What is more fun than a present? The box it comes in :)

Playground Fun

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Our sweet little ladybug

Our Aunt Shirley and Uncle Paul came for a visit and took a bunch of pictures. I love this one of our sweet girl sitting on the ladybug chair in her room. Thank you Uncle Paul for the great shot.

Meet Katie Starr's New Friend Kacey

This is Katie's new friend Kacey. I consider her mommy, Julie and her grandma, Susan to be good friends of mine. I had the good fortune to meet Julie through this wonderful adoption community and our local FCC Chapter. Over a year ago we started our chapter and Susan(Kacey's Grandma) started attending our monthly gatherings here in South Florida. Julie has also attended one of our gatherings when she came from Atlanta to see her mom. Julie and her mom Susan have been a huge source of support to me and my family throughout this tough wait and I hope that they know how much I care about them and their family.

Congratulations to Julie and her whole family!! Your Kacey Susan Xiao Mei is such a beautiful and precious girl. Katie and I are looking forward to meeting her so much.

You can read all about it at: Chasing Little Kacey

Three and a High Chair

I thought it was appropriate that I change the name of my blog since we are home now with our sweet girl. This blog will now chronicle the life and times of our clan. I am changing it to Three and a High Chair because as many of you know we eat out ALOT and this is the phrase that we utter every time we eat out as a family of four. We are trying to eat at home more often as Katie Starr's manners are still being refined and she has no idea what an inside voice is or that spaghetti should not be flung to the next table. Most of the time she is so charming to the other restaurant patrons that they do not seem to mind. I on the other hand am always running interference. We basically stick to very casual dining where the decibel level meets or exceeds our Gansu Princess. We hope that you continue to pull up a chair and relax while reading about our goings on. Be sure to take cover if the food starts flying :)

Another Milestone

Today we made it official here in the good ole' State of Florida and our county. Katie's adoption was officially recognized here and a Florida birth certificate will be issued. The judge was very nice and gave us this photo op. We shared the day with our wonderful friend's, The Przelomski's as well as another great family in our FCC Chapter. The attorney that handled this for us is also an adoptive parent with a child from China. His wife and daughter came as well so while we were waiting to have this case heard by the judge the four children hung out together. After 2 hours of waiting it became a toss up as to who was more frazzled; us or the kids. When the judge offered us candy at the end of the hearing Marc sarcastically told her that he would have preferred breakfast...love that man of mine :)

Home Update

We have posted our final entry on the Story of you with our home update. You can view it at: http://www.thestoryofyou.net/KatieStarrHomeUpdate.html

After this final journal entry you can continue to get our updates on this blog.

Enjoy!!

Having Fun at Cracker Barrel

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Happy 4th of July from our newest citizen!!

On this Independence Day 2006, Katie Starr Hongshan and her family including Lori's parents wish you a wonderful day. We are truly appreciative that Katie is living with us as a citizen in this great country and can enjoy all of the rights and freedoms that we have enjoyed all of our lives. We will teach her that with this comes great responsibility. Great sacrifices have been made through history for this freedom.

Happy 4th of July!!

Friends hangin at the mall

Today, our good friends, Shannon, Alan, Ryan and Mia met us at the local mall for some fun. The guys went and bowled at a very cool new bowling alley attached to the mall while the girls shopped till we dropped. We wanted to have the girls play at a play area at the mall but it was overrun with big kids. Since Katie walks she will only allow me to keep her in the stroller for so long. Here is a video of Katie stretching her legs and interacting with Miss Mia :)

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A fun time at Chucky Cheese

We went to Chucky Cheese with my good friend Kira and her nephew Adrian. A good time was had by all. There is a picture of Katie with her mouth wide open as wide as the Grand Canyon. It is because she is screaming with joy and not pain. :)

Our Girl LOVES To Eat!!

First Time in the Pool

Here is our little adrenaline junkie having fun during her first time in the pool. We were absolutely thrilled that she liked it so much as she is still not sold on baths. At one point she actually went in head first after her sippy cup which had drifted away. We took her out and she was laughing like she had done it 100 times before. Our girl is too much.

A Wonderful Weekend

We had a truly wonderful weekend. We hosted an open house for family and close friends to come and congratulate Justin on his accomplishment of graduation from the University of Florida as well as welcome our Katie Starr home. My sister Jane, brother in law Steve and Nephew Sam came from Northern Virginia to meet Katie. Our Starr was her usual social self. She is quite the ham and a real people person. She has captured our hearts as well as all that meet her. Justin enjoyed the open house as well. We are all so proud of him. Marc and I were overjoyed to be able to share our love and pride for both of our children yesterday.

Above is a picture of Justin, my nephew Sam and Katie together at the party and the other photo is of Katie on her new riding toy that her cousin's Jeff, Kathy, Ariel and Brittany gave her. She loved it and has been on it quite a bit today. We have also posted a Flickr Badge on the right margin of the Blog. If you click on it you will be directed to our photo account where you can view all the pictures from yesterday.

We are home and loving life

As many of you know, while we were in China we posted on the Story of you. Now we are back and I will begin updating this site frequently with updates from our new family of four. Katie has made a beautiful transition into our lives. The first 10 days that we had her were very difficult as she was grieving heavily for her foster family and she was ill. She is now well and has finally settled into our lives. After a few days home she began to show us the real Katie Starr. She is smart, funny, energetic, mischievous and quite obstinate as was stated in the information that the CCAA gave to us :) We are totally in love with her and feel very fortunate indeed that the Chinese Government allowed us to adopt and raise this child. The above picture was taken today as we left to go to a party that we were invited to. We were told that Katie likes to be around people and again she proved that to be true. She is quite the charmer and has a warm smile for all that interact with her. She is quite attached to us all now and loves her brother Justin very much. I promise to post again soon with a few more photos.

We are leaving in the morning to get our Katie Starr :)

We are up tomorrow at 4 am to begin the journey to finally bring home our Katie Starr. We will be in LA all day hanging out with some friends until almost midnight when our flight departs Los Angeles and travels 15 hours to Guangzhou, China. We then connect another 2.5 hours to Beijing and somehow it becomes the 11th even though we leave on the 9th :)

We will be sending home photos and journals every day on The Story of You. We hope that you follow along with us as we become a family of four. We receive our girl on Mother's Day.

Here is the link: http://www.thestoryofyou.net/KatieStarr.html

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!

Congratulations to our son, Justin who made himself as well as us very proud when he graduated from the University of Florida this past Saturday.

It is absolutely Crazy Around Here!

First, I would like to thank everyone who sent us their sympathy's both publicly and privately for the loss of our fur baby, Buddy. We sincerely appreciate all of your support so much.

Life has been so nuts lately. There are really no words to describe the chaos around here. There are suitcases everywhere in various stages of being packed. The whole house has turned into a staging area for the China trip. Our days are devoted to winding up work at our businesses, running errands for the trip, compiling orphanage gifts, knocking off my list of about 100 tasks that have to be done before we leave. Besides all of that we are trying to keep our Chihuahua, Gabby as happy as possible after the loss of Buddy and all of the strange crazy vibes in our home.

This weekend we travel to Gainesville to attend Justin's College Graduation. We bring him home on Sunday, unload his things, pack him up and then we are off to China the next day. I am actually starting to believe that spending 21 hours on two aircraft will be relaxing. I know I must be overworked as I am absolutely terrified of flying. The idea that it will be a relaxing time has to say something about my present mental state.

I will post one last time after graduation and then I will post our link on The Story of You where you can follow our journey on starting next week. Thanks again for all of your support :)