One TA spotted in Boston......

Well on the Rumor Queen forum one TA has been spotted. They are in Boston, MA and their LID was 12-12-05 also. Their LOA (letter of acceptance) was sent back to China on 12-14, so hopefully our TA won't be far behind! I am going to hope that it will be within the next week. This roller coaster ride is making me nauseous!

Visa's

We got the call today from our courrier and our Visa's are on their way! At least that's one hurdle that's over. Whew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now if that TA will just come!!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE BLASZCZYNSKI FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours! Well, I meant to post this before Christmas but you know how that goes. Anyway we hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We had these shirts made originally to do our Christmas cards, but then decided to save our money and do some kind of announcements when we get back from China, so be looking for that in the months to come! The school age children at our parish did an acting out of the Christmas Story and Madison's class, the second graders, were angels and shepherds. Instructions were sent home with them on how to make angel wings with coathangers and white tights. Well, Mommy lost those instructions! So I just made up my own instructions and poor Madison, her wings didn't look like an angels but more like a bat. She was standing next to our friend Parker McWhorter and her wing kept jabbing him in the face during the whole thing. Bless his heart he kept trying to move over to get away from her wing. I am surprised we weren't called down by Father Bill to leave the service because we were all laughing so hard. Anyway, it was very precious and we all enjoyed seeing our children involved in such a special service to recognize the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ!
Our Precious Little Present-Zoey!

To Backtrack A Little.......

On December 7th we finally got what we had been waiting for, our referral!!!!! We checked Madison out of school that afternoon and she was absolutely thrilled to see a picture of her sister after all this time. She had lots of people in mind already that she couldn't wait to share the news with. Number one being our dog, Scout, who you can tell by the expression could care less, although it is more food to get dropped on the floor for her so I am sure she'll be more excited once Zoey is here! Madison also couldn't wait to tell her skating instructor, Miss Claire. I didn't get a picture of the moment, but she was so excited she even came off the ice to hug me. Madison has been so involved in the whole process. When we didn't get our referral on the 6th of December, she was devistated. She cried so hard after school that day. We are so happy that she is excited about being a big sister. Of course, being used to being the only child, she doesn't I don't think, realize what a rude awakening she is in for. But I know that she will be a wonderful big sister! Just another quick shot of Zoey's room that has long been waiting for her, and this wonderful frame that finally we can put her picture in!

More updated facts on Zoey

Late this afternoon I got an email from our agency with some "updated" medicals on Zoey. The biggest "update" is that she weighs 17lbs., not 11.9 anymore, so yeah she is very healthy!!!! And she is 25 inches long. So it looks like we will be able to, for sure, by 6-9 month clothes for her. Still we sit and try patiently to wait for that TA. Things are all falling into place though. Little by little I keep remembering things I need to take care of. I finally called and spoke with Madison's principal today to make sure she would be excused from school to travel and I spoke with the director of the daycare I want to get Zoey into. She is supposed to be calling me back tomorrow to let me know when there will definately be an opening. Our Visa's are being processed, so that's moving along. Now if I can just get everything together on the travel list and be prepared to pack, and make it through Christmas, I think we'll be ok!

Getting things in order.....

Well you wait and wait for your referral for two years and then you finally get to see your beautiful childs precious face, then the next phase......travel preparations. We received a history on Zoey a few days ago. A short synopsis...
She was found on 6-7-07 at the front gate of a local hospital and was reported to the local police. She was admitted to the orphanage with the police's permission. She received a medical check-up and her date of birth was estimated based on the condition of her cord. She was healthy and weighed 6.6lbs. She at 4 months was eating rice cereal, has juice, mashed fruit and egg yogurt, milk, she sleeps through the night (8-6), localizes to sounds and people, can lift her head up when on her tummy, and babbles alot.
It's so exciting to hear these wonderful things, but is sad too because we have not been there to experience all these milestones. We are absolutely thrilled about being able to soon hold her in our arms, kiss and hug her, and watch her thrive in a home and family full of love.
This week we returned our referral acceptance saying that we absolutely want this precious angel! We also sent off for our Visa's so we can travel to China to bring her home. Now we are back to the waiting game. At least during this leg of the wait we have packing to keep us occupied and the Christmas Season, of course we have had life in general keeping us occupied the last two years and our beautiful Madison! She is so excited about being a big sister! She's so adorable when she talks about her, I love to see that twinkle in her eye.

