Good news on New Year’s Eve!

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We ended 2014 with a bang. Praise the Lord, because Lord willing, we will have a daughter home in 2015! Our agency emailed this evening with news that the adoption contracts arrived in their office this afternoon. They don’t yet have a report of the meeting with our girl but the contracts arriving means she said yes and we are moving forward!

We will receive the contracts and instructions for completing our dossier early next week. I am so excited to see what the next steps are and to find out what contact we will have with her next. Maybe a Skype call? Another care package? I’ll be emailing my agency on Friday to find out what we can do next to start bonding with her.

I am so excited and can’t wait to see what God brings our way in 2015. Hopefully we’ll have a daughter home soon!

Happy New Year!
新年快樂!

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18 months

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Today marks 18 months since we officially started our adoption journey. I feel like so much has happened and yet I feel like, in some ways, we have made no progress at all. My husband and I talked about this tonight and agree that we have made progress but it sure doesn’t feel like it! We have an up to date home study, approval from the US government to adopt a foreign born orphan, and approval from a Taiwan agency to be matched with one of their children. It’s progress, but not much.

Hopefully we hear an update soon on the meeting with Cin-Ru so we know if this adoption attempt is going forward. I hope and pray that we will have a daughter home sometime in 2015!

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December Goals – Week Three

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I don’t have any pictures of my decluttering work this week but hope to have some next week. I was able to finish the bookshelf upstairs in our dining room, as well as some other small things upstairs. I cleaned the bathroom downstairs but that doesn’t count toward my goal. My mother-in-law will be here in about five hours so I don’t expect I will get much more work done this week. I want to relax and enjoy my time with her. I am pleased with the progress I’ve made, though I still have a long way to go.

I did make huge progress with my Chinese study goal, though. I studied over 8.5 hours this week and completed three grammar lessons. I only have three more grammar lessons to complete before the end of the month in order to make my goal.

Totals for the month:

Grammar lessons – 9 out of 12
Study hours – 20.25

I don’t expect to keep up this pace all week, but hope to stay on top of my flashcards and at least make some forward progress. But if, just IF, I can be diligent about studying over the holidays, I will shatter my record of how many hours I’ve studied in one month (27 hours in September). Reachable goal or unattainable due to the holidays? We shall see!

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The Secret of Pembrooke Park – a book review

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I have now read every single one of Julie Klassen’s books. On her About Page on Goodreads is this description – “Julie Klassen loves all things Jane—Jane Eyre and Jane Austen.” Yes! I can tell! So when I received an email from Bethany House that Klassen’s latest book is available for review, I snatched it up and was not disappointed.

I started reading this book and could barely put it down. It’s longer than most Christian historical fiction, coming in at 456 pages. Even being a longer book, I felt there wasn’t much filler. The story was great, about a “spinster” whose family loses their fortune so they must move into the country. They move into an abandoned house, one filled with the servants’ whispers of tragic events that happened years ago. The rumor is that there is a treasure hidden somewhere in the house. Is the rumor true? Is Abigail going to be a spinster or will she marry?

Parts of the book were cheesy, mainly Abigail’s romantic interludes. But the treasure hunting aspect of the story and how Abigail seeks to uncover her home’s past, were delightful. While I can’t label this a classic that I’ll be returning to, Klassen wrote another fantastic weekend read. I just discovered that she has another book scheduled to come out next summer and I can’t wait!

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December’s Goals – Week Two

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I made progress last week on both of my December goals. First up was lots of cleaning and decluttering.

Here’s the wet bar, though we don’t use it for that. We actually turned the water off to this faucet. I’m so confused about why this was installed right next to the fireplace, but what do I know? I think the neighbors have a book case in this location, which I would love to have!

Before

After
I forgot to take a picture of our entertainment center before I started cleaning it. The top was covered with several stacks of paper, remotes, and five pumpkins! This picture gives an idea of how cluttered it was:

Before

During

After
And, for fun, we put the Advent calendar there for the remainder of the holiday season, along with Cin-Ru’s framed photo.

Here is my next project, to be tackled tomorrow.

Books, books, and more books
I also made some solid progress toward my Chinese goal (12 lessons completed before the end of the month). Last week I finished 2.5 lessons, which put me at 5.5/12 complete (I finished up the .5 lesson today). I studied 5.75 hours last week, which isn’t too shabby. I just hope I can stay on top of everything when my Mother-in-law arrives on Sunday!

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Fun with a new Advent calendar

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We found out that the social worker is meeting with Cin-Ru next week! Our coordinator has requested a report as soon as possible, as she’s going on vacation at the end of next week. We’re hoping to find out what Cin-Ru thinks about our family and about us adopting her. Hopefully it is good news!

We bought a Hello Kitty advent calendar to count down to Christmas. It’s so cute! We’ll share photos of it with Cin-Ru in one of our later care packages. I sure hope she likes Hello Kitty. They make such fun clothes!

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December’s goals – week one

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I have two goals this month – to clean my house from top to bottom and to make significant progress in my Chinese class.

Cleaning – I’m not doing too bad but I need to pick up the pace. There have been several days of adoption excitement and that took precedence over my cleaning. I did declutter several areas last week but there is lots more to do. Tomorrow I’ll be tackling my upstairs bathroom.

Chinese – This is where all of my progress lies. Last week I completed just under six solid hours of studying, plus about two hours of listening practice by watching Taiwanese television shows. I finished three lessons from YoyoChinese, which meets my goal requirements. I’ve already studied an hour today and might squeeze in a bit more before bed. With the adoption process moving forward, I need to keep studying. I don’t want to be in Taiwan wishing that I had learned more!

In adoption news, our photo album was mailed off today. We sent a photo album, a stuffed animal, and a small interlocking hearts necklace. Hopefully she likes everything! I can’t wait to hear back the report from the social worker’s visit with her later this month.

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Pre-approval!!

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We received our pre-approval today!! I’m so excited!!

I printed the photos at Walgreens and picked them up today. This weekend I have to finish assembling the photo album and we’ll be mailing out the care package on Monday morning. It will be forwarded to Taiwan immediately because the social worker will be visiting with her the third week of December to show her our photos!

Over the next few weeks, I will be praying that her heart is prepared for a family. The social worker reports that she wants a family; hopefully she will want OUR family to be her family!

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