Playtime :)

Fireproof

Yesterday, I went to the movies with my friend and a group of people from our church to see the new movie, Fireproof. (It's made by the people who made Facing The Giants, which if you haven't seen that movie, it is an awesome Christian movie with a great message, and is an amazing film for families to enjoy, and they also have a movie called Flywheel.) It was a really great movie, and even better than the first two, which is pretty hard to beat. Anyway, I encourage and recommend it for everyone to see, because it's a really cool movie and also has a great message about faith and living for God, and following Him in your life and your marriage. So go ahead and check it out!

(you can visit the website and see the trailer at: http://fireproofthemovie.com/)

Ah, that classic toddler tantrum...

(just take a look at that snot bubble! Ewww...LOL) =D

Here are the pics we had sent to us of Karli enjoying cake and gifts on her bday! :)

Third birthday, Waiting, and Names

Well, yesterday was Karli's birthday (happy third birthday Karli!), so now our little angel is three years old! =D As you know, we are patiently **cough, cough, I mean anxiously** waiting for our LOA*. The normal wait right now for a LOA (according to a woman at our agency) is about 12 weeks--which will be tomorrow--and someone my mother knows on Rumor Queen has a July 2nd LID** and got their LOA the other day. Since our log in date is July 4th, we're waiting and hoping that we will be getting our LOA sometime this week. (My mother is literally checking her email all day and saying every time the phone rings, "Is that my agency?! Maybe it's the agency!"). We are thinking that my mom and Kylie will travel in the month of November, and my Grandma is also thinking about going. Kylie has saved a total of about $1300 so far and the amount just keeps growing!

Another thing that has been on my mom's mind lately is, how are we going to fit Karli's Chinese name into her American name? because since Kenzie has Yang as her 2nd middle name, we feel that we have to add part of Karli's to her name, so she doesn't feel left out. At first, she wanted to put the Xi (pronounced "shee"), but decided against it because it really just stands for the city of Wuxi. Then she was going to go with the He (but contrary to how we thought it was pronounced, it's really pronounced as "huh" but with more expression; I forgot what it means). That left us with Na (it's pronounced the way you read it; in the orphanage, they call Karli Na-Na), and it means very beautiful in an elegant way (like a willow tree is how it was described to us). (Karli's full name right now is Xi He Na). We decided that her full American name will be Karli Nicole Na Smelley. That's about all the news so far...hopefully my next post will be about us getting our LOA.

*LOA=Letter Of Approval
**LID=Log In Date

Gifts!!!!

My mom had some stuff sent to Karli, since she turns 3 tomorrow, and she is also having a cake sent over to her!!! :) They will take some pictures and send them to us, and she is getting a toy, as well as everything else you see in this picture.

The Past 2 Weeks In Photos

Here's some pics of Kenzie playing around in a baby carseat (with a huge grin), her at the zoo, riding her fourwheeler (her Got'cha Day gift), and the slideshow is our house, yard, and basically just Ike.

WE HAVE ELECTIRICTY!!!!

My dad (he went home Thursday evening, because he had to go to work on Friday) has just called us and told us the good news: we have power!!! We are going home tomorrow afternoon, and will hopefully start getting our normal lives back together again.

*Sigh* Ahhh...it's going to be great to be back home...with a/c, TV, internet, and everything...and being in my own bed!!! Can't wait. :)

A Million Miles Away...

A million miles away, a little girl is waiting...
A million miles from there, a family does the same.
They pray and hope that one day soon, that little girl will be theirs to hold.
To cherish and to love forever, whose smile will can brighten them when they're under the weather.
This little girl, she does not know that one day she will be with them.
Those nights alone, they will not matter, for one day they will be together.
A family who feels incomplete, the hole will be patched when they meet.
Their sweetheart, wimpers in the cold, life in an orphanage is not what they know.
Right now, their angel is in China, but one day they will bring her home.
And she will forever be their baby, and they can begin something new.
The journey ends, yet it begins.
And thought you're never really through,
You keep on going, because of her.
One day...one day...one day that will make all the difference.
And you will never once look back.
It's funny how right now, you seem so far away.
But if you think about it, you're really not,

And the best is yet to come.

