Reece's Rainbow

Thanks so much for clicking over from Reece's Rainbow!!  We are so excited to be working hard to bring our sweet boy HOME!!!  This is actually MinLan's adoption blog...want to check out "Timothy's"...soon to be John Preston's blog?????

Visit us at:

www.thestoryof1000.blogspot.com

The Journey....

Friends...thank you for your support today. We are so thankful that you come alongside us with JOY and prayerfully support us.

God showed out in a MIGHTY way when we adopted MinLan...who in the heck starts an adoption when no one in the house has a JOB!?!??!?!?!  Crazy people I tell you!  But God was faithful and our precious little girl is sitting in the room next to me, eating popcorn and catching up on her TV viewing time. 

We are praying for God to show out in a MIGHTY way again.  We are pursuing the adoption of a precious little boy that we know is meant to be part of our family.  Will it be an easy road? No. We have a few mountains in our way that we need God to pick up and MOVE!

Are we crazy? Maybe...but I'd rather us be crazy doing what God has called us to do, than to forever regret not being faithful to His calling.  Are we special, extraordinary parents? Nope. We often have a messy house, have our moments of being short tempered and sometimes sneak away to the bathroom for a moment of quiet. But you know what? We wouldn't change one single bit of our lives together. 

One of my favorite quotes is:

"We may not have it all together, but together we have it all!"

AMEN!

Because of the growing number of little ones in our home and Bryan's job change, we will need an "income waiver" from China. I'm not sure how often these are granted but our prayers are hopeful. We pray that God will move in hearts and minds and grant our request.

Paperwork is being filled out now and we will submit what is called a letter of intent or LOI to China.  Not too long after, they will either approve or deny our request to adopt our boy. When they approve (did you catch that confidence?), then the WORK begins. Many documents we can reuse from our last adoption but many need to be redone. We are ready to do the work.

Please pray with us friends. 

Pray that God will choose to use us to make a difference in the life of this sweet little boy. We can't save the world, but we can make a difference for one. 

Pray that God provides a way financially for us to bring our boy home. We are ready to work hard and do anything required to meet our needs.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen!" 

Ephesians 3:20-21"

As a side note...I have many Facebook friends that are EXCELLENT guessers..... ;-)

Love You All,

Jenifer

Oh how we love sweet little Timothy!  He was a favorite of our guide in China and we were honored to meet him!  He gave Ellie some awesome hugs and is a great little basketball player!

This year our family has committed to being his Angel Tree family through Reece's Rainbow!  Our goal is to raise $1000 or MORE for his RR account! 

Starting October 1st, we will be sharing about ways you can give and help us reach our goal! Timothy deserves to know the love of a family of his very own...let's help him get home.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TIMOTHY!

$5.......Can You Spare It Today? Meet Nolan!

Meet Nolan...he is our first little one we'd like to help raise funds for!

Isn't he a cutie?  I could just pinch those little cheeks!!!!

Here are a few facts about Nolan from his Reece's Rainbow page:

• Born in July 2012...he's one month younger than my Neely and has never had a mommy and daddy to call his own.
• Lives in the People's Republic of China.
• Lives with a foster family on the grounds of the orphanage and participates in the Little Sister Program.
• Nolan likes to play with blocks and balls best, as well as playing with other children and he likes to look at books.
• He smiles often, knows his name and has good motor development.
• He is active and energetic.

Nolan, as of this posting, has only $22.50 in his Reece's Rainbow account! Let's change that friends!

Can you spare only $5 today?

The cost of your favorite latte....to help a boy find his forever family.

Most families feeling called to adopt are overwhelmed with the thought of the cost of the whole process.  When they find a child on Reece's Rainbow with a large grant available to them, it is often the catalyst that causes that family to move forward with adoption.

How awesome would it be to see a rise in Nolan's account this week?!?!?

Please share this post on your Facebook page and encourage your friends to give.  Next Tuesday, I'll post an update on how much we raised.  Can't wait to see how God moves for this little guy!

