Tidbits & Friendships

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!  Matt and I had an awesome weekend - we spent it traveling around the state of Michigan...with my nephews/neice in St Joe on Friday, swimming at a cottage up north with Matts family on Saturday, & Grandma Lillie's 91st birthday party on Sunday.  We wrapped it all up on the 4th of July with family and friends at home. Gotta love Michigan in the summer!

We still cannot share pictures of our daughter but I did wanted to share some information about her below:

1. She was born on 10/5/2010 - the very same day as my good friend Kate Rojas' daughter, Mary Frances.  Amazingly, 3 years ago, Kate and I had our first dear daughters only 5 days apart.  I didn't think it could get closer than that but I guess it can!!  Shamefully, I didn't realize when we got the referral that her birth date was the same as Mary Frances' but Kate reminded me this weekend that they were born, across the world, on the very same day!!
2. She was found in a public place on her 2nd day of life and was brought to a police station. At that time, she weighed ~3.5 pounds. We are guessing she was born about 8 weeks early (although we will never know for sure). She is a fighter -- at 4 mos. she had already TRIPLED her birth weight, weighing in at 11 pounds!!
3. She lives in the Yunnan province of southern China in the capital city of Kunming. The province borders Laos, Vietnam, and Burma.  The city looks nice and I am excited for our trip!  A few random facts:
• The city is at 1900 M elevation – the same elevation as Lake Tahoe.   Given it’s elevation, China has their high elevation Olympic training center there.
• Kunming is located just north of the Tropic of Cancer.  For those of you not map inclined, the Tropic of Cancer runs through Mexico (just N. of Cabo San Lucas), the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and Southern China!
• They call Kunming "the city of perpetual spring" because things are always blooming there.  Like other “tropic” cities, there aren’t wide varying seasons. The weather looks very temperate, similar to North Carolina.

4.      The name she was given by the orphanage is Chun Xiao. Chun means “spring” and Xiao (pronounced “sh” & “ow”) means “early morning”.  Given that she lives in the city of perpetual spring and was born early, we think the name makes perfect sense!

5.      The orphanage she is at transitions most of their children at 6 months to foster villages outside of the city. These villages are tiny towns where multiple famlies have agreed to foster children while they wait for their forever family. We *think* this is where Chun Xiao is now, given that she will be 9 mos tomorrow but hopefully will learn more over the next month or two. 

6.   She has ears like her dad, a Mohawk like her mom did at her age, and facial expressions that resemble her Great Grandma Norma.  We are so excited to bring her home!

One other interesting point: when we first started our adoption process we asked 3 families - the Walsh’s, the Yonak’s, and the Clark’s - to write us letters of recommendation for our Home Study.  At the time, we had known all 3 couples less than 2 years -- but we needed local reference letters (no family!) and we felt like we had known these famlies forever.  We didn’t realize it at the time, but each one of these families has been instrumental in getting us to this point…Lana and Marty have helped open our hearts to adoption and continue to support us throughout the process. Nancy and Serdar lead the local March of Dimes chapter -- helping to educate and advocate for premature babies.  Little did they realize that by supporting us they were also bringing another preemie across the world to her forever family! Finally, Chad and Katy -- our dear friends who, over the past 2 years, have reminded us that God is always with us (and given us a laugh in between as well). 

We feel so lucky for all of our friends and family and it seems that all of the above friends (Rojas', Walsh's, Yonak's, & Clark's) were meant to be part of the process of bringing our daughter home - pretty cool!

That’s all for now -- more to come (hopefully pictures and a pre-approval) later this week.

BTW - I apologize for the length of this post, but there was a lot to share!!