I Got "G"!!!!

Great Wall China Adoptions
This is the adoption agency that David & I used to complete our family. Without them, Erin wouldn't be a part of our lives. Nor would we have the lifelong friends that we now have.






Grapes
I love grapes!! In fact, when I buy grapes, I buy bags of them - green, purple, red, black. It doesn't matter because I love them all!














Great Wall of China



When David & I traveled to China in 2003 to adopt Erin, sightseeing wasn't allowed due to SARS. We decided that we would love to go back & see the The Great Wall when Erin is older.









Glitter


I love to work with glitter when I do projects with my students. It's messy but everyone has so much fun with the stuff.

Visiting Susan & Her Family

Julianna & Erin - The Yangchun Cuties!

And just what do you say here???

The weekend of February 11th Erin & I visited our friends Susan & Art & their family. We try to visit them on their turf once a year since they come down to visit us so frequently. Our visit usually coincides with Chinese New Year. Susan & I usually have a great time just zoning & doing nothing other drinking our chai lattes from Starbucks. Yummy! We're so addicted that our girls know to let us be comfy when we're sipping away.

Our girls have a great time together which makes it especially nice for the adults. Susan's girls always make Erin feel like another sister when we're all together. They play outside (weather permitting) & just have a "grand ole time." I love to sit back, chat with Susan & hear the girls laughing.

Chinese New Year Celebration!

Erin & I went to Spring Hill the weekend of Feb 11th to celebrate Chinese New Year with our friends the Fremers & the rest of the FL Great Wall families. Wow! What a wonderful weekend we had.

Saturday we met Snow Wu (the president) & LeighAnne Baseflug of Great Wall China Adoption at the airport. Their plane came in right after ours. It was a pleasure to meet these very special ladies. They came in for the FL CNY celebration & were quite surprised by how large a gathering we had. LeighAnne read a book to the children during our party, & Snow took pictures with a number of the families.

This CNY party is an annual event & put together by Susan with help from many other people. In fact, some of my friends from S FL also came up for the party. Marc Weinstock was an AMAZING emcee! I'm not allowed to show the video of Susan doing the chicken dance. Snow mentioned that she had never seen the chicken dance or heard "YMCA" at a CNY celebration! The families all had a wonderful time, & best of all, we raised a substantial amount of money to be donated to Love Without Boundaries.

Then & Now

January 2007

August 2006

August 2005

April 1, 2003 David & I got a referral of the most beautiful child to come from China - Chun HuaXu now known as Erin Chelsie. We fell in love immediately!

Every once in a while my friend Sandra does a retrospect of her girls, & I always enjoy it. Today I thought I would finally do something to see how Erin has changed. I usually save all of the pictures from a year onto a cd & put the cd away for safekeeping. That made it hard find anything older than 2005. However, I can definitely see Erin changing just from August 2005 up till a month ago. I just love seeing how she has grown!

Erin has been home sick this week running really odd fevers. She's running anywhere from 99.8 - 100 during the day & will be pretty cool to the touch. Around 2:00a.m., she spikes all the way up to almost 102!

David stayed home with her Monday & Tuesday while I took over today & for tomorrow also. Erin loves going to school & knows that if she has to stay home, there is no going outside to ride her scooter or her bicycle. However, she knows that time with Daddy means watching "rubber monsters" on tv. Being such SciFi fans, David & I found a way to have Erin watch the shows & movies (within reason of course) that we both enjoy. She is totally transfixed when we put on Babylon 5 or Harry Potter or even any of the Lord of the Rings movies! Staying home with Mommy, on the other hand, means playing with play doh & coloring. And then there's the food. Since Erin's such a horrible eater, David & I tend to relax the rules when she's sick just to get her to eat. This week Erin has even been hungry enough to eat!

I'm hoping that tonight her fever doesn't spike too much if at all. The dr told us that this bout of funky fevers with no other symptoms is going around. Supposedly it ends in 72 hours. I'd like for that to happen. My poor girl is usually pretty happy & content to amuse herself. When she's sick, I can't even go potty without her crying for me. I hate seeing her so miserable.

Just - "Stuff"

Erin has been in a silly mood lately. There's a lot going on here & we really encourage her to show how she's feeling - as long as it's not a tantrum that is.

She is working very hard in school right now. Her grade level is one of 3 that will be putting on a show in school. Each grade level represents a different country, & they get to sing some songs from that country. Erin's grade is representing Italy. Just ask her how Italian people say good morning, & she will smile with a huge grin & say "Buon Giorno!" I love that her preschool does this although I have mentioned that I'd love to see them do China. Her teacher for next year, Miss Cindy, told me that she has done China in the past & would consider it for next year. I'm not holding my breath since she really can't accomodate just one parent. But it would be fun - especially if the show was around Chinese New Year again!

I went to a Spa Night this past week at the synagogue. It was a fund raiser for the ECC (Early Childhood Center). Talk about a nice mom's night out. I had a neck & back massage, a hand & foot massage & my polish changed! I love getting spoiled on the odd occasion. I even won tons of stuff! Erin got a really cute tye-die t-shirt with baby bugs & baby taz embroidered on it, a huge basket with one of the Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses & matching vanity. For myself I won a free sitting at a local photograpy studio that one of the moms works at. Okay, so I'm bad. I outbid my friend Viv. I couldn't help myself! We had Erin's 4 year portraits done, & they were horrible!!!

Of course we also had some wonderful news on the friend's adoption front. Our friends Candy & David finally received their referral after a 16 month wait!!!! Rachel is just beautiful. Now we just have to load Rachel up with some adorable outfits. I know her FCC family is just dying to shop for them.