Karli Updates!

Today we recieved some updates on Karli. We got 3 new pictures (which I will put on here whenever I get the chance, most likely when I get home), and my mom asked some questions that we recieved answers to. Here they are:

She had a note with her when she was found. Her birth date is 5:00am August 21 of 2005 in lunar calendar, which s Sep 24, 2005 in physical calendar.

Did you receive the photo album we sent through Homeland Adoption and if so, how often does Xi He Na get to see the album?
Yes, we received it. Nanny shows the pictures to her whenever possible.

Does she know she has a family waiting to come get her?
Yes, she knows.

Please describe her typical day.
7:30am get up;
7:45am breakfast: congee, cake, steamed bread, steamed egg, milk and bread, etc.
9:30am cracker, milk or yogurt.
10:30am lunch: rice, meat, vegetable, noodle, mashed meat, egg.
11:30am nap
2:00pm get up
2:30pm cracker, juice or yogurt.
5:30pm dinner: rice, meat and vegetable.
10:00pm go to bed.

How does she communicate? Can she speak words?
She can say some simple words, she can understand instruction.

Has she had any major illnesses or surgeries?
She only got cold and coughs sometimes, no major illnesses or surgeries.

Is she in diapers or does she use the toilet?
No diapers. She is potty trained! She needs help going potty, though.

Does she drink from a cup or a bottle?
Cup.

Has she ever had a foster family?
She is in foster family now since this July. She is doing well.

Her updated measurements:
Height: 93cm ; Weight: 12kg ; Head: 47cm ; Chest: 48cm ; Foot: 14cm ; Teeth: 20
Height: 36.5 inches; Weight 26 pounds

New Pics Of Karli

Another Trip To The Zoo :)

Since there isn't really much to do in Alto, Texas, we decided to drive over to Lufkin (about 30 minutes away) and take a trip to the Ellen Trout Zoo. It was awesome! The zoo here is much smaller than the Houston one, which is what we are used to, but in a lot of ways I think it's better. I think by now we've figured out Kenzie's favorite animal is a bird (why did it have to be a bird? I hate birds! LOL.) She also likes lions, and giraffes, and pretty much any other animal. It was great, because since it wasn't very crowded (most kids are in school) and it wasn't very big, my mom let Kenzie walk around instead of being stuck in her stroller. We saw alligators, a hippo, birds (many, many birds), giraffes (the zoo had a baby giraffe; he was 6ft 3 and 165 pounds at birth), snakes, monkies, and lots of other types of animals. The train (the zoo has a little train that you can ride around the zoo and the lake on) wasn't running today, though. Unfortunately, it only gives rides on weekends. But that didn't stop our fun. We took several great pics, which I will post when I can get them uploaded on my computer. Well...that's about all that I have new to post for now, so I'll talk to everyone later. Bye!

Time Flies--(a poem about how quickly I think this year with Kenzie has passed, and the same for the rest of my life)

My, my, the time it flies...

Before you get the chance to recognize.

Who comes, who goes, who withers away, who grows.

What changes, new faces, same stories, new places.

My, my, the clock it ticks...

But we never seem to realize that every second that goes by

We often use to waste our time.

My, my, the days they pass...

Do we even know? That one day it could all be gone?

Then where would we be? The years they go in the blink of an eye.

So take the time to think. Take the time to love.

Take the time to share, and always be there.

Tell someone you care, spread a little joy.

Because if you don't, one day, you will regret

Every moment that you spent, in anger and in hate.

Hold a hand, give a hug, give your ear, be a shoulder to cry on.

People go quicker than they come, so before your time is through.

Make sure you remember how quickly time flies,

And what you know that you should do.

Got'cha Day!!!!