Won't you help us? 

If you can give $5...please give.

Maybe you are able to give $25 today...or even $105.

Whatever you feel led to give, don't wait...give today.

What a huge difference it will make in the life of sweet Nolan.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE.

(Click on the yellow "Donate" button under Nolan's picture and it will walk you through the process.)

Love,

MinLan's Mommy

First Sunday Home....

I promise I haven't forgotten about journaling the remainder of our days in China or our homecoming.....

I'm just a happy, tired momma right know but detailed posts to come soon, I hope.....

I just wanted to post quickly on how things are going with our sweet MinLan....

We are over the moon to have our girl HOME....

But, imagine for her the change and heartbreak she has experienced the last month....and it hasn't ended yet for her.

She was taken away from her foster parents....the only family she has ever known...

She spent a week in an orphanage, just one of many, with no one to love her or probably even remember her name....

Then, she was driven by two orphanage workers to an office building, and handed over to a lady who doesn't look like her or sound like her....then the orphanage workers left....

She spent almost two weeks with us in her home country...trying to decide if we could be trusted. She slowly started to open up and show us a little of her true self, for brief moments...

Just as she was beginning to trust us just a little and lose some of her nervous/terrified "tells", we put her on a plane to America...

Then she was surrounded by no one that looks or sounds like her...

Her nervous "tells" came back.....

She's trying to figure out who Daddy, Ethan and Roo are....

She's trying to figure out why Neely wants to happily attack her all the time....

But you know what, she's going to get there. She's going to come to know that Daddy and her siblings can be trusted. She will begin to understand that we are her family, that we love her and that we are not going ANYWHERE....

We will begin to see more and more of her sweet, silly personality....

She will begin to feel like she is one of "us".....like a Parris....

Please continue to pray for our sweet girl.

Even though it feels like all the hard work....the paper chase....is behind us, really the hardwork is just beginning.  The process of attachment does not happen overnight. For some children it takes months, for some it takes years.

For our family, this means a lot of things. It may mean that you see us out and about less than normal. 

It may mean that if we try to take her out...and she becomes overwhelmed...then we have to return home sooner than expected. 

It means that the best thing you can do for our bonding and attachment is to enjoy her while she is in our arms and not ask to hold her. 

It also means that just because you see happy pictures of MinLan on Facebook, please know that adoption is hard. Our family loves the beauty of adoption but we are also living out the heartbreak that is an equal part of the picture. Please pray for our girl and for our family.  The days and months ahead will be hardwork. We are dealing with jet lag on top of trying to build our new family with MinLan. We want to try our best to keep life normal for our other little ones. We want them to enjoy all their regular activities but it will be hard for us. Please understand if we are not able to keep up with returning messages or texts or phone calls as quickly as we normally do. 

We love you all and are so thankful for your help on this journey. We are so grateful for all everyone has done for us. Don't give up on us...we'll be back in the swing of things before you know it.

Thanking God for how He continues to bless us,

Jenifer

Monday and Tuesday

Yesterday....Monday.....was our last official appointment!!! It was at the US Consulate to finish up all the details to get MinLan's Chinese passport. I was nervous because our guide was not allowed to go in with us. Once we got in, we got a number, took an oath as a group, waited our turn, they looked through our paperwork and took our fingerprints and then we were good to go! Our guide said it took us about 45 minutes. No pictures from inside since they don't allow cameras/phones etc. Here's a quick one our guide snapped before we went in.

After our CA, we headed back to the room for the day. For lunch, we tried out the little deli/coffee shop area in the lobby. We both had a salad and tried a couple of their breads that were yummy! MinLan ate a TON of my salad! I sure don't believe that she was eating ONLY congee before we got her!

For dinner, my sweet friends Yvette and Claire came over from their hotel to meet us for dinner. We walked to Tekila's, a local Mexican restaurant. It was yummy and the only thing lacking was air conditioning! This girl was hot! MinLan even ate GREAT!!! This girl loves some Mexican food! Definitely planning a trip to Mi Casita when we get home!!!! 

