California Babymoon

We spent a 4 day weekend in California this past weekend. It was what some might call our "babymoon." What is that? It is an adult vacation for a couple prior to introducing that new little one to change your vacation habits forever! According to wikipedia it includes things like prenatal massage. Ours included wine tasting, hiking, and lots of seafood.........ha! Advantage adoption!

I dare you to take this.

We flew in to Los Angeles and went to The Getty. It's a great art museum overlooking the city and has beautiful gardens and buildings. It's very peaceful.

More!!!!!

Naomi Update!!

We received another update and lots of new photos on Naomi again on Wednesday! We got a detailed schedule of her daily routine and new growth measurements. She is a short little thing. We know what language is being spoken in her foster home, she is potty trained for the most part, sleeps in a crib, has an older foster sister who were in some of her photos (although we took her out of those on here), like toys with sound and music, and will get to stay with her foster parents until we come! The other awesome thing was the foster family took photos of her in a red headband we sent. They put it on workout style but it's the thought that counts. In the same photo, the photobook we made her is sitting beside her too. Our picture and her picture are on the front. The stickers all over her in the other photo are the ones we sent her. It was amazing knowing our daughter has seen us and are so happy her foster family did this for us, without us asking. Her  hair is still what we are calling "90's flattop" and leaves a bit to be desired but she's able to overcome it with her cuteness right now! And it looks like she loves a good dress, she's got a few waiting for her here already. She is so loved in the US and China right now!

Yellow is my color

I'm number one!

These people look easy to wrap around my finger....

Where do you want this next one?

More photos........

They said 'YES'!

We proposed with a lovely, organized mound of paperwork that included all of our personal and public history. They new we didn't have herpes and how much we still owed on our mortage, probably some questions a few people wouldn't have minded knowing prior to taking the plunge. We laid it all out there. China said, let me think about it, I need to be sure I'm ready and.......after a long, long, long, did I mention long, 3 months after Naomi's referral, they said 'yes'! We finally received our Letter of Acceptance from China last Tuesday. Never has a summer lasted so long, we pretty much went from Memorial Day to past Labor Day waiting for this piece of paper to change our lives. The bad thing was it was taking longer than expected and there were many, many people waiting, some a month longer than us, which was scary. Our Letter of Acceptance is China's official acceptance of us as Naomi's future parents and of her specifically as our daughter. The adoption is not completed until we sign the papers in China. We received it in the mail on Thursday at which time all paperwork was promptly FedEx overnighted to it's next stop. I've never been so happy to start engaging my FedEx account again. They should give adoptive families some sort of special FedEx card that affords you exclusivity. Exclusivity to what, I'm not sure, maybe a specially designed envelope or....just something to fill my need to feel special. I'll spare you the boring details but bascially the US government is working on our paperwork for the next month and a half probably and then everything back to China's government who will approve us to travel and then we set our travel dates. Our agency optimistically told us very late November to December to expect to leave! I'm thinking we leave closer to Christmas but we will see.

For the first time in 3 years we feel us becoming a family of three is going to happen, and happen soon. We've allowed ourselves to think of Naomi as our daughter but truthfully