And...
Today (September 16th) marks 1 year that we have had Kenzie. Wow!!! Hard to believe it's been that long...each of us (especially Kenzie, but everyone else in our family as well) have come so far in this year. We have gained so much since last September, in so many ways. As we live our lives day to day, I don't think we really think about what we're doing, how we're changing and growing, or how much we learn. But when you look back, it's just like, "Whoa...it seems like everything has happened in barely no time at all." The year has meant so much to all of us, and me in particular, and I can't imagine how different it would have been without having my little sis with me all this time. I can remember 2005, when we started her adoption prosess, I can remember when we got our DTC, LID, LOA, our referral and TA, and I can remember the day my plane landed in Beijing, and I walked outside the airport to board our bus that took us to the hotel, and I remember feeling like it was a dream and that any moment I would wake up and it would all disappear. Sometimes, it seems my life is a whirlwind of so many confusing, crazy things, and it still feels like that. But right now, I know that it's real, and I am thankful that the Great Lord has blessed me with such an amazing, joyful, beautiful, sometimes annoying, incredible little sister. I sometimes wonder where we would be without her, even though the wait was horrendous, if we had gotten a child sooner...where she would be and what kind of lifestyle she would be in if we hadn't come to get her. Some days I would trade my life for everything, but most days, I know that I wouldn't be the same without her, my family, my friends, or any of the things that I've had to go through in my life. And I know that the memories of China, and holding her for the 1st time and everything that I ever will experience with her (as well as the rest of my family) will be with me forever, and I can't wait to see what this next year brings, I know it will be even better. :-)

p.s. to all of the families in our Jiangxi group: Happy Got'cha Day!!! I hope you have been truly blessed with your little girls. I know we have. I miss everyone...I cannot believe it's been ONE WHOLE YEAR since we've all met and traveled to Nanchang to get our girls!!! I'll never forget the experience. Have a great year!

After Ike Update

Well, today is Tuesday...3 days after Ike hit Texas. We still have no power (we decided to drive up to my Grandparents' house in Alto, and that's where I am right now) but we do have water at my house. The hurricane hit us sometime around like 3 (I believe, but I didn't wake up until around 8 that Saturday morning, when we were getting the back end of it). There was no damage done to house (which, in my opinion, shows how much God is really watching over His children and is a true blessing). We had no trees fall (that were ours; just limbs and branches and pine needles), and if you have seen my yard, we have about a dozen or more pine trees in our front yard as well as two dogwoods, and a small tree (idk what kind...), and then about six pinetrees or so in the backyard, and another one or two smaller trees. AND WE DIDN'T LOSE ANY!!! What a miracle. However, the people who live across the street had two trees fall and one fell into our yard, but it landed at the front, and not even close to our house. The wind wasn't as bad as we thought and nothing got flooded. We don't really even have any water damage! Anyway, we plan on staying up here for a few days until our power comes back on (not really because of the no-a/c thing, [since there is a cold front in, it's only about 70 degrees outside and cooler at night], but because of the food situation.) Like all of our food from our refridgerator and freezer had gone bad, and the stores around us aren't really open. I mean, like the local HEB was open yesterday from 7 am-7 pm but the lines to get in the store were huge since they're only letting in a few people at a time, and what few gas stations are open, have excrucatingly long lines (like around the street, wrapping around the Wal*Mart parking lot, etc.) so here we are. Well, I guess I'm going to go ahead and go, I just thought I would let everybody know we're okay and thank you for keeping us as well as our family and friends in your prayers. Thanks. :-)

*Kayla*

W-H-O-A!!!!

The storm is now 700 miles across!!!!

Update

We still haven't gotten any rain, but the wind has definitely been picking up in the past hour or so.  It is still only a category 3 storm (thank heavens!) and our power has not gone out yet (again, thankfully).  (My friend's power went out a while ago.)  The water in Galveston is over the sea wall and it still hasn't officially hit yet.  My grandma and I went to go and get gas a while ago and we waited forever in line, and the prices were HIGH.  My aunt arrived and right now we are eating dinner and playing around on the internet and messenger, until the power goes out. *sob*sob*  There aren't really many updates on the storm...just that it's coming...towards us.  Well, talk to you later.  I'll try to get on if I get any more updates.  

