New Traditions

We started a new family tradition this Christmas. Every holiday season we are going to purchase a new ornament in honor of Kai. We dediced to leave it hanging all year to remind us of her & purchase a new one the following season. Once she is finally home with us she will be able to hang her ornaments and she will know she has been in our hearts all along!

This beautiful Pagoda ornament is the one we chose for Christmas 2008.

Kai's Second Gift

Kai had a gift waiting under the Christmas Tree at my parents. It was the cutest UPS Package Car peddle car. It even had a personalized licence plate with her name on it! Now all we need is her here to ride it.

Kai's First Present

Today Kai received her first gift ever. Maris gave her the most adorable stuffed turtle. It is a character from the children's book Counting in the Garden. The turtle was so pretty & had the most beautiful illustrations on the hang tag. I found a website for the author & she has tons of wall art as well. I think I will have to order the Trey the Turtle wall art!

"A girl should be two things: Classy and Fabulous." ~Coco Chanel

It has been really hard not to buy every great deal I come across. Especially during tax free weekend when sales were abundant. I have to keep reminding myself (or Kendall keeps reminding me) that it is going take at least two more years before we are able to get her. I have bought a few...well, okay maybe more than a few...things. Here's some of my favorites.




My new favorite children's clothing is Tea Collection. They have really cute dresses that can be worn in the summer & then you can put leggings & a long sleeve t-shirt for fall/winter.

What did we do before Craigslist?

We have narrowed the nursery crib bedding down to three collections from Javis Davis. They also have gorgeous swivel glide rockers that can be covered to match the bedding. The only problem is that they are $1500! I decided to search Craigslist for one in good condition & have it recovered with extra fabric from Javis Davis.

Last week I did a quick search on Craigslist & a swivel rocker popped up that had been listed 5 minutes earlier. The desciption said "like new condition, Ethan Allen swivel glide rocker". We went to see it a couple days later & even though I couldn't get him to come off of his asking price...we scooped it up in a matter of minutes at the bargain price of $275!!! He told us they had just moved & didn't have room for living room furniture anymore. He said it's less than two years old & the most that had ever sat in this chair was two of his wife's dolls from her collection. It still has the Ethan Allen tag/receipt attached & it was originally over $1300. I am so excited at how great it looks & we won't even have to get it recovered because it looks great with all of the fabric swatches for the bedding.

We moved it up to an extra bedroom until time to go in the nursery. The only problem is that Tucker thinks we bought it for him to nap in!

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names”, Chinese Proverb

As you can see we have our blog titled "Our Journey to Kai Coleman". I am not yet convinced this is her name. I can certainly change the title if need be! Kai means "ocean" in Hawaiian & "forgiveness" in Chinese. Coleman is my dad's middle name. The only problem I see with this name is that it would be Kai Walker...Sky Walker...Luke Sky Walker??? I don't really want her teased about Star Wars all her life! Our second choice is Neely Cole...which would actually be a double name. I am going to see which name everybody votes for. Maybe we haven't even found the right name yet.

No Messy Ink?

As part of our home-study we had to be fingerprinted & send them off to the SBI for a criminal background check. We had to go to the Chatham County Sheriff's Department to be fingerprinted. I was fully prepared to come away with black ink all over my fingers, looking like I had just been arrested. However, (to those of you that think we live in the middle of nowhere) Chatham County surprised me with a new, state of the art fingerprinting computer. You just place your hands on the screen & it scans the image in & then prints it out. I actually found it quite difficult though because I have very short fingers & couldn't really reach the spaces I was supposed to put each finger in. Here's a few photos of us getting our fingerprints.

Trying to Stay Organized!

I decided I had to have a way to keep all the paperwork organized. I found two different file folders to keep it all seperated. For the home-study I went with this Vera Bradley, Take Note Tote. I really love it because it has handles so it's easy to take everywhere we have to get something filled out.

I found this one at Michael's and thought it would be perfect for the dossier to China. It's red, gold and black which the Chinese beleive to be colors that bring good luck. We definitely need all the luck we can get!

Wow, We're Paper Pregnant!

Today we were assigned our Asia Family Coordinator. She sent us all the information to get started on our Dossier to China (this is the mountain of paperwork that will actually be translated & sent to China). There are actually two sets of paperwork to be completed. One set is for our social worker who will complete our home study and the other is for the actual Dossier. I had NO idea there was this much to do & fill out. I know why they call it paper pregnant now, it will take us nine months to complete everything!

We're approved!

After much consideration of an adoption agency we decided on America World Adoption Association. They are a Christian Organiztion and are highly recommended. They have been in business for almost 15 years and have had thousands of sucessful adoptions from China. We submitted our application last week and today we got the great news that our application has been approved. Now the very long, very expensive wait begins!