JESSE IS 14!

Today is Jesse's 14th birthday! It doesn't seem possible that he is 14. It seems like just yesterday he was 2 years old running around with his cute little glasses on saying, "great job Mom, great job!"
We had a fun day celebrating starting with a family breakfast, lunch out with mom, special birthday dinner and cake, and presents. Jesse is looking forward to a party with his friends on Friday.

Happy Easter!

Happy Half Birthday Ming!

Today Ming is 12 1/2! I wonder if he has any idea that today is his half birthday. In true Bowser fashion, we celebrated with a special dinner and a half of a cake. Since Ming isn't here to pick his dinner, we thought we would celebrate at our favorite chinese restaurant, The Tree Cafe. We have established a relationship with the owner and her daughter who have moved here from China. They helped us during Jamae's adoption when we needed help understanding some of her paperwork which was in Chinese.

Today the daughter, Leanne, offered to translate a letter we wrote to Ming explaining to him about how we want to adopt him to become our son. One of the most important letters we have ever written and he will ever receive. We will be sending him the letter with a package we have put together as soon as China gives us our Referral Acceptance. This is the next step of our adoption. We have been waiting for this since our dossier was logged into China which was February 4. (Really we have been waiting since September when we committed to adopting him but China works from the day our dossier is logged in.) We have been told that the average wait for this step is 2-3 months from log in date - we have been waiting 6 1/2 weeks so far.

After we got home from the restaurant, we continued the celebration with half a cake.
Happy 12 1/2 birthday Ming! We pray it's not many more days before we can bring you home.

The Wiz of the West

This week Madison had the opportunity to be part of a Community Theater Production called "The Wiz of the West".
Missoula Children's Theater came to town to put on the play in one week. Monday afternoon, 80 children came out to audition for 50 parts. Madison received the part of a Buzzard. Practices followed each afternoon and evening that week and on Saturday they gave two fantastic performances. It was so much fun to see Madison on stage. She's a natural.

Update on Ming

We received new pictures of Ming! Doesn't he look great? We were so encouraged to see how healthy he looks. It was so exciting to get this small glimpse of him. We are still waiting to hear from China about when we can go and bring him home. The waiting is so hard. We were really hoping to be able to travel the first two weeks of April while the kids were on spring break but that does not seem possible now. Please pray with us that we will be able to travel in May. Jay is taking a mission trip to Africa in June, which we are committed to him going on, but we are also committed to him traveling to China with us. Our fear is that the two trips might collide and then we would have to put China off until July. So, please pray that we will be to China and back before Jay leaves for Africa on June 14.

I'm sure you will hear our shouts of joy when we hear from China, but just in case you don't we will post the good news.