We're Kicking It Up A Notch!

The weathermen have determined Ike is a category 3 hurricane now!!!  They have finished boarding up some of the windows.  (I say some because there wasn't enough plywood left at Lowe's to do all of our windows.  [Like I said, stores are sold out of pretty much everything, including plywood, seeing as it's something you will need during a hurricane.]  And, of course, we have to live in a house that is FULL of windows!!!)  They just left a few moments ago to head over to Paul's house to do his windows.  My aunt will be here around four, and then we'll probably decide what to have dinner and begin to isolate ourselves into our home.  As I said yesterday, we're not evacuating (though I really wish we would), so this will be my first time really to go through a hurricane.  Can't say I'm excited though!  LOL.  The water just keeps rising in Galveston (water from the "beach;" i.e. waves coming up onto the shore and beyond), and it isn't even raining here yet!  The wind flow or whatever you call it (too stressed from this storm to be technical right now) for a category 3 hurricane is 111 MPH (but we won't be getting that here, since we're more inland, but it will still be strong.)  We are expecting some trees to fall down, maybe street poles, and stoplights to get blown.  Yesterday my mom and I worked to take all of the yard toys into the shed and garage and my dad put his beetle bug and MR2 into the garage as well.  We also washed laundry and took showers/baths in case--ahem, I mean WHEN--the electricity goes out.  Well, I guess that's it for now!  Check out Kylie's blog because she is doing an update, too.  TTYL and I might log on, if I can, when they get/give us more updates on Ike.  

p.s. another reason why this hurricane STINKS:

-I have to miss the Barlow Girl concert that was supposed to be tonight!!!!  (Granted it did get postponed and rescheduled.)  But we had FIFTH ROW SEATS!!!!  For BARLOW GIRL!!!  I mean, come on! :-(  Oh, well.  At least I'll be seeing them soon!!! 

Hey everyone!  Right now, my dad and his friend Paul are working on boarding up our windows, and then they will go and board up his.  As of now Ike is a category 2 hurricane and it is supposed to hit us sometimes around 2 am tomorrow morning.  At least, that's when the eye is supposed to pass over.  The wind is already picking up a lot, and normally this time of year in Texas it would be burning up, but it's surprisingly cool and breezy.  I'm still thinking I probably would've rather evacuated than stick this one out (umm...hello?!  Who wants to be stuck without power for a few days?  Not me!!!) but we're doing good so far.  We have gas in our car tanks (even if we did have to wait forever in line at the gas station) we have food and supplies, such as batteries (although most stores are out of just about everything) and we're praying that we'll be okay.  It hasn't hit yet and Galveston Island has already began to flood.  Whoa!!!  My grandma is at our house, too, and she's going to tough it out here as well.  (Rather than her trailer, which is probably not the safest idea around.)  And my aunt will be coming over shortly.  (She lives in a town home next to a river, so...)  We are expecting a little flooding (which my street floods halfway into my yard during a normal thunderstorm), strong wind (like up to 80 mph or something!), and power outages.  :-(  Which means I may not be able to update my blog for a while...  Did I mention how much I HATE hurricane season?  Oh, well I do!!!!  Anyways...Hope to talk to you all soon!!!!

p.s. yesterday was 9/11 and it was so weird, it's like we didn't really hear anything about how it's been 7 years (can you believe it's been that long?!)  all we've heard about is Ike, Ike, Ike!  (What kind of name is Ike anyway?)  So I'd just like to remind everyone to take some time to remember the families and people that 9/11 affected.  :-(

We're Ready For Ike!!!

If any people have been watching the news lately, they know that hurricane Ike is coming our way!  We are pretty much going to get a direct (well almost direct) hit sometime late tomorrow evening/early Saturday morning, and since it just suddenly turned our direction, we've only had since about yesterday evening to get ready.  (That's when we decided we should.)  For Rita, we evacuated up to Rusk, but we're just going to stick this one out.  It is a possibility the storm will be a category 3 and we will have winds anywhere from 85-110 MPH, I believe...So wish us luck and pray for us!  (Btw, if I do not update for several days it is because the power is down.)

