Our SON!!!!!!!!!!

There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.

Mother Teresa

Tim, Nora and I are are proud to announce the referral of our baby boy, our son and brother

Haven JiaBo Anderson

He was born on March 2, 2009 in the Jiangxi Province, China. He was exactly 9 months old today, our referral day, Dec. 2. He is healthy, happy and a deep sleeper. He is currently residing in the Poyang County Social Welfare Institute, waiting for us to come and take him into our arms to carry him home.We expect to travel in 6-8 weeks.

Slumber softly little one beneath the moon and stars.

Happy Spring Festival

The Spring Festival or Chinese New Year as we know the holiday here in the US began over four thousand years ago to represent the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
Traditionally we clean our homes and hold a feast to celebrate a new beginning. The dragons, lions, lights, and firecrackers became part of the celebration as people say that it all started one winter long ago when a wild beast attacked one of the villages. At first, everyone was afraid of the beast, Then they discovered what the beast feared: It did not like loud noises, the color red, or bright lights.

Spring Festival began this Monday. On Sunday, the eve of Spring Festival, Our family celebrated by participating in a community performance and having a meal with friends. Nora performed and we participated as her proud parents. Nora has been preparing for months. I am including a picture of Nora's preparation. ShuQi is applying her stage make-up. As soon as I have a chance to pull more photos off of my camera, I will post a few from the performance.

On Monday and today, we have the opportunity to continue our celebration, school has been cancelled because of snow (which is admitting not very spring like)! Nora made some Chinese Lanterns as I took down the Christmas tree (yes, it was still up). Today we plan to put up more Festival decorations as well as clean house and make soup. Cooking and soup making has become a new area of interest of Nora's as well as learning to play and practicing the piano.

On the adoption front, it looks like March 1st and March 2nd of 2006 have received referrals this month. With a log-in-date of March 29th, our referral does not look to be anytime soon. We do not expect to see referrals until after the Festival, at the end of February.

Here are few of my favorite pictures from the holidays:

My family enjoying the Nutcracker.

Nora preparing for Santa.

New Year's eve at home with friends.

I'm Blogging!!

Welcome to andrea's corner of the world. I am adding this expressive space to the long list of everything else I have to do. My first priority on my list is my daughter Nora followed by my husband Tim.

The three of us (four if you count Hoss, our spaniel) are currently waiting the long wait for another addition to our family from China. I've begun this spot so that we have a place to announce to the rest of the world when we receive our referral. After nearly three years of waiting, I do believe that we will receive a referral this calendar year. Right now, I think that will be in May (according to china forecast) and we will travel this summer. We'll see about that though. I have learned to be cautious and ridiculously optimistic with this second adoption.