Holiday Fun

We came back this weekend from a week long trip to see family and friends for the holiday. We also attended a family Bat Mitzvah for Marc's second cousin Haley(or is that second cousin once removed -- he has so many family members it is hard to remember their exact designation..LOL) Anyway, we had a wonderful week. Justin was able to go with us for about half the trip before he had to fly back and return to work. It turns out that Katie is a superb traveler. She met about 100 new family members - I kid you not; and she took it all in stride. She barely fussed when naps were missed and meals delayed. All of the little cousins had such a blast with her. We also got to see Katie's 3rd Grandma appointed by us - Aunt Shirley, as well as Uncle Paul and her daughter Mindy and hubby Steve. They really rolled out the red carpet for us. As I said we saw so may relatives but quite honestly Shirley has been so wonderful to Katie Starr and to us. She has been amazing. We also got to meet my Mei Dreams sister Monica and her family. She has a daughter Katie as well. We have corresponded for about 18 months so it was wonderful to finally meet. You can check out her blog here

Katie was great on the flights and even feel asleep when descending both times. We were in New Jersey, New York and Virginia and even spent the day walking around NYC in 38 degree weather. I had Katie so bundled up she looked like an Eskimo. The only time that she fell asleep was in Chinatown; that gave us a good laugh! We ended the trip in Virginia to spend the holiday with my sis and it was so wonderful. It was definitely a week to remember.

We came home late Friday because on Saturday we were invited to a wedding of some friends of ours. Marc and I had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night with food poisoning. I have not been that sick in at least 20 years. I kid you not. I am recovering now and just tried to fire up my laptop and it died on me...UGH. I had a huge amount of pics on it from the trip that I am hoping were not lost forever. I also had not backed up in a while so tomorrow it is off to the Geek Squad to see if I can recover my data and maybe even fix the computer.

I hope that your holidays were as much fun as ours were. We have so much to be thankful for this year especially but quite honestly we feel pretty blessed every year that we are able to celebrate with family and friends.

P.S. If and when I get my pictures off the computer I will post a few.

Six Month Anniversary and Here We Grow Again :)

Six months ago today Wu Hong Shan was placed into our arms sound asleep. Little did she know that she would become Katie Starr Hongshan Weinstock and that her destiny would be forever changed. As many of you know Katie had a very tough start after coming to us in that state of sleep and also after living her first four months in an orphanage and then what we feel was a wonderful foster home for the next nine months. As far as she was concerned having her destiny changed was not necessarily a good thing; grief followed our sweet girl for quite some time.

Fast forward to today and we can say without reservation that Katie is as happy of a child as we have ever known. I am sure that the coming months and even years will continue to deepen the trust and bond that she has with us but truly she is one happy camper. Laughter reverberates in our home and there is not a day that goes by that we do not thank G-d for our precious daughter.

When we began our quest for this child Marc always said that he wanted a second. I said that I did not think that I wanted to adopt a second time. I learned early on in life to never say never so I did not close any doors. Over the past two months or so Marc and I have been seriously discussing adopting again. We do feel that it is important for Katie to have a sister or brother to go though life with and we have a lot of love to give to another child from China so....the paperchase for our third child begins today in slow motion so that we can be DTC on our one year "forever in our arms day" anniversary for the NSN program. We are open to the special needs program as well. We will have to wait and see what path we take to our next precious child.

Then and Now

How Sweet is That?

This picture was taken last weekend at a local art festival that we attended with our good friends Toby and Charlie and their wonderful "far east" kids, Emily and Carly. We had a wonderful time with them. The day was bright and beautiful and the company even better. They traveled at the same time that we did to adopt their daughter Carly and for the months leading up to our trip to China we got to know them and watch their sweet Emily in action. Whenever Toby and I get together there is never a loss for conversation. We definitely speak the same language. I hope that our girls grow up to be great friends.

Here is Emily hangin with our Katie. We look forward to the next time that we all get to hang together again :)

Our Little Ladybug and Her Big Brother the Birthday Boy

I love Lollipops and I love to share them with my brother :)

Happy 22nd Birthday Justin!!! We Love you Mr. J

Blogger is giving me fits!!

I would love to be able to post pictures from yesterday but unfortunately blogger is frustrating the heck out of me by not allowing me to post them.

Yesterday was Halloween and Justin's 22nd birthday. We went to a large celebration that was being held in a town nearby. Marc was entertaining there so Justin and I took our little ladybug (Katie Starr) there. My parents joined us as well. Katie was very happy to suck on a lollipop, share it with anyone that would lick it with her (thankfully that was just our family) and check out all of the festivities. Her daddy brought her on stage at one point and she had a ball.

Marc had to work a few hours at the event so the rest of the family went out for dinner and celebrated Justin's birthday. It is so hard for me to get over that my Mr. J is 22 now. How in the hell did that happen?!? We had such a nice time together but had to end the evening rather quickly as our Starr was on sugar overload. We bid a hasty retreat from the restaurant and got her home. Unfortunately, the moment we put her into bed some late trick or treaters decided to bang on the door and ring the bell about 50 times at once. Katie woke up and screamed; she was so upset. It took us another hour to get her to bed. When Marc came home I just looked at him and told him I was so tired that I could cry. Besides a full day at work and the evenings festivities we have also been dealing with Katie waking an hour and a half earlier every morning since we ended daylight savings time...Ugh. I got to bed fairly early for me and felt much better this morning.

Tomorrow I will try again to post photos.