The rest of the story....

I have some other things I want to blog about, so I'm just going to finish up the rest of our trip to Allison. Thanks for traveling down memory lane with me!

November 1, 2006

At a park in Kunming - my sister Ginny holding Lindsey, me and Allison, and our guide, Helen

November 2, 2006



November 3, 2006




November 4, 2006 - In Guangzhou, someone is tired



November 5, 2006 - At Lucy's



November 6, 2006 - Sunday Night Football - Monday morning!
You KNOW I was loving that! :-)



November 7, 2006 - Last day in Guangzhou



November 8, 2006 - Coming into our local airport - HOME!



November 9, 2006 - Siblings together at last



In Guangzhou it was hot and we were in summer clothes. The day after we got home it was nice enough to go for a walk. The next day, we got this.....



That is Wisconsin for you! Despite the snow, it was great to be home! I loved both of our trips to China, and I hope to go back some day, but in my eyes there truly is "no place like home".

Thanks again for reliving my trip with me!

October 31, 2006

Sisters!

Gotcha Day - October 30, 2006

Family of 5 (minus 1 - Ben was back home in the US)

Doesn't Lindsey looked thrilled? :-) Don't Jay and I look shell-shocked? :-) Our Gotcha Day for Allison was a totally different experience than it was for Lindsey. Lindsey's 4 year Gotcha anniversary date is coming up on May 31. I will probably blog more about it then.

October 29, 2006

My sister Ginny, me, and Lindsey at our hotel in Beijing...



Lindsey at the Great Wall....

Back to China....

....in my memories that is. :-)

Here we are at Tiananmen Square for the second time in our lives (that just blows my mind). It was Lindsey's first time there. :-)

October 28, 2006

Praying for China after the deadly earthquake...

Flashback - Oct 27, 2006

In my last post I have a picture of me, Jay, and Lindsey in our local airport on our way to China to adopt Allison. Here we are the next day, in Beijing! Happy that the long trip was o.v.e.r.!




Here is Lindsey having a meltdown on the plane right before we arrived in Beijing. Can you see why we were glad the flight was o.v.e.r.? :-) (Actually she did very well on the way there and this was the only meltdown she had on that flight. Notice I said on THAT flight. LOL)

This and That

First of all, THANK YOU to all who left such nice comments on my last post. I'm so glad I opened up and shared about this. Since I wrote, Allison said her first 2 word sentence, a very simple one, but 2 words together nevertheless - "Bye, Bapa!" (Bapa is Grandpa) She also added a word or two to her vocabulary. Tracy, I do know about the apraxia website and email group - I am a part but lurking for now since I don't even know if Allison has this. When her therapists first mentioned the word, and I did some initial research, I thought it sounded a lot like her. But now as time goes on I'm not so sure. Allison always seems a step behind her peers, but she grows and develops on a typical timeline, just as though she is 6 months younger than she is, if that makes sense. So we keep the diagnosis in the back of our mind but time will tell on that. Kit, *I* have watched the Signing Time videos and have learned from them :-) but Allison is still really not interested in TV yet at this point. (Unlike her sister, who, ahem, loves watching TV.) Anyway, thanks again!

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This Saturday I am walking in a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society with my 3 sisters. As most of you probably know my mom died last July from pancreatic cancer, just 3 weeks after she was diagnosed. So this cause is very important to me. I hesitate to ask here, but I'm going to anyway. It's totally up to you if you want to help out. So far I only have 2 sponsors! If you or someone you know is affected by cancer, and you'd like to sponsor me, you can go HERE and donate. Thanks so much!

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If you read the comment on my Draft Day post, then you already read this, but it's so good I have to say it again here:

Did you hear that Brett moved to the 'Twin Cities'?

YUP...He wanted to get as far away from professional football as possible. :)

ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL

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We've been home from China for almost exactly a year and a half, and I still have not printed out the pics from our trip!!! I thought it was bad when it took me a year after our trip to Lindsey to print those out and get them in an album. Of course with her trip, Ben took over 1200 pictures! He didn't come on our second trip (his choice) so we don't have quite as many pictures. So what's my excuse, I don't know. But I am finally going through day by day and choosing pictures to print. I thought I would share one from each day of our trip, one per day or as I get a chance to post. As I said before, I am just so itching to be in China, so bear with me as I relive our trip to Allison. :-)

Here we are at our local airport waiting to fly to Chicago and then on to Beijing! (October 26, 2006)

Awww!

I am so itching to be in China! Not to adopt again, just to visit. We hope to take the girls back when they are older, maybe ages 8 and 10 or something like that. I hope we can afford it. Anyway I have been thinking about our 2 trips to China and have been browsing through pictures this morning from our trip to adopt Allison. I just came across this one of her the evening of Gotcha Day. So cute! She's changed so much!