Lily Re-Adopted and visit to the Beach/Magic Mountain

This Friday we completed our re-adoption of Lily. In California (the most bureaucratic state in the union) we have to re-adopt our child in order to get a California birth certificate. Plus, due to the great government efficiency it will only take 18 months to get it!!! Anyone who wants big government ought to think twice...

We went to Magic Mount*in recently with our kids, grand kids, and daughter in-law. As you can see, our little Lizzy is very stylish sporting her latest purchase in shades...

The kids had a great time in the "kiddy" section. We also found out that Lily is a little dare devil when it comes to rides, she loved the little roller coaster and this ride. It's a bus that goes around and around, up high then down low.

We went to Carpenteria Beach and found that Lily does not like to get her little feet in the sand. Notice in one of the pictures that she is standing on a beach towel because she didn't want to touch the sand....nor the water for that matter. But, she didn't mind putting her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the sand! Yuck!

One Year Ago Today We Received "The Call"

It's hard to believe that one year ago we received "the call". I had been watching the "rumor queen" site and knew that the call was coming. The phone rang and our caller ID said the name of our agency. I knew it was the call. The conversation went something like this. Agency " you have a daughter! She is 8 months old." Me "really? That young? When is her birthday?" Agency "October" Me "October, what day?" Agency " the 17th." Me"that's my grandson's birthday. What year?" Agency " 2006." Me "she's not 8 months old. she's 19 months old and exactly the same age as my grandson."

I asked if they could email me a picture. They could not. We would have to wait until Tomorrow to get the picture along with all her info. I waited all day for UPS to deliver that package. UPS came and picked up packages for our company, but no package. About 5 pm still no package. I began to cry. Ok I finally got a hold of my self and we ate dinner. As we were eating dinner along comes the UPS truck again at about 6 pm. There was our long awaited package with all the info. about our precious daughter.

Here is the referral picture we received along with several others which are shown on our blog. She is about 1 year old in this picture so it didn't even give us a good idea of what she looked like at 19 months.

This is the day we got Lily in Nanjing China at 22 months.

This picture was taken on May 30th of this year. Our happy little girl loves to swing!

One thing we would like to point out for those who may be working on their second adoption is that the second one was completely different than the first. In other words, God did certain things during our first adoption process to confirm His direction for our lives in the adoption but He did not do the same thing for the second, but none the less confirming of His will. For example, when we received the referral call and found out that Lily was exactly the same age as our grandson, it was God's way of showing us that he hand picked this little one to be part of our family. Jerry had been saying...."I don't care how old she is as long as she's not YOUNGER than our grandson" Well, she's NOT younger than our grandson.....she's exactly the same age!!! God does have a sense of humor and the joke was on Jerry!