More Information on our sweetie!

Well how's this for a shocker- Zoey is 11.9lbs (tiny) and 23 inches long. She can hold her head up when laying on her stomach, she likes toys, she laughs out loud and smiles often, she can follow sounds and people when they leave the room (yeah she can hear!). I am just so overwhelmed. Our little angel!

I am so overwhelmed with love!

The last two days have just been unbelievable to me and Vince. Not only are we mentally exhausted from being on pins and needles wondering when we would get the call, but physically exhausted because neither of us have slept well wondering and waiting. I know that we have never received so many phone calls and emails of congratulations. Emails from people all over the world that we've never even met who've said they have been following our blog and are so thrilled for our family. Madison has been carrying around a picture of Zoey wherever she goes and honestly every so often she will open it up and say, "I just can't believe how cute she is, I wish she was here now." It just touches my heart. We have already been blessed with the birth of a wonderful amazing daughter, who I can't believe is 7 years old and now God has led us on this long, but incredible journey to Zoey who we know will be the perfect fit for our family. You can tell just from her picture, she's already sticking her tongue out at the photographer! We can't wait to kiss all over those sweet cheeks! Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive these last two years and in advance for the time to come. God has definately taught us some important lessons already and I know for me, I have many more to learn from Him. I thank Him everyday for the life He has blessed me with, I don't deserve what He has given me, but I am sure going to continue to try my best to live in His ways, wherever that takes me. I have prayed everyday since I found out we were expecting Madison that God lead me to be a good parent who will lead my children to be good Christians and love God and Jesus with all their hearts. And now more than ever I pray that same prayer because this child was chosen for our family, we already love her so much and it seems so strange that she's not here in our house. There is a void there and we've never even held her. I've said in a previous post how afraid Iam of the trip to China and still am, but now I am so ready to go get her and bring her HOME that the fear of the trip is not nearly the issue it was before! Thanks again to everyone for their love and support! Please keep all of the adopting families in your thoughts and prayers as we now wait for our travel appointments and prepare for the rest of the journey!

WE HAVE A GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got the call this morning at 9:46 A.M. Her name is Bo Cheng, she is from the Jiangxi Province and her birthday is 6-6-07, so she just turned 6 months old yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are so in love with her already. Zoey Bo Cheng Blaszczynski, our precious angel!

LONGGGGGG DAYYYYYYY!!!!!

Well Thursday has come and gone and no referral. I have to say that we are very dissappointed, but then again I guess we shouldn't have siked ourselves up to get it today, even though it seems that everyone else logged in on the 12th got theirs. We'll be just as thrilled when we get the call and even more so I think because we've made it through this day of one major roller coaster ride. Poor Madison started bawling crying when she found out she wouldn't get to show her sisters picture off at school on Friday. Oh well, now it is time to try and get some sleep again with major anticipation of tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have news tomorrow!

CCAA Update

Well, It's Wednesday night December 5, 2007 and the CCAA has updated their website that referrals have been given through 12-14-05, which means hopefully, TOMORROW WE WILL GET OUR REFERRAL. I can't believe it after these past two years it's finally here. Several people we email have gotten theirs already and it has made me cry all afternoon. God is so amazing and His timing perfect. I can't believe in a few hours (hopefully) we'll finally get to see our little girls face! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just thinking.......and worrying........

From my blogs and for those of you who personally know me, you can tell we've had quite a bit going on in our household lately, mainly because of me. Between wrecks, major surgery, epideral shots, and a major strep infection (thought to possibly be staph-MRSA THANK GOD IT WASN'T) we've had some downs lately. But the way we are, we've laughed about it really. You just have to find a way to. Vince and I have not always had the best luck, well except the fact that we found each other. But luck aside ,we are soooooo Blessed by God in our lives together. We have a beautiful, smart, fun, and precious daughter who has brought us 7 years of amazing joy. We both have wonderful families, great friends, careers that we enjoy (for the most part), and over the past two years this incredible roller coaster ride of adoption.

