Moon Festival and More Pictures

Monday marked the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival. There are various legends surrounding the celebration as well as traditional foods. We decided to keep it fairly mellow. I made some orange peel chicken in my awesome wok. We visited a Chinese bakery and bought a red bean mooncake while practicing our Mandarin on the very sweet lady who rang us up. After that, we laid a blanket on the front lawn, did some moongazing, and talked about little Nora and how excited we are to be bringing her home. With all the craziness in our lives it was nice to take a moment to just be still.

We get asked quite often when we will travel and if there is any news. The simple answer is that it will likely be another month at least until we receive our Letter Of Approval (LOA) which is the next big step. Until then, we won't hear much of anything, and our travel timeframe could vary so much. It's possible (though very unlikely) that we will be going around the end of December. It is far more likely that we will be going around January/February.

Today I went to see the new posts on our adoption group's site and saw the following message:

I finally did a little blog updating, all photos. But thought "some" of you might be interested! Enjoy

This was written by the same person I've mentioned before and I can't tell you how much she rocks! Honestly, my sanity is being preserved by her updates. One of YinCi's friends at the orphanage has also gotten a family and I'm sure that the photos are as much for them as for us, but still. The fact that she would go to the trouble while being so busy means more than I can say. We are getting a few things in order financially to be able to donate to the orphanage and anyone else who wants to put money toward a very deserving group is welcome to do the same.


Now, for the part that you actually came here for. Pictures! It sounds terrible, but it took me a minute to be sure this was YinCi. She's getting so big!!


Squishy cheeks? Check! Gorgeous eyes? Yup! Look at all that hair! And new teeth!

I love her little foot on the table leg! I can't get over how big she's getting and how great she looks. Her lip repair is so amazingly well done you can barely even see the scar!

Come on LOA! Just get here already so I can give those cheeks a good squish!