Painting...

I am SOOO happy.  Wanna know why?  Because I am getting my own room...again!!!!  We are moving Kylie into our old study (i.e. computer/school room), the stuff inside the study to our front room (i.e. playroom #2, lol), and Kylie's stuff from our (soon to be MY) room into the study.   All in all, Kylie and I will be having our own rooms again.  Yay!  This week we're working on moving everything out of that room (which we did yesterday), and painting it (doing today and tomorrow) and then eventually moving everything back in there.  This was a very sudden and random plan, but we hope to have it finished pretty soon. :-)  

Day 65...

Today is day 65 in our wait for LOA!  Some days it seems like the day doesn't go by fast enough; like the hands on the clock are barely moving.  But other days it's like, "Where did the day go to?" "  Hopefully, though, in this case, we will barely notice the wait until we have Karli... 

...which should be real soon :-)

1st time to eat corn on the cob

Yummy! Here's some cute pics of Keenie eating corn on the cob for the 1st time! :-)

Today...

Today we have been waiting 62 days since our LID!!! Wow!!! The typical wait for an LOA is usually 70-90 days, so we're praying hard that we'll have our LOA soon. I put a countup clock on the bottom of our page, so you can just scroll down there whenever you'd like and check out how many days we've been waiting.

This Weekend...

Hey people! Well, I'm sure you've noticed my most recent updates...the pics and the video. So now I thought I'd tell you a little bit more about them, and what we did this past weekend. Here I go: This past weekend (Labor Day weekend) we had an awesome time!!! :-) On Saturday, we went to see the San Jacinto Monument (which is the place where the Texans defeated the Mexican army) and the Battleship Texas. First we took a ferry across the ship channel and had lunch at the Monument Inn. I got something called the Fisherman's Platter, which turned out to be a really big entree with like fried shrimp, catfish, oysters, stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, and fries; on top of the appetizers we ordered of fried alligator and boiled shrimp, and I am (somewhat) proud to say that I was able to eat just about all of it...minus the fries! LOL. Then we had a blast walking around the Monument area and going up to the top, which is like 50 stories (whoa!). It was so cool, and you could see like everything for miles and miles around. It's like, wow...to walk around that place and just, you get this feeling when you remember that a long time ago, history was made; that men fought and died for our freedom. After that we hopped in the car and drove across the street to see the Battleship. That was interesting, too. It's an old ship built in 1913, and was used in the war. We got to walk by the old guns and through where the people used to stay. It was also kind of cool. I mean, history isn't really my favorite subject and it gets kind of boring, but you can't help but appreciate it a little. If you know what I mean...

Then we went to go visit my Great-Grandma, my dad's Grandmother. We hung out there for about 3 hours, and my Great-Uncle came to visit us, too. It was great! He hadn't met Kenzie yet, so the two of them got acquainted and Kenzie did really well, considering she doesn't really know either of them.

Sunday we had church, and then that afternoon we drove up to East Texas, to Alto. (Alto's like 30 miles or so past Lufkin.) My grandparents live in Alto, so we got there around 8 pm and slept over. Monday morning we woke up and drove to the next town (Rusk; which is about 20 minutes away) and we walked down this really long footbridge. (Supposedly, it's like the biggest 1 in the world.) We took several pics on there. It's really pretty, and it's a gorgeous park, and it was the most beautiful day...One thing I have to say is that the weather there (even though it's only about 3 hours from my home) is pretty different than ours. It was much cooler and more breezy, and DEFINITELY not as much humidity. Another thing about being out in the country (which being in the country is kinda a bummer if you ask me, because there's really not any stores or restaurant close by) but you can see stars at night. (I really wish you could see them at my house, but you usually just have to pretend the airplanes are stars). After that, though, we came back to the house and had lunch, packed up and hit the highway. We got home that evening and then started to finish out our regular routine week.

Cute Video

Here's Some Pics From Our Labor Day Weekend Trip