More photos of Switzerland!
Europe Recap
3 days ago
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Jerry in Austria and Switzerland!
Jerry is spending 2 weeks in Austria and Switzerland with our friend T. They are backpacking during the day and 5 star hotelling it at night! Bums! Here are some photos!
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Some Random Pictures!
Our WONDERFUL Stroller! A Britax, the more we use it, the more we love it! Alex loves it too!
These are my youngest sister's kiddos! They are so fun and adorable! Alex really enjoyed himself! He was really not sure what that thing was in cousin Erica's mouth though! haha! He kept yanking it out of her mouth and looking it over!
These are my youngest sister's kiddos! They are so fun and adorable! Alex really enjoyed himself! He was really not sure what that thing was in cousin Erica's mouth though! haha! He kept yanking it out of her mouth and looking it over!
My Sister April, Colin and Erica! Her hubby was not home that day!
Alex totally enjoyed the snow... a little hard taking steps in though... he mostly crawled... er... snowplowed through it though!!
This is our Family Portrait!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
CyberShower Pal!
THANK YOU!!!!
Cyber Shower Pal for October!!!
Thank you so much!! I love the dinner set! It was so perfect! It is so beautiful too! I am so going to enjoy feeding Kimi with it!!!
October’s theme was meal time! She sent us a 100 good wishes dinner set in honor of a new baby in Chinese tradition from Red Envelope! It is soooo nice!!
Cyber Shower Pal for October!!!
Thank you so much!! I love the dinner set! It was so perfect! It is so beautiful too! I am so going to enjoy feeding Kimi with it!!!
October’s theme was meal time! She sent us a 100 good wishes dinner set in honor of a new baby in Chinese tradition from Red Envelope! It is soooo nice!!
To My Secret pal!!!
Secret Pal!!!
No offense to anyone else, but… I HAVE THE BEST SECRET PAL!!! She is from my DTC July 2006 yahoo group! She sent us the most wonderful stuff while we were gone and another one came today!! Thank you SOOOO much!!! October was bath theme and November was Lady bug month!!! Not only did she send gifts for baby Kimi, but she also included cards and gifts for Alex!! So sweet and thoughtful!!! Here are the pictures of the gifts from her!!
Thank You!
Thank You!
Thank You!
This is what was waiting for me when I returned from Kazakhstan!! So sweet! The bib and the onesie is for Alex! October was Bath Month!
This was the November package that I received the other day, the theme for the month is Ladybugs! Which is a symbol of Luck for the Chinese Adoption Community! The towel and Bib both have the most adorable Ladyugs, they are pink ladybugs!!! She also sent another gift for Alex!!! He thanks you, Secret Pal!! He keeps the teether with him in his bed!! :) Thank you so much for the scrapbooking stuff!!!
Thursday, October 05, 2006
New Blog!
We started a new blog because I think we ran out of space on this one! We want to post more pictures, right!!!? So click on this link!
http://cookfamilyadventuresinkaz.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
We Finally Meet!!!!!!
I know that you all just want to see pictures, so here they are, and my guess is that you are not even reading this!
We went to the baby house again and then we waited for the inspector to come, she came about 5:00pm went into the director’s office and they decided it was too cold in there for the baby. So we went into the music room, to wait for baby Alex to come. He finally came in with a caregiver. Oh my word! Our hearts just melted when we saw him. It was not at all like the other children we saw yesterday, we thought they were cute and all but no serious connection. I think the inspector could tell, too. We told her that we wanted him! The baby was actually happy to see us! He was bouncing up and down and hitting my chest with his little (big) fists! He was smiling and so happy to see us!!! He could hardly contain himself he was so excited!!! It was so precious! Jerry could hardly stand it!! He just wanted to kiss on him and stuff!!! We were completely in love and you could tell!!!
Our meetings with Alex will be at 11-12 noon and 3-4pm every day until the other family leaves next week. Then we will switch to 10-11 and the 3-4 will be the same. We are glad that we get to have 2 visits with him a day. We will bring 5 diapers a day and an outfit to put him in. They will give the outfits back everyday and we will wash them and then we can bring them again. I hope they fit! We can hardly wait to see him again tomorrow!!! We love him so much!!!!
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Becoming Adoption Savvy!
