahhh, aren't they sweet."I'd rather be sleeping right now!"

#1 puppy~female

Just chillin'
#2 puppy~female

Kind of reminds me of a Saint Bernard's face
#3 puppy~male

I'm telling you, they are pretty hard to resist.
#4 puppy~male

Our sweet little surprise.
#5 puppy~female

Just a matter of size...

So, I was requested by one of my dear friends to show how big the puppies are "really", so hope this gives you all a little perspective! As you can see there are some that are a little bigger and some a bit smaller.

I have also put them in order of their birth.

This is puppy #1 ~ female


This is puppy #2 ~ female

This is puppy #3 ~ male (the blotches on his back look black, but they are a really deep brown in the light)


This is puppy #4 ~ male
And if you remember right, we were told Maisy was pregnant with 4 puppies, so this one was our surprise. Her first few days of life she appeared to be the smallest of them all (but not by much) and now she's Miss Fattie Fat (as we call her) since she's the biggest, heaviest, largest of them all. She also was the first to have her eyes open.

This is puppy #5 ~ female

Puppies, puppies, puppies

Just like I promised...pictures of the babies

I'll be with you in a minute

And I thought raising kids was a lot of work; try 5 puppies, 1 extremely protective mother, 2 teenager's, 1 who insists on getting behind the wheel of my car any chance he can and 1 pre-pubescent 11 year old who at the flip of any moment can bite your head off. Uuuggghhhhh! Oh yeah, forgot the incredibly loving and patient husband who just smiles and bears through it all.

Not a whole lot of time for blogging these days, but I do check it when I get a chance.

Just trying to hang in there! Will try to post pictures of the growing pups soon.

An Incredible Day!

Happy Chinese New Year February 7, 2008

Not only is it a day of celebration from the land where our daughter is from, but...

We Have Puppies!!!

Our sweet little puppy (again I must remember she is not a puppy, after all she is 3.5 yrs.) gave birth this morning to 5 incredibly healthy thriving puppies; 3 girls and 2 boys. 2 white w/ champagne coloring, 2 white with black spots, and 1 white with chocolate brown spots ~ the last one to be born. If you remember from my previous post, we were told to expect 4 puppies! Man were we ever blessed today.

You see, about a year and a half ago, we made the decision to proceed with breeding our little dog for the purpose of using the proceeds from her litter(s) to help fund expenses for our adoption. We had two (very disappointing) attempts at breeding her in the past 1.5 years and this last time (Dec 2007), I was skeptical that it actually "took". A few weeks ago when we began noticing symptoms, I wouldn't believe it cause I didn't want to be disappointed again. When we finally got the word from her vet that indeed puppies were coming, we were elated. This morning after the 4th puppy was born, Maisy still showed signs of contractions and labor. I had left to go into the kitchen for some tea only to have my oldest come and say "Um Mom, you might want to come into the bedroom, there's another puppy being born." Shock - utter shock. God blessed us with 1 unexpected puppy offering us more for our adoption fund. AND...when I realized that they were born today, 2/7/2008 on Chinese New Year, I cried. All the pieces are connected to beautifully.

Without further delay, I give you the puppies:

Matches are here!

Our agency has reported that they have received matches for families logged in on 12/20 & 12/22, yet they have not been able to find out for sure how far the CCAA has gotten through with this last set of matches.

I have visited one site who had a LID of 12/27 and they have their daughter's picture and information posted, so it is very likely that they indeed have matched through 12/27/05.

That means we are officially 1 month away (30 days worth) of lid's before ours. 8 days worth of matches is delightful news considering everything in China will shut down for Chinese New Year on February 7th. We are praying and hoping for a larger number of dates in the next set of matches in March!

A wrestling we will go...

As you know, the sport of choice in my house is wrestling with all three of my boys. Well, last Saturday our oldest was in a district league tournament with his high school, of which the top 4 qualifiers in each weight class would be eligible to move forward to this Saturday's Regional wrestling tournament.

It was a long day of sitting on school bleachers cheering on some really tough matches and I am happy to report "D" took 3rd place overall and will be advancing to the next round. He is absolutely ecstatic as this is his first year wrestling with this high school team and to make it through qualifiers as a sophomore, I guess it's a really good thing (and hard to do-unless you are good). We are so incredibly proud of him and the hard work he has done to make it this far!



So now we are gearing up for Saturday's Regional Tournament and are praying for his to finish in the top 4 for his weight class, and then he will have the privilege of moving onto the Washington State Wrestling Finals the following weekend at the Tacoma Dome!