Hope and Homecoming

What a blur the past week has been. We are now (almost) mid-July and are enjoying the summer so much.
This past weekend, we celebrated Independence Day by going to a small-town, 4th of July, all-day event complete with a parade, amusement park rides, craft booths, food stands, and the like. It was beautiful weather and a very nice day to be out in the sunshine, celebrating our freedom.

I'm pretty sure the kids liked the parade the most. Has anyone noticed how parades have evolved into something of a candy fest...in other words, if the latest float isn't throwing candy to kids, there isn't a lot of interest. This kind of bugs me, since I think it should be more about recognizing those in the parade. Still, we enjoyed it and the kids were still in awe of many of the floats and specialties passing by. Caleb and I had this conversation:

           Me: "So, what was your favorite part of the parade?"
           Caleb: "I liked the veterinarians that were marching by."
           Me: [silence....crickets..] "Huh?"
           Caleb: "You know, the guys with the Army uniforms that marched                with flags and we stood up and clapped for them?"
           Me: "Ah. I liked them, too. For future reference, they are known as              veterans."

Sweet kid. :)

On a different note and a JQ update, this adoption is going fast. Faster than our last three. Fast. It doesn't seem so fast when one looks at the months it takes to complete, but when I think about how we accepted his file at the end of March and how we will probably travel this fall...that is fast. It's okay. We're good with that.

We have already received the copy of his Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and are awaiting the hard copy of the form to come in the mail for us to sign. If anyone still reads this blog from years ago, the LOA is a pretty big deal. Once you turn in all the paperwork, you wait for the LOA to come, which means that you will be traveling in a few more weeks. For Caleb and Asher's adoptions, it took about 2 1/2 months from the time we sent our paperwork to get the LOA. I think with Ellie's process, it was close to 2 months of a wait. This process: 5 days.

So things are going fast. They are faster this time because we had some paperwork done that had actually been sitting in China for the past four years...which is a long story that I won't get into. Suffice it to say that this time around, we have to be on our toes and be prepared. So we continue to prepare.

A little over a week ago, I sent JQ a package. We have done this with all of the kids...we want to send a few nice things to have during the rest of the wait and also a photo album so he knows who we are. Our agency has Chinese translation that we can add to the pictures to identify "older brother, younger sister," etc. There isn't much of a way of knowing if he receives the package or not, although with all three of our other adoptions, the kids showed up on the day of the adoption carrying the photo album and at least the stuffed animal that we sent.

I was thinking about past packages we have sent off into the realm of the postal service to hopefully reach our waiting child. Here are a couple of things that I sent Caleb, now nearly eight years ago:

He still has the stuffed puppy. He showed up on his adoption day with it and it remains in his room, along with a multitude of other stuffed animals. However, the puppy has changed a bit over time.

He lost an ear and part of his nose, not from too much love from Caleb, but rather from the work of this unruly beast:

Well, these are what memories are made of. The stuffed puppy is loved by more than one member of the family. I'm hoping JQ will get his package and will enjoy what we have sent, but more than that, I hope he is finding out that we are here and we are his family; that he is treasured, he is wanted, and he is loved.