Enjoyed visiting with these mommas so much and their boys are precious! Yvette and her husband own the largest independent gun shop in Colorado! I knew Bryan would love that! I hate Claire wasn't in the picture since she was the one taking it!!

Today our plan was to get up and head for Safari Park if the rain held out. I woke up not feeling well so we postponed our outing with our  guide and spent the day inside. After a few minutes of letting our guide know we were staying in, Ellie decided to clean out MinLan's bottle and poured BOILING water from the kettle on her hand. Poor thing! She was pitiful. Then MinLan got upset because Ellie was upset. Thankful we had our oils with us and some lavender and coconut oil fixed Ellie right up. 

God truly blessed our time in the hotel room today. We got to see so much of MinLan's little personality. What a blessing! Be sure to check out our Facebook page for a couple of precious videos of her.

We are waiting on our guide now to bring our paperwork and MinLan's passport to our room. Once he does that we are free to leave the country....just have to wait for our flight out! Miss our little family terribly and can not wait to be HOME!!!!

Thanks to all of you who have continued to lift us up in prayer! Such a blessing!!

Love,

Jenifer

Saturday and Sunday

These have been a nice couple of leisurely days. We have spent most of our time in the room with sweet MinLan.....holding her when she would let me and trying to comfort when she wouldn't.

Yesterday morning we got up and walked to a store called Aeon. It has several floors and it has everything you an imagine.

Especially if your baby loves cod fish and apple cereal....

Or milk in a juice box.....don't you just love the big udder on the box?

The weirdness was more than I could handle so I finally had to just put my phone up and trying to take it all in. 

I did LOVE how they packaged their strawberries though....pretty smart!

We bought MinLan a bottle to try while we were there and also bought her a pacifier (oh, how I despise pacifiers).....hoping it might help with her teeth grinding. It does stop her some when she will keep it in. :-)

So after we made it safely back to the room, I mixed up a four ounce bottle and she drank it right down! I know she was so thirsty.  She would hardly let me get near her with any liquid for the past week. She hasn't taken the bottle really well today but it's better than nothing.

Our guide came over late in the afternoon to help us prepare all of our documents to take to our consulate appointment on Monday. This is our last official appointment! Woohoo!!!!

After our guide left, we headed out to find this noodle restaurant that we have heard great things about. Our guide said all the noodles are handmade and pretty inexpensive.

The restaurant was near the Irish pub and was very clean and nice.  We ordered two different plain noodle dishes to share that looked yummy. 

When the noodles arrived, they were cold....I mean, like on purpose....cold like they came from the fridge........uhhmmmmmm, no. We could not eat them. We came back to the room and ate cashews, Oreos and sprite. The dinner of champions. :-)

Last night, we managed to give little miss her first official bath and she loved it! Mommy got in with her and MinLan had lots of fun splashing and playing with her stacking cups. 

Tonight during her bath she was NOT happy. Here's hoping for a better bath tomorrow!

Look how cute she was in her strawberry pjs!

We even FaceTimed with daddy and Neely and she surprised us with the same pjs!

So today we had big plans to go to a museum today (Sunday) and go and see the Buddist temple but it has poured down rain most of the day. I had no desire to venture out in that so we stayed in the hotel today. We spent some time in the playroom and then ordered pizza in for dinner.

We had some attachment progress today. I tried to lay her down in the bed for a nap and she cried for me to pick her back up. I happily obliged and held her while she napped for about three hours. Best feeling in the world.

We are counting down the days until we get to come home!!!! I dread the plane ride home but will be happy to get there.  Please keep praying for MinLan to continue to trust us more each day.

Love,

Jenifer

Friday

Today was a good day. We got up and headed downstairs to breakfast where MinLan proceeded to knock half the items off my plate while we were in the buffet line. Fun times! Guess she didn't like my breakfast choices! Ha!