Ok all! This post is a “preaching” post. So prepare yourself…
For any of you that know Jerry and I, you know that we don’t like to do anything normal. First, we met on the internet…10 years ago when that was rare! We dated long distance for a year and knew we were ready to be married, so we planned a wedding in 5 months (a big wedding) while I finished my last semester of University in Texas! One of our mottos is "If everyone else is doing it, do the opposite!" Of course with in reason! :)
We started building our house 2 months before we were married, but we have waited more than 8 years to bring children into the family! For those of you that ask why… we wanted to be ready for them and stable, financially. We hear a lot of “you’ll never be ready” comments… we don’t believe it! Not for a second! It always amazes us that so many people say such negative comments about having kids… we always wonder “why do you have them then?” But yet for years the same people have bugged us, “when are you going to have kids?” The weird thing is that we know that these folks love their kids and would never change the fact that they DO have children, and their children bring them the greatest joys in life! So why all the negative comments!?
By now all of you know that we are in the adoption process times two! Wow! Now we really hear a lot of strange things! Because of course everyone assumes that if you are adopting you can’t have “your own”… wrong answer!! Oh dear… I have had comments like “I wish I could just share my fertility…” as if they are sorry that we are adopting. There are upwards of 70,000,000 (70 Million) orphans in the world and 100 million homeless children! For our Christian world, in the Bible we are told to care for the widows and the orphans! Because we are so hard-headed in thinking that the only way to have a family is by our own pregnancy, sometimes God allows us to have fertility problems in order to take care of some of his other children! Another comment is, “it’s too bad there aren’t any babies available in the United States.” Most of these orphaned and homeless children are not in the U.S of A.
We are on a mission in life! To help as many orphans as possible… and do you know we feel blessed and so privileged to be traveling this path! We are amazed the God picked us for this from the beginning. Jerry was adopted as a 5 week old infant and I felt called as a young child, to adopt and care for orphans around the world… when we married, our dreams joined forces. Everything we have done in life has led us to this point for amazing reasons!!
Not that it is anyone’s business why and how we grow our family, but: No we did not have fertility problems, and yes these babies we are adopting are our own! Yes, we may try for biological children at some point, but when, we don’t know, it depends on God’s plan for our family. So, no more of that nosy question, “are you going to have your own?” It is a little offensive… God adopted us, are we not HIS OWN? Yes we are! That is the way we feel about our children in the adoptive community!
We are excited that God chose us to adopt our children from the other side of our world. We are honored that He chose these specific children for us, even though we don’t know them yet. It amazes us that these children will be so perfect for our family! We are not upset or disgusted by the fact that we “have” to travel half way around the world to go get them. We feel blessed that we will learn so much about the Countries that birthed our children. In spite of what everyone thinks, these countries do care what happens to their children, that is why we are required to be approved to “have kids,” by being finger printed multiple times for the office of Homeland Security, local county and the FBI and countless other "checks" on us as indeviduals! They do not want someone adopting their children that do not really love them and will abandon or abuse them again. When we have our children in our arms all the pains of “labor” will not matter anymore! We are looking forward to enjoying the most exciting years of our Life!!!!
Ok some new vocabulary! These are the main ones that we hear a lot.
Please say Biological childen (not “your own”) And Birth parents (not “real” parents)
The children we bring into our lives will be our OWN REAL children!
For any of you that know Jerry and I, you know that we don’t like to do anything normal. First, we met on the internet…10 years ago when that was rare! We dated long distance for a year and knew we were ready to be married, so we planned a wedding in 5 months (a big wedding) while I finished my last semester of University in Texas! One of our mottos is "If everyone else is doing it, do the opposite!" Of course with in reason! :)
We started building our house 2 months before we were married, but we have waited more than 8 years to bring children into the family! For those of you that ask why… we wanted to be ready for them and stable, financially. We hear a lot of “you’ll never be ready” comments… we don’t believe it! Not for a second! It always amazes us that so many people say such negative comments about having kids… we always wonder “why do you have them then?” But yet for years the same people have bugged us, “when are you going to have kids?” The weird thing is that we know that these folks love their kids and would never change the fact that they DO have children, and their children bring them the greatest joys in life! So why all the negative comments!?
By now all of you know that we are in the adoption process times two! Wow! Now we really hear a lot of strange things! Because of course everyone assumes that if you are adopting you can’t have “your own”… wrong answer!! Oh dear… I have had comments like “I wish I could just share my fertility…” as if they are sorry that we are adopting. There are upwards of 70,000,000 (70 Million) orphans in the world and 100 million homeless children! For our Christian world, in the Bible we are told to care for the widows and the orphans! Because we are so hard-headed in thinking that the only way to have a family is by our own pregnancy, sometimes God allows us to have fertility problems in order to take care of some of his other children! Another comment is, “it’s too bad there aren’t any babies available in the United States.” Most of these orphaned and homeless children are not in the U.S of A.