Last night I should've been exhausted. I cleaned my house from top to bottom, when I was supposed to be home resting and recooperating, but it HAD to be done. In the midst of my manic activity I started thinking: Am I nesting? You know when you are in the last trimester of your pregnancy and you have these bursts of energy and start feeling like everything in your house needs to be Chloroxed before baby gets here, well I think I am in that mode. Now that I pretty much know we will be getting our referral next batch, I am freaking out! I don't know how to be a parent to "children". I wonder now how I will get things done between work, housework, homework, skating, etc. How will a baby fit into all of this? I know I felt this way when I was pregnant with Madison: How will I handle this and pay for daycare and clothes and groceries and get everything done that needs to be done? What have I done?-I even asked myself a few times. Of course all was fine, we easily fell into the parenting thing and I am sure that will happen again, but this time I have to fly to the other side of the world! That scares me to death! I get very very anxious of the unknown. Even if it's just visiting a new church, or going to a party where we only know one other couple, I get very uncomfortable. Going to a whole other country, that's HUGE! Everyone I know who has already traveled has given us great advice, and I shouldn't be so worried, we will probably be well more prepared than most people because we have such great friends who've been there to help us. But now that I know we will be traveling in the next few month, I am scared. I have so much to do and will be doing most of it during the holidays, which is hectic enough as it is. If I seem a little nuts, well more so than usual, please just bare with me! I'll be back to normal one of these days! I still can't believe I get to see my sweet baby's face in a matter of a few weeks!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you God! You chose us for the journey, why I am not sure, but we are so glad that you did and look forward to it's continuation!

Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had never been one to want to dress for Halloween as an adult, but I have a husband who still likes to be as silly as a child and I have to admit it makes life fun. So starting about 3 years ago we began dressing up for Halloween. At that time we were the Spartan Cheerleaders from Saturday Night Live and Madison was Hilary Duff. Last year Madison was Dorothy of OZ, Vince was a man riding an Ostrich (which he wore to the dinnertable at Thanksgiving at my parent's house last year), and I was a Greek Goddess (hahaha). I wanted us all to be something that went together this year, but I was out-voted! Vince always wants to find the most ridiculous, crazy, goofball costume possible, but I wouldn't want him to be any other way. He makes me laugh hysterically everyday!And this year.... well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Nice Passy! He stole it out of Zoey's room. What was so funny was watching him try to get into this thing!WONDER WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Madison, by the way, is Hannah Montana, but decided she didn't want to wear the wig.

It's not a real microphone she's holding, but I promise you she's really singing, and loudly at that!
Hope everyone had a fun Happy Halloween!

CCAA Update

Hello friends, the CCAA updated their website Monday morning. Referrals have been issued for families through December 8, 2005. We are logged in December 12, 2005, so it's looking like December 2007 will be our month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a fabulous Christmas present to get to see our precious angels face. We can't wait. We will surely let everyone know as soon as we get the call! Happy early Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins and Jack-O-Lanterns!

Hello, it's fall finally, the weather is cool, it's beautiful outside, and it's my favorite time of year......Christmas is just around the corner and that means a special picture should be coming soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is Halloween time, so we had to get some spooky decorating done. We knew we needed to get some pumpkins and these were the only "pumpkins" we could find in Springville, so we headed to Hayden on Saturday (between ice skating practices) for some pumpkins at The Great Pumpkin Patch.We took the hayride out to the pumpkin patch. They have been open for several weeks now and although there were still alot of pumpkins left there weren't a whole lot of big ones left and Vince really wanted a big one. We still all found the pumpkins we wanted. There were alot of activities at the Pumpkin Patch to do: horseback riding, corn maze, trampoline, moon bounce, food, crafts, etc., but it was absolutely freezing! After getting our pumpkins Madison said she was ready to go, and frankly I was glad, I was so cold. Sunday after church Vince found a big pumpkin at Publix so now we had 4 pumpkins. We went home and each carved our own pumpkins and then all pitched in to carve the 4th one. Everybody's was unique. Vince went for the classic kindof scary pumpkin. Love the eyebrows and it has ears!Madison's is kindof similar to Vince's but it's features aren't quite as big, and Mom had to help her cut it.I went for a totally different one. I don't like scary ones, I like silly ones so I tried for that. It actually kindof looks scared itself.

