Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken the end of November. Here are just a few. Hollie Colwick is an adoptive mom and member of our church. She does a fabulous job!!! Her website is www.holliecolwick.com. We would highly recommend her.

2012 is now behind us! I can't believe how little I blogged in 2012... so you guessed it, a new year goal will be to post at least monthly. As a way to redeem myself, I pulled a few pictures from our year. I take hundreds of pictures each month, so this is a very small display of our lives... but it is better than nothing! We are looking forward to 2013 and the addition of our baby girl, Hannah Faith. Enjoy the pictures!

Timmy gets a big boy bed... and continues his obsession with electronics.

Emma turns into a "little mommy" and carries her babies everywhere she goes. She also gets lots of practice bossing her brother around.

A friendly little hug makes Timmy cry. This is the year of many tears from Timmy boy.

Sibling love...

Happy Easter 2012

 Baseball season: Andrew and Matthew kept us very busy at the baseball field this year!

 Warmer weather= more hikes outside!

Happy 7th Birthday, Andrew

Matthew graduates from preschool. My big boy is ready for Kindergarten.

May 21, 2012: the day I first saw my daughter's face (5-21-10)

Timmy hates to sleep and would often fall asleep after hours of screaming. We never knew where we would find him. I know you can't see the shirt, but it is his dump truck shirt. He had to wear it every.single.day or he would scream his lungs out. I will always remember this year as the one where I didn't sleep (because he didn't sleep) and the year where he only wore 3 shirts the whole summer. (the ones with trucks on them!)

Summer fun:

A visit from Brandon and Evan

Hatfield cousins

Happy 5th Birthday, Matthew

The Hatfield Family

4th of July

I went to China this summer and met my daughter. She will be coming home in 2013!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Emma Grace!

 2nd grade for Andrew and Kindergarten for Matthew: 1st day of school

Might be one of my favorite pictures of the princess:

Happy 3rd Birthday, Timothy!

Gotcha day!!! In our arms for 2 year! October 23, 2012

 Happy Halloween:

We had a very Merry Christmas! Santa brought this trampoline for our basement and a new Wii. The kids were so excited!

We had a great year! We are thankful to experience so many happy memories with our loved ones. We are looking forward to 2013!

Timmy's Birthday

My handsome little man is 3. I feel like I have aged in dog years since his birth.

 

 

When Timmy is happy, he is really happy, talkative, and so stinkin' cute you can hardly stand it. When Timmy is rotten, oh my goodness... it takes every ounce of patience to deal with the screaming temper tantrums. Thankfully, we have had a lot more happy days than grumpy days lately. He recently started preschool (with his sister) and this has been a great thing for him! He is coming out of his shell and his little personality is emerging. I see a perfect mix of Andrew and Matthew in Timothy. Timmy turned 3 in October. I can't believe my youngest child is now 3. For the last 7 years I have always had a 2 year old or younger. It has been exhausting! But now these days are disappearing. Our house is free of diapers, baby toys, bibs, sippee cups and all the other necessities that come with itty bitties. And I am one happy mama! I love the ages of my kids right now and feel that I can actually step foot in Walmart and not make a scene that will have people talking for weeks. My kids listen (mostly) and act right (mostly). It is a nice place to be!

 

Here are some things I don't want to forget about my Timmy boy at this age:

 

*He has a blanket that he carries EVERYWHERE. I don't even want to think about what would happen if it goes missing. And he does NOT like other children to touch it!

 

*He hates to sleep. It kills me. Every night, our bedtime routine consists of Timmy screaming his lungs out (pretty sure the neighbors can hear) and standing at the top of stairs for a solid hour. We have just recently started sleeping through the night, but before that it was not unusual to wake up to a screaming Timmy. We both work, so we have early mornings around here... you guessed it, we wake up to a screaming Timmy. (Now do you see why I feel like I have aged in dog years?)

 

*He loves all trucks... excavators, monster trucks, dump trucks. BUT, he will certainly have a tea party with his sister or feed "his baby" in the high chair. Timmy and Emma are so gender neutral, they will play anything!

 

*His best friend is Emma. They spend so much time together. They talk constantly to each other. Sometimes I can understand them, sometimes I can't. It is obvious that they understand each other. I really hope these 2 stay close forever. I often wonder how Hannah will effect that relationship.

 

*Timmy loves to cut the grass with his fake lawnmower. He will spend hours outside walking up and down the grass, all around our yard.

 

*He loves to ride his bike and his little car. He says he is going to Costco, or Walmart... and he will play in the garage by himself riding his bike all over the place.

 

*We have no easy transitions with Timmy. Trying to get him to wear underwear... nightmare. Trying to get him to wear pants when the weather got cold...nightmare. Winter coat... nightmare. You get the picture.

 

*He potty trained himself when he was 2 years 9 months old. I tried and tried when he was 2 and a half, but he wanted nothing to do with it. He would scream when he saw the toilet (see previous comment about transitions). I got back from China this summer and was dreading having to tackle potty issues again. He woke up one morning and asked to go to the potty. That.was.it. Potty trained from that moment on. I did NOTHING!!!