Our guide picked us up at 9:30 and we headed to the pearl market.  He said Americans are the ones that call it that, Chinese do not. They actually sell many different stones, etc. mostly to wholesale customers. 

We went to Andy's Store and got each of the girls a pearl necklace for when they are older and I got a couple of bracelets. It was really neat to watch them handstring the pearls while you waited. The pearls were about $40 American so not a bad price at all. There were much higher quality there too but when you have many little girls to buy for, you are on a budget! Ha!

See the fancy tin of Oreos in the picture above. They cracked me up bringing out food for Ellie. She didn't want any Oreos so they finally brought her packaged cookies to take with her as well as some chocolate. 

For all of you bacon lovers out there, here's some stone for you.....

Then we headed to Shamain Island to get a name scroll for MinLan and some shoes. Our guide dropped us off at Master Wang's shop. He warned us that since Master Wang considers himself an "artist" he can be a bit temperamental. He was fine with us but it took me about ten minutes to explain that MinLan does not HAVE an American name. He wanted to put her Chinese and American names on it. He finally was happy with putting her birth year, name, city of birth and the name of her orphanage. Will share a pic soon. Holding my sweet girl (she is soooooo not a morning person) and blogging makes it hard to take a picture!

Apparently it is very popular to come to the island for your wedding portraits. They were also doing some modeling shoots. 

The grounds on the island were very pretty. 

There was no way I was risking taking a happy MinLan out of the carrier for a photo shoot here. Maybe we'll photoshop her in later! Ha!

Chinese women have definitely come a long way over the years.

The Pearl River. I asked our guide if people swim in this river. He said only if you want to catch a skin disease. Ha!

We managed to find a few treats for the kids while on the island so a good trip. Might have to go back before we leave. So then we came back to the hotel and were going to have the consierge order a pizza recommended by our guide. He kept saying "cham ping" pizza. I ask the concierge several times and she had no idea what I was talking about. She finally figured it out and when the pizza arrived, it was CHAMPION PIZZA!!!! No wonder she didn't know what I was talking about! Ha!

That pizza and one coke for around $11 US. Not too bad.

We let MinLan lay in the bed with us for a long time before we out her in her bed. She did much better going to sleep after that and I only had to getup with her a couple of times.

So it's seven in the morning here and Ellie and I have showered and we are waiting on miss sleepy head to get a little happier. She is definitely not a morning person. ;-)

Today we are venturing out to Aeon by ourselves to look around and then our guide comes over at two to help us fill out some paperwork. 

Thanks to all of you that are praying for us. We can feel it.

Love,

Jenifer

Orphanage Visit

Yesterday was an exhausting day. I was so anxious about taking MinLan back to the orphanage and the possibility of us meeting her foster parents. Of course this is a once in a lifetime chance to meet them so we wanted to try but I also knew that is could possibly be pretty devastating for our sweet girl.  

To start, we left the hotel at 8:30 am to head to get her TB test. But as soon  as we started driving I realized I had forgotten gifts for some little ones in the orphanage! I asked our guide to go back and with traffic and turning around it took us like thirty minutes! ACK!!!! We had only just turned out of the hotel when I asked! Traffic here is INSANE!!!!!

So, all of our gifts In hand, we headed for our TB test. They do not do the simple scratch test here, they do a blood draw. The only good thing about it is that you do not have to come back and get it checked.

They took MinLan in a room with two nurses and mommy had to wait outside.  In just a few seconds one nurse comes out and grumbles something to our guide. She said they had to get a THIRD nurse to help them.  This girl is feisty!!!! It took FOREVER to get her blood...it was hot in the building and I began to feel like I was going to pass out. Praise The Lord I stayed on my feet and we were quickly on our way. She had band aids on both arms. Apparently they must have stuck her twice.

So then we drove the two hours to her orphanage. We saw no children at first. Our guide said they were all napping. We got to walk around the common areas but did not get to go into the baby room where MinLan would have been as an infant.

