I'm so excited! We're going to be celebrating Tet at my house :) My husband and I were throwing around the idea of having people over for Tet and this morning I realized that it's in twelve days!!!

So I put together an evite with a 'Happy New Year' theme and sent it out. We decided to limit our guest list to family only because we just don't have the space for many people. It's going to be tight as it is. It makes the thought of having a larger home even more exciting~then we can have more people over for Tet next year.

I'm... more

Sandra over at the International Adoption Blog pointed me in the direction of findyourspot.com.

The site states that:

FindYourSpot is the best way to discover your perfect hometown... just tell us your ideal and we’ll find the best candidates for you. We don’t have the bias of your Aunt LuLu, we don’t have mounds of useless data for you to sort through, and we don’t have the gall of "best places" lists that tell you what your priorities are. What we do have is the most accurate automated recommendation system and the most pertinent information on the places we recommend.... more

Can a girl have too many bows? Not my Ella!

My obsession started in June, when we received the phone call that we had been matched with a little girl! And the girls at my agency were freaking out because they were so excited about her massive head of hair :) I was told to go right out and start buying barrettes. They emailed her pictures to us and I got to see the potential blank bow canvas of hair right in front of me.

I got some of the baby bows which Velcro into the hair, but they’ll never get used... more

Wanted: Cute home (larger than the current one) in a diverse area with excellent schools and friendly neighbors. And it needs to be closer to my family. And affordable. With low taxes ;)

Does anyone know of a home like this? sigh...

We're talking about moving and it's been a very stressful process so far; and we haven't even put our house on the market yet! We currently live in a very diverse area that has absolutely zero community appeal. We've been here almost three years and have met one neighbor. One! In the suburbs! It's... more

January has flown by and I have had so much fun getting to know the ropes around here! I really am amazed by the other bloggers and all of our readers~what an amazing community this is. Anyone looking for information on any facet of adoption would be hard pressed to leave adoption blogs without learning something new.

I really appreciate the opportunity I have been given to write this blog. I became quite addicted to reading blogs during my wait pre-travel and I understand how important it is to hear from others who have been there, done that.... more

I’ve been reading about attachment parenting for years; long before I became a mom. I was always interested in the topic and the subject of baby wearing just seemed to make sense to me. Now that we have Ella, it makes even more sense.

Before we left for Viet Nam we purchased a front carrier that mom or dad could use and a pouch sling that was my size. We only used the front carrier in country and I would consider it an absolute essential! She loved it, we loved it, it was all around wonderful. We kept... more

As I was searching for some resources recently I was struck by something that appeared on my computer screen. I googled “vietnam for kids” and at the bottom of my results page I saw:

Vietnam Children at Amazon.com

I instantly tensed before I realized that it wasn’t an anti-adoption, how much did that baby cost situation. I’m sure that Amazon ads pop up with whatever it is you’re google-ing. But it made me realize how much on the defensive I am. There I was, sitting in my living room on my laptop in the middle of the night... more

I cut my baby’s hair!!! I know this has nothing to do with the adoption process in Viet Nam, but I just couldn’t help it…can you stand how cute she is?

I mentioned her hair in an earlier post, so you know that she has always had a wild, thick head of hair. She had one haircut (based on what we can tell from pictures) in the baby center before we got her. I remember getting that post-cut picture in my email and wondering if they had actually cut her hair. It was pretty jagged, but now I can empathize with whomever tried to trim the bangs... more

We have an eating machine on our hands! Ella was showing such a strong interest in eating what we were that we decided to see how she did with some “big girl” food. Well, let me tell you, there will be no stopping this baby! She will eat whatever is placed in front of her with no hesitation. And she feeds herself too (which is just too cute!)

This picture was taken just a few weeks ago when she was eight months old. Now she’s a whopping nine months old and my baby’s growing up too quickly, but that’s for another post… Anyway,... more

I'm still shocked by the joy in her little face in this picture. This was taken in our hotel room in Viet Nam after we returned from our Giving and Receiving ceremony. We had been a family for approximately four or five hours at the time. This baby had been lovingly handed to us by her caregivers, taken to the Department of Justice for the Giving and Receiving ceremony and then taken back to our hotel in Hanoi. Although throughout this first day together we didn't get any tears, we also didn't get any smiles.

That... more