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.

Brother Ruben

Please pray for Ruben and his wife Martha. Ruben is standing next to Jody with the hat on. He is in the middle of a fierce battle of colon cancer. Jody had the opportunity to spend these last few days with Ruben in his home in Texas. In 1995, Jody first met Brother Ruben as Ruben lead a mission trip for Jody to Niguargua while Jody was at The Chapel. Jody's life has been impacted by Brother Ruben ever since. Total, they have taken 5 trips together.
Please pray bold prayers of healing for Ruben and his family during this time.

A Star is Born

Madison loves to be in the limelight and she got that opportunity tonight. Our town had a talent show to raise money to build a community park. Madison and her friend Savannah performed a duet together. They were good! What a fun way to help out our town.

Shopping in Seattle

After the state meet was over, we were able to spend the next day (Saturday) in Seattle before we had to head home. We started the day off at Panera Bread to have coffee and cinnamon crunch bagels (you have to live in Moses Lake to realize what a luxury that is). Yum! Then off to IKEA. This was our first experience at IKEA and I loved it. We shopped, let Mitchell and Jamae play in their kid land, which they had heard all about from friends, shopped some more and than ate in their restaurant. What a fun experience.



We then went to Build-A-Bear for a much anticipated shopping trip for Jamae. She had received a gift card for her birthday from the Shaw's and had been waiting patiently(?) for this weekend so she could have her first trip to Build-A-Bear. It really was fun to watch her pick out her bear (so many choices!) get it stuffed, give it an "air" bath, and dress her. Madison also got into the act by making a bear. Fluffy Bear is now part of our daily life. How fun to be 4.