HAS it been a year ALREADY???

YES - It Has!!!

This is becoming a habit that I'd REALLY like to break! There is right now, 10 minutes left in the day of June 13th, 2006. That means that it was exactly one year ago today that our dossier was delivered to China to be logged in by the CCAA for our adoption of Ruby. As I mentioned in previous posts, when our paperwork was logged in, the wait to referral was running about six months. How things change...

The good thing is that Jada keeps up busy and we are SO blessed to have her in our family. I'm sure Ruby will fall completely in love with Jada, as so many others have. But, they will share a bond the likes of which none other can boast - SISTER! Sheila and I truly believe Jada will be a wonderful sister. She seems to already love Ruby and that is saying a lot about a three year old that really has no concept of anything regarding Ruby except what she hears from us. Surely God is in the relationship already. Many times, she will unexpectedly blurt out something about what Ruby is doing at that instant in time. It makes me wonder if they already share a bond that is beyond time and distance; a closeness that cannot be separated by oceans of water or lands of ice and snow.

Not a whole lot to report except that we spent the weekend in Pennsylvania visiting with several families of our travel group from our China trip in 2003. We drove up on Friday and spent the night with some dear friends (not travel companions) in Reading. Then we headed over to Elysburg to meet up with 6 other families who traveled when we did. Thanks Dan and Des for setting up the get-together. It was great.

We met at Knoebels Park and had a wonderful day riding rides, eating all that nourishing theme park food, and enjoying the company of friends we made almost three years ago - some of whom we hadn't seen since then. Jada fell right in place with the other girls and seemd to have a wonderful time. Whitney Heise was 13 when she went to China and she was such a hit with all the families. Here are a couple of pictures I took of Whitney and Jada. One was in China in 2003 and the other one was just a few days ago in PA.

Here is another picture from Knoebels as we were about to leave for the day. Jada and I had just finished riding the Model A cars and there was a little car there that provided that perfect Kodak moment.

Well. I'm officially calling it a night. While I started this entry before midninght, some image upload problems has caused this to take WAY too long. It is now past 1:30 AM. NOT a good thing considering I have to get up in less than four hours. Oh well, that just goes to prove how much I care about you, the reader.

Until next time...