Madi at 16 months old...

After contacting Ann from Red Thread last Friday, she was not only able to send a care package to Madi's orphanage, but she was able to get us updated photos & updated measurements. 

We are so thankful to her!

Our daughter has grown and changed quite a bit...our little "XingYao". And even though we were sad to see that the orphanage had shaved her head....we still think she looks adorable, and love her even more. 

Here's one of our favorite pics from the 8 photos we received, the rest we will treasure them for her to have in her special book. 

We were both pretty surprised to see how much she's changed.....and at first we didn't recognize her immediately, with her tanned skin, and newly shaved little head, but we know it's her from her beautiful eyes! 

I love all that baby fat on her still. She's obviously very well fed, lol! & after talking to our agency, they said that most likely she's been outside quite a bit during the summer so she's gotten pretty toasty. & she also reminded us that there is no air conditioning at her orphanage even thought it's been melting hot in her region, and that it's very common for the orphanage to shave their heads to prevent lice from spreading. 

Overall, this is really one of the only photos we received in which we can get a good glimpse of her little face. In the rest of the photos, she was either squinting from the sun, or frowning from what appeared like she had been crying, or with a large balloon-like toy that blocked her face, wearing a very wrinkled little dress and plastic little clogs. 

None of the photos showed her smiling, which was a little heartbreaking to see. But it is apparent she is living in a poor orphanage, and may not have the attention that any little child deserves. 

But right now we are grateful for the things that we can see from the photos, which is mainly that she appears to be healthy, and appears to have good balance when she is standing on her feet ( we are assuming she is walking ). She also does not show any signs of having any scratches or blisters from scabies which we've heard are quite common. 

I wanted to share this pic of me when I was around 9-10 months old. My mom thought it was cute that they had sent us a photo in a similar chair pose. 

So it's most likely that we will not be receiving any more updates or photos before we travel, which means the next time we will see her it will be in person! We can not wait to see her break a smile & show her how much we love her. And we will make sure to take LOTS of photos so we can capture that moment.

Adoption Process Update: We have hit a small bump in the road while waiting for approval on our I800 application with USCIS, but we are confident our agency will help us resolve it quickly within a day or so, & hoping we will still be able to receive our approval this week & then move on to wait for our Article 5. 

Our Pre Travel to China Celebration!

Our Dear Friends from our Marriage Enrichment hosted a huge celebration for us this past Saturday August 25, 2012 and it was Beautiful! 

We are working on a photo slide show to post soon. In the meantime, you can watch the video we presented during the party.  Just scroll down....

Music is by Christina Perri, & we hope we can share it before it gets muted by youtube....

A Joyful but Busy Week!

On Thursday May 24, 2011 we received our "Official Referral" via Fex Ex. It contained original documents on "Ning Xing Yao", our little Madeline. Some of her medical reports had limited English translations, so we are still awaiting some more translated documents from our agency. But we did receive a full translated version of her general report via email, which includes her daily eating schedule, more details about her, when & where she was found, what she likes to do, etc. It is so awesome to read, & I cant wait to share some more of those details here on the blog as soon as I get it all sorted out and "Officially Accept" her referral. Basically, before we can officially accept her referral, theres a bit more we still need to do. First of all, as soon as we receive a few more translated medicals on her, we will get a pediatrician to review them & God willing everything will be ok and we will soon sign off on her paperwork & mail it off to our agency. Also this week, we will finish filling out the I800A forms ( which are forms required under the new Hague Treaty Regulations to bring an orphan into the US )  as well as the I800 forms ( which basically finalizes the immigration process of an adopted child from another country ). We have to send these forms together with our latest Homestudy report which was just updated. Normally we would of filed one set of forms first, waited for an approval by USCIS then after receiving our referral we would have filed the second set. But since we just updated our Homestudy & were pleasantly surprised with our referral earlier than we thought, we have to do everything at once. And on top of having to do this, we can't forget that we still have a home business to run ( which btw we are happy to have a few good projects in the works that will help us to pay for the rest of our adoption process ). We need any extra work we can get in order to finalize all of this, as you can imagine it has been really expensive mostly because of our long wait which has pretty much forced us to pay extra money to the US for re-filing fees. BUT....we know it will be all worth it in the end. 

 I will also admit though, that last week while it was one of our most JOYFUL weeks, was also very very busy and challenging for us. It was a challenge to get our work done, while trying to get our adoption paperwork organized, additional calls and visits, and making time to run off to 4 graduations, meetings, and dinners with families & friends that we had previously rsvpd. to. But, it was really fun sharing our wonderful news & showing off our treasured little photos we have of Madeline. In fact, I've been wearing a little locket around my neck with her photo on it & any chance I get to share with friends I am thrilled to do so! She's so darn cute I can't stand it! Will share pics soon, promise!  Hopefully this week "Baba" Kris will update our main site ( journeytomadi.com ). 

Thanks again for following along!

Here's a few pics of our week.

Here we are with our beautiful neighbor Marisa who graduated from High School. We've seen her grow up since she was about 4 years old & we are so proud of her. ( this pic was taken on Sunday, the day before receiving our referral ). 

And here we are with Hayat ( on Wednesday ), one of our God-daughter's Ivi's friends. This graduation ceremony was especially bitter-sweet for us as it was at the Jr.High School that Ivi would have graduated from had she not moved to Nebraska. We miss her so much, and wished we could of been there for her also as she graduates from 8th grade. Sadly though, for reasons out of our control, her family has no communication with us. Our only wish is that perhaps through this blog she may get to see & get to know her new cousin Madeline. 

Here we are with Iliana, another beautiful High School graduate who also grew up in our neighborhood. What an honor to be invited to share this special day with her. 

Here we are again with Marisa & her twin sisters who will be graduating in a few more years. Where does the time go?

Here I am with lovely Katura, our front neighbor, also graduated from High School.

Here I am with Monica, our very smart & pretty next door neighbor who still has 2 more years until she graduates but we took her to one of the ceremonies as she wanted to support some of her graduating friends. 

Here's a cute pic of all of our neighborhood girls ( except the one on the bottom right, who's a family friend ) taken about 7 years ago at a birthday party I hosted for my God-Daughter pictured on the bottom left. They have all turned out to be the sweetest & smartest girls. We are so honored that they still want to include us in some of their special days such as their graduation. 

Then on Friday, we were invited to a special birthday dinner of one our friends, parents of our God-Son "Alex" who's 8 and pictured above in the middle. His brother Ryan is 12. Both really great boys. Half Chinese, Half Mexican! So Madeline will fit perfectly! 

And here we are celebrating the beautiful dinner evening that my college friend Brenda prepared for her husband Mike. We had a wonderful time with 10 other couples, & from you can see in our faces, we are thrilled to finally be on our way to parenthood. We both love children, & we have always joked that we are so tired of just the two of us! Finally....we can enjoy morning cartoons, a messy kitchen, sleepless nights, outings to the zoo, dirty diapers lol! Well....everything except the dirty diapers.