Then the one we all did together turned out a little differently. It has two sides to it. One side turned out scary, the other has "Zoey" carved into it. We started out deciding that it would a pumpkin for Zoey, but the carving went awry (sp?) so it ended up with two sides.Hope everyone has a very happy, safe, and fun Halloween.Look for Halloween post with pictures of EVERYONES costumes! It should be very interesting!

VACATION, FINALLY!

Wednesday October 17th we checked Madison out of school and headed to the beach. We sooooooooooooo needed a vacation. We haven't been anywhere, just the 3 of us, in a long time, and we just needed to get away. We went to Destin, FL for several days and had a ball. We got down Wednesday night about 7:00, checked into our condo, then headed to Mellow Mushroom for some pizza. After a wonderful night sleep, we woke up to thunderstorms, which honestly we didn't mind, we were just glad to be away. We went to the Donut Hole for some yummy breakfast and then headed to the outlet mall, where else do you go when it's raining at the beach. The only problem this day was that we spent most of it under tornado warnings, so we couldn't leave the outlet mall until that lifted, so we really were there all day. That night we headed to Pompano Joes for some delicious crab legs, my favorite. Madison actually ate some too and didn't gag. Friday we woke up and again, rain. Oh well, lets do some more shopping, this time we headed to Destin Commons. Saturday morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny, clear, and cool day. It was only about 75, a perfect day on the beach. Vince and Madison had a great time running and playing in the ocean. I got sit, relax, and read a book. Oh darn, doctors orders to take it easy! This is the condo, Sterling Sands, it's awesome if you are ever looking for somewhere to stay, very nice! Also a perfect day for Alabama football, ROLL TIDE ROLL. Alabama beat Tennessee, what an absolutely wonderful October day! You can't beat that beautiful ocean sunset! That night we headed to the TRACK for go carts and Putt-Putt golf, and guess what, I won!!!!!! Madison was a little worn out after such a fun filled day. We were still watching the movie, she was watching the back of her eyelids! Sunday was beautiful as well, until the afternoon , so our beach time was cut to a half day. Madison entertained us by showing us her clogging moves that she has learned in her beginner clogging class. We at least had the morning on the beach and then played another round of Putt-Putt because Vince wanted a rematch. And what do you know, I won again!!!!! (Seriously, I never win at anything so this what quite an exciting time for me) We had a great vacation, it was too short, but isn't it always!

Sleepover Chefs and Nerf Dart Wars!

Saturday October 13, Vince and I went to see Phantom of the Opera at the BJCC. If you haven't seen it, it's amazing! I had been wanting to see it for a long time and Vince agreed to take me. It was very different from any musical he had seen with me before, not as upbeat and song/dance like. It's creepy, eerie, and operetic(?), but the sets and the performers were absolutely outstanding. I loved it. That night my nieces came over for a sleepover. On several occasions when they have spent the night Vince will get up in the morning and make a big breakfast. Usually Emily will help him cook. This time they all wanted to help, well the younger ones, Michela, who is almost 13, would rather get a few more minutes of sleep! So they pitched in with Vince and made pancakes, sausage, eggs, bacon, and cheese grits. I don't have enough aprons so Suzanna opted for my bathrobe. They played waitress and short order cook to present a fabulous A.M cuisine!
After eating, no one wants to help clean up! Instead lets strike a pose, vogue!

Sunday afternoon, after church, Vince and Madison had a Nerf dart war in the front yard. Don't they look fabulous in their gear. Vince looks especially good, the vest fits him so good since he's eight years old. It was so funny to watch them. Of course they ended they war with mom as the target, and I had no gear, I just got pelted for about 20 seconds with nerf darts. Scout got a few too, accidently, she doesn't get that she has to stay out of the way. She just wants to be in the middle of the action. Oh well no one was hurt, amazingly, and everyone had a blast, literally.