We are on a mission in life! To help as many orphans as possible… and do you know we feel blessed and so privileged to be traveling this path! We are amazed the God picked us for this from the beginning. Jerry was adopted as a 5 week old infant and I felt called as a young child, to adopt and care for orphans around the world… when we married, our dreams joined forces. Everything we have done in life has led us to this point for amazing reasons!!
Not that it is anyone’s business why and how we grow our family, but: No we did not have fertility problems, and yes these babies we are adopting are our own! Yes, we may try for biological children at some point, but when, we don’t know, it depends on God’s plan for our family. So, no more of that nosy question, “are you going to have your own?” It is a little offensive… God adopted us, are we not HIS OWN? Yes we are! That is the way we feel about our children in the adoptive community!
We are excited that God chose us to adopt our children from the other side of our world. We are honored that He chose these specific children for us, even though we don’t know them yet. It amazes us that these children will be so perfect for our family! We are not upset or disgusted by the fact that we “have” to travel half way around the world to go get them. We feel blessed that we will learn so much about the Countries that birthed our children. In spite of what everyone thinks, these countries do care what happens to their children, that is why we are required to be approved to “have kids,” by being finger printed multiple times for the office of Homeland Security, local county and the FBI and countless other "checks" on us as indeviduals! They do not want someone adopting their children that do not really love them and will abandon or abuse them again. When we have our children in our arms all the pains of “labor” will not matter anymore! We are looking forward to enjoying the most exciting years of our Life!!!!
Ok some new vocabulary! These are the main ones that we hear a lot.
Please say Biological childen (not “your own”) And Birth parents (not “real” parents)
The children we bring into our lives will be our OWN REAL children!
September Secret Pal Gift!
Our DTC July 2006 group also has a Secret Pal program…
Of course there are all sorts of mystery surrounding this one! So I can’t say too much! I sent my secret pal her gift this week. I hope she loves it… it was books! Hee hee… Our theme was books, so that was not a real clue!
I received, weeks ago, already a box with 4 books in it!!!!! My secret pal was fast!!!! Here is a picture of the ones she sent!!! We love them! They are really good too!
Thank You!!!!! Whoever you are!
Of course there are all sorts of mystery surrounding this one! So I can’t say too much! I sent my secret pal her gift this week. I hope she loves it… it was books! Hee hee… Our theme was books, so that was not a real clue!
I received, weeks ago, already a box with 4 books in it!!!!! My secret pal was fast!!!! Here is a picture of the ones she sent!!! We love them! They are really good too!
Thank You!!!!! Whoever you are!
August Cyber Shower!
In July after we sent in our Dossier to China, I joined a Yahoo group mainly for people with a DTC of July 2006. This is a wonderful group of people! There are roughly 204 people that have joined us to pass the time until our referrals come next year!
Every other month we have a Cyber Shower. We are matched with someone in the group, we send them a shower gift for their baby and they send us one! It is fun and exciting to get these gifts! Mostly because we know these other women care a lot about these babies that we are waiting for! We all understand how each other feels while we wait!
In August my Cyber Shower Pal was a very sweet lady named Jo Brabham. She sent me a travel pillow, with the little eye cover (so I can sleep on the plane), a book to help us learn Mandarin Chinese, and a yummy bag of pink and white Jelly Bellies! We ate the Jelly Bellies and forgot to take a picture of them!
THANK YOU JO!!!!!
Every other month we have a Cyber Shower. We are matched with someone in the group, we send them a shower gift for their baby and they send us one! It is fun and exciting to get these gifts! Mostly because we know these other women care a lot about these babies that we are waiting for! We all understand how each other feels while we wait!
In August my Cyber Shower Pal was a very sweet lady named Jo Brabham. She sent me a travel pillow, with the little eye cover (so I can sleep on the plane), a book to help us learn Mandarin Chinese, and a yummy bag of pink and white Jelly Bellies! We ate the Jelly Bellies and forgot to take a picture of them!
THANK YOU JO!!!!!
Monday, August 07, 2006
Chinese Adoption Timeline
March 9 – Decision to adopt from China
March 13 – Signed contract with WPA, sent in I600A
March 14 – Ordered birth certificates and marriage license.