We saw classrooms and play areas.  Our guide told us that the typical kids in the orphanage go to school outside in the community and that the children with special needs go to school in the orphanage. Her orphanage also houses adults...kind of like where you might go for a government sponsored retirement home. But trust me, this is not lush and fabulous. 

Her foster parents lived a distance away and were not able to come. I'm glad I tried to meet them but also think it might have been best for MinLan not to see them again. I wish I could have met them myself. Thanks to everyone who prayed faithfully for us to have a good visit. Your prayers were felt.

Sorry about so many dark photos. They had the lights off and I couldn't get great shots. Can't wait to get home to my computer and edit them!

Outside the entrance to enter the children's part.

Inside the gate.

Recognize this little red things from some of MinLan's updates? :-)

It was in this room that the very first video we saw of MinLan was filmed. 

We were able to meet several children with Down syndrome! A couple of them have mommas already coming for them!!!! I'll ask their permission to share those photos and hopefully share tomorrow. My sweet friend Sara asked me to get photos of a few other children to help advocate for them. The shots were not great because of the light so I'll edit at home before I share here. 

Our guide has one little boy with Down syndrome that he just loves. He talked about him for a long time on our trip and asked if we wanted to meet him. He was PRECIOUS!!!!! So sweet and active...typical boy. He just needs a momma and daddy to love him. I'll post more about him when I can get some more info.

That boy is a hugger!!!! He just kept hugging on Ellie!!!!  So sweet!!!

Next we got to eat a simple lunch prepared by the orphanage staff. I don't know why but this part completely stressed me out! Ellie ate lots of hers. I just ate rice and fed MinLan rice. I am sooooooo not a food adventurist! I tried the white stuff thinking it was chicken.......yeah, it wasn't chicken. ACK!! 

If you know me well, you know I love penguins. Check out these penguin trash cans!!!! Oh my gracious!!! I wish I could have paid them for one and shipped it home! Ha!

Recognize the piano and the coffee table from MinLan's updates?

For all you Bon Jovi fans out there (Brandi Reyes)....these signs were everywhere.

These were the two people who handle all the adoption related stuff at the orphanage. I'll have to be sure to get their names from our guide. They brought her to us on gotcha day and then helped us around at the orphanage. I asked about some of her baby pictures and they said they would email them to our guide. Woohoo!!!! (Sorry for the blurry photo...Richard our guide needs some photo taking lessons! Ha! His wife Alexa does much better.) :-)

This wall is in the lobby and I asked our guide about it. He said it was from a speech from one of their leaders about how it is important to take care of children and the children with special needs.

Next our guide asked if we wanted to go and see her "finding spot" since it was an hour away. Ummmmm.....yeah!!! We certainly did not come all this way to let an hour be an issue. Our guide was very sweet and did not mind taking us but I think he got stressed and confused several times with his GPS. The only info that we had said that it was at a furniture center. When we arrived, the place was HUGE! There was no way to know the exact spot so I just got some pictures of the building and was able to shed tears where her journey to us started. If not for this spot, then she wouldn't be ours today. It was very heartbreaking to try and imagine how her birth mother must have felt to be the one leaving her. I am so grateful that she left her in a place where she would be found. 

The white letters on the left apparently say Shenzhen Furnture Center.

We came back to our room, played with MinLan for a bit, praying to not have a repeat of the day before. She did start to get upset but I pulled out some yogurt melts, yogurt raisins and noodles and she didn't get too upset. 

We def had some good moments at bedtime last night. She cried every time I laid her down and even stood up in the crib with her arms up to reach me. I finally had to just stand beside her bed until she fell asleep. She didn't want me to touch her but she didn't want me to leave either. Good sign! Progress!

Today we get to go to the pearl market and to the island to do a little shopping. Hoping to find some cute shoes for the little girls and a treat to take home to the kids. Nice to not have any official appointments today. Whew.......

As I type this MinLan is laying on my shoulder, sucking her tongue and sleeping quietly. This is truly the best feeling....I have loved her for so long and now get to hold her forever. God is so good.

Love you all,

Jenifer