 

*At the moment, Timmy has a fear of the naughty list or a phone call to Santa. When he is happy he says "I not crying, I on the nice wist."

 

*he uses all of his pronouns incorrectly. I NEVER correct it because I think it is too adorable. "what him doin?" "Her took that from me!" oh my goodness, so cute.

 

*he loves peanut butter, chicken nuggets and junk food. He also likes most fruits, yogurt and applesauce. Mostly, we live on peanut butter sandwiches.

 

*He wore 2 truck shirts all summer. I had to do laundry constantly. We were finally able to distract him into other clothing. The dump truck shirts are now in his memory box!

 

*just recently, he started saying "that hurts my pee-wings (feelings)" when someone hurts him. So if you accidently bump into him, put his shoe on wrong, etc. you have hurt his feelings. He has no idea what that means, it is so funny!!

 

Happy Birthday, Timmy! We love you to the moon and back!

 

 

Give-a-way!!!!!!

As I mentioned in my last post, we have been blessed with a fundraising page from Reece's Rainbow. I am going to give you 3 GREAT REASONS why donating to our adoption is a WONDERFUL idea!

First....

You will be helping us to bring this precious little butterfly HOME! She has waited 3 years for a family and has gone through so much in that time.

Second...

All donations to Reece's Rainbow will be tax-deductible.

and finally, look at all of these awesome give-a-way items that have been donated!!! For every $10 that is donated, we will enter your name to win one of these awesome items donated by awesome friends. First name drawn gets first choice, second name gets second choice, etc. until we run out of items :)

Item #1: $100 Amazon gift card

Item #2: $100 La Bella Salon gift card (hair salon in Louisville, KY)

Item #3: $50 Mary Kay Gift card

Item #4: beautiful Thirty-One items!!! We have a black purse, flower and zippered pouch. This picture does not show how beautiful the purse is!!! The flower looks adorable on the purse (but it would also look adorable on a little girl's head!)

Item #5: 3 iron candle holders

Item #6: a handmade, wooden cutting board. It is beautiful, but I don't have a picture of it yet!

Item #7: a basket of hair bow accessories (headbands, flowers and bows) I will let the winner pick what colors and combinations they want because I have many to choose from.


Thank you to our friends and family that donated these items!!! We will draw names on December 10. Every $10 donated = one chance.

To donate please click HERE.
Donations can also be made by check. Please make checks payable to Reece's Rainbow and mail to:

Reece's Rainbow
PO BOX 4024
Gaithersburg, MD 20885

Please write "Isabella- Fischer Family- KY" in the memo line. (Her name here will be Hannah, but her English name in China is Isabella)

Thank you for helping us bring home our daughter!

Adoption update: Our dossier is at the Embassy of China getting final authentications. It should be in our hands at the end of this week. Once we get it, we will send it on to our adoption agency who will then send it to China! We will be given a log in date (the day our papers will be entered into China's system) At that point we wait for our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and this will take 1-3 months. After LOA, we have another small round of paper work to complete and should be on our way to China 1-3 months after that (after Travel Approval is issued)!!!!

Fundraising!!!!

We have been blessed with a fundraising page from Reece's Rainbow! Reece's Rainbow is an organization that brings awareness to down syndrome and other special needs orphans around the world. They advocate for the children and then help to fundraise the money to offset the HUGE cost of adoption. We were happy to find out that our Hannah (who is currently named Isabella in China) was listed with this organization.

We are asking our friends and family for help in bringing Hannah home. First, we would like to ask you to pray for our girl. She is getting stronger everyday (thank you, Lord!) but is still a complicated and fragile case. The surgeon in China has agreed not to operate on her and this is wonderful news. However, it means that this adoption needs to move quickly so that she can receive the medical care in the States that she desperately needs. (For a list of her medical needs, please see previous posts). Second, we would like to ask for you to consider giving financially to her adoption. All donations through Reece's Rainbow are tax deductible and we will receive the funds for our adoption. To donate via paypal, you may go HERE. (this link takes you to our Reece's Rainbow fundraising page)

If you prefer to donate by check, please make checks payable to Reece’s Rainbow and mail to:

Reece's Rainbow
PO Box 4024
Gaithersburg, MD 20885
Please mark "Isabella- Fischer Family-KY" in the memo line.

Thank you to everyone that has given us encouragement along this journey. Adopting Emma was such an amazing experience and we love the way she has transitioned into our family and is adored by all that meet her. We know that Hannah (Isabella) will be another wonderful addition to our family and we look forward to the day we get to hold her in our arms!

Just for fun, we will be holding a raffle! I am still in the process of finalizing raffle gifts, so check back to see what we will be giving away. I wanted to get the fundraising page up and running. Even if you donate now, I will still include you in the raffle. Check back for details!