March 15 – Received Birth certificates and marriage license.
March 19 – Homestudy meeting with Jamie for “3rd” meeting.
March 20 – I600A logged in USCIS office in Detroit.
March 21 – Our 4th Homestudy meeting, Police clearance letters, Wrote Letter of Intent to Adopt, filled out Guardianship designation, Gathered pictures for Dossier. Finished questionnaire, commitment to post placements reports, financial statement.
March 24 – Letter from USCIS, with a 3 month wait for processing.
March 27 – First Draft of Homestudy
March 28 – Jerry’s employment letter.
March 29 – Medical appointment, mailed in record clearance forms.
March 30 – Blood draw for HIV and other blood tests.
April 6 – Medicals done.
April 9 – Baby Shower!!!
April 18 – Post Placement agreement signed by Adoption Options.
May 4 – Mailed Homestudy to USCIS.
May 8 – Employment letter for Christel, copies of passports.
May 12 – Received fingerprint appointment.
May 15 – Received Christel’s birth certificate back with Nebraska Great Seal.
May 24 – Redo Letter of Intent, homestudy agreement.
May 25 – Fingerprints done at USCIS office in Grand Rapids.
June 14 – I171H!!!!
June 16 – Redo Jerry’s police clearance
June 19 – Great Sealed all documents in Lansing, and fed-Exed to There’s Always Hope to submit to Chinese Consulate in Chicago.
June 20 – Documents submitted to Chinese Consulate ( for 48 hours service), except Nebraska birth certificate, which was sent to The Assistant Stork to submit (24 hour service) to the Chinese Consulate in Washington DC.
June 22 – Nebraska birth certificate submitted to Washington DC. Documents picked up from Chicago Consulate and sent overnight back to us.
June 23 – Documents received from There’s Always Hope.
June 26 – Nebraska BC received from The Assistant Stork. Assemble Dossier and make copies.
June 27 – Sent by FedEx to World Partners Adoption, Inc.
July 5 – Dossier sent to Faith International Adoptions, Inc.
July 19 – Dossier to China!!! (DTC)
August 8 - Log In Date (LID) at the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs!! (CCAA)
March 13 – Signed contract with WPA, sent in I600A
March 14 – Ordered birth certificates and marriage license.
March 15 – Received Birth certificates and marriage license.
March 19 – Homestudy meeting with Jamie for “3rd” meeting.
March 20 – I600A logged in USCIS office in Detroit.
March 21 – Our 4th Homestudy meeting, Police clearance letters, Wrote Letter of Intent to Adopt, filled out Guardianship designation, Gathered pictures for Dossier. Finished questionnaire, commitment to post placements reports, financial statement.
March 24 – Letter from USCIS, with a 3 month wait for processing.
March 27 – First Draft of Homestudy
March 28 – Jerry’s employment letter.
March 29 – Medical appointment, mailed in record clearance forms.
March 30 – Blood draw for HIV and other blood tests.
April 6 – Medicals done.
April 9 – Baby Shower!!!
April 18 – Post Placement agreement signed by Adoption Options.
May 4 – Mailed Homestudy to USCIS.
May 8 – Employment letter for Christel, copies of passports.
May 12 – Received fingerprint appointment.
May 15 – Received Christel’s birth certificate back with Nebraska Great Seal.
May 24 – Redo Letter of Intent, homestudy agreement.
May 25 – Fingerprints done at USCIS office in Grand Rapids.
June 14 – I171H!!!!
June 16 – Redo Jerry’s police clearance
June 19 – Great Sealed all documents in Lansing, and fed-Exed to There’s Always Hope to submit to Chinese Consulate in Chicago.
June 20 – Documents submitted to Chinese Consulate ( for 48 hours service), except Nebraska birth certificate, which was sent to The Assistant Stork to submit (24 hour service) to the Chinese Consulate in Washington DC.
June 22 – Nebraska birth certificate submitted to Washington DC. Documents picked up from Chicago Consulate and sent overnight back to us.
June 23 – Documents received from There’s Always Hope.
June 26 – Nebraska BC received from The Assistant Stork. Assemble Dossier and make copies.
June 27 – Sent by FedEx to World Partners Adoption, Inc.
July 5 – Dossier sent to Faith International Adoptions, Inc.
July 19 – Dossier to China!!! (DTC)
August 8 - Log In Date (LID) at the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs!! (CCAA)
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