Asian festival, Get Air and Birthday party

Wow what a crazy busy weekend.  First a full day in Portland with Zoe's dance team and then a full day in Eugene for the Asian Festival and a birthday party.

We left early to get to the Asian Festival when they opened at 10.  We watched the Lion dance first and the kids got to feed them money.  Then we walked around for a little bit, while visiting with another family that lives in Eugene that adopted a little girl from China.  We also got to reserve our tickets for a show at the end of March.  We are so excited to take the girls!

Then it was of to Get Air for a friends birthday.  It's a giant trampoline place.  All the kids got to jump, even little Hope.  Zoe found some other gymnast and hung out with them for the rest of the time doing flips.

Then off to Papa's pizza for the party.  Ryland was turning four!

West Linn Dance competition

The competition today was great.  The girls did amazing for their first time and placed 2nd!

Hope

A couple pictures of Hope  from Friday!

Dance rehearsal

The girls had a dress rehearsal with full makeup to practice for their competition this weekend.  They also performed for the parents and did a really good job.

We are adopting again!

Yes you read that right!  We are in the process of adopting again. We are also already matched and in the process of redoing our homestudy.  How did this happen you ask.  Well we are just as shock as you are because we really were not planning on starting this soon.  We knew that we would probably adopt one more time but thought it would be a few years down the road.  In January I emailed the staff at Holt with just a simple inquiry about reusing our dossier.  It seemed easy and a lot less painless than doing a whole dossier over again.  So I took a look at Holt's photolisting and seen a little girl that was 6 months younger than Hope.  I clicked to read more about her and learned that she had dwarfism but was otherwise healthy.  The next day we requested to review her file.  Our social worker didn't grant it right away and we spent the next week researching dwarfism and talking to other families that have raised children with this SN.  We finally got to see her file and were in love.  Yes she was tiny but oh so adorable and healthy.  She is in a foster family and located in the same city that Hope is from.  We spent the long weekend deciding whether to move forward.  Then on the Tuesday after Martin Luther King day we submitting our application to Holt and told them of our desire to adopt her.

We have told most of our family but are still keeping it a secret and will reveal in the early summer or later spring.    We are in the process of doing our homestudy, then will submit for our i800 extension, then it will be ready to log in.  At that point we will be officially waiting for our LOA.  We think we will travel in either November or December.  Holt requires a year between placements so it will be after the date we adopted Hope.  We can't share her picture yet but as soon as we have LOA we plan on sharing on the blog.  So stay tuned!!

Zoe's second OSU performance

Today Zoe had her second OSU performance.  She was so excited because she was going to get to do her roundoff backhandspring.  Also Aunt Geneva, Uncle Charlie, Grandma and Grandpa were going.
She fell on the landing and was so upset for a very long time.  She finally calmed down after awhile but really never got over it.  Hope was all dressed up in her Beaver clothes for her first OSU event.

Hope's first Haircut

It was time to finally get Hope's hair trimmed up. She really did good hold still for my hairdresser as she evened out her hair.