The Best Medicine

What's a girl to do? This month has pretty much been.....what's the word I'm looking for?? Disappointing!! Frustrating!! Forgettable!! Pretty Blah!! I think that sums it up. We thought we would get an update at the beginning of August since we got nothing for July. Now we're at the end of August and still no update or news about our ruling.

The only thing left to do is shop!!! We didn't purchase anything big, but there were a few sales today. We bought a dress and pants from The Children's Place. Both were on sale plus 25% off. I also had a coupon so I got another 15% off. How can you beat that? How about an outfit from the Gap for $2? I had a $10 coupon, so after the discounts, I ended up only paying $2.

Shopping is definitely the best medicine when life doesn't quite work out the way you want it to. Now that August is coming to an end, we hope that September brings better days or at least better news!

Lexie Slide Show

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I wanted to try out the slideshow feature on smile box. Since we're still waiting for our updates, I had to use our old pictures of Lexie, but at least I got to see our cutie patootie. We really miss her a lot and hope that we hear from our agency soon with some good news. You may need to pause the music on my Ipod player so you can hear the music on the slide show. Watch and enjoy!!

Lexie Withdrawals

It's been 47 days or 1128 hours or 67,680 minutes since our last updates. In the grand scheme of things, a month and half is not a long time. It's just the not knowing that's a killer. Our last pictures was taken in May, so we don't know if she's got a few more strands of hair on that cute head. Our last update was from June, so we can't even go shopping for her because we don't know how much weight she's gained or if she grew another inch.

So, everyone in your loudest voices, give a shout out to Taiwan and let them know that Lexie has a family waiting for her. We're crossing our fingers and toes that they hear all of us and we'll get an update soon or better yet, we finally get our ruling that we've been waiting anxiously for.

Typhoon Morakot

Even though Lexie is not physically part of our family, I can tell that she's already loved by so many people. A lot of friends and family have been asking if she's okay since there was a typhoon last week in Taiwan. Luckily, she lives in northern Taiwan, so she's safe and sound. Southern Taiwan wasn't so fortunate.

Still no word on whether the social worker in Taiwan has interviewed Lexie's birth mom. We've been waiting very patiently for our monthly Lexie fix. It's been over a month since we've seen her sweet face so we hope we get our update soon. We're definitely going into withdrawals!!

We finally picked up our crib. This is the same crib that we looked at every time we went to Baby Emporium, but we kept saying that we'll wait until we travel to Taiwan. So, Eric & I went on Saturday just to get the name of the crib because our wonderful family said that they wanted to get it for Lexie, but when we got there, it was on sale. It was $110 off, we couldn't believe it. Then, they said that there were only 2 cribs in the color we wanted left in their warehouse and the crib was being discontinued, so when they sold the last 2, they weren't getting anymore in. At that point, we decided to go ahead and buy it. Sorry, Aunty Jodi, but we have lots of other things that you can get for Lexie.

Sort of Good News

We heard from our social worker that our hearing went well on Monday. The only thing that needs to be completed is the interview with Lexie's birth mom. At the time of the hearing, they didn't have a home address for her, but now they do, so that has to be done before the judge will make his ruling.

We've been asked to start filling out our I-600 form which is required by immigration to allow us to adopt a foreign child. The good news is that once the judge gives that 1st ruling, they said that we would be travelling within 6 weeks.

Let's hope and pray that everything falls into place and we'll be headed to Taiwan really soon!

Retail Therapy!

We've been very cautious about making big purchases for Lexie because sometimes in the back of our minds, we still can't believe this is happening. Everyday we have to pinch ourselves because we just might wake up and find out this has been just a dream.

We decided to buy our carseat when we got our 1st update in May. We (actually me) read tons of reviews of different carseats and Eric drove me back and forth between Target, Baby Emporium and Kahala Kids because we just couldn't decide on which one to get. All the reviews recommended the Britax Marathon, but we still weren't sold on it. We were in Target looking at it and several people came up to us and told us that it was the best car seat they ever bought. I just didn't like the way it looked, until we found out that it came in the "Hannah" design which was brown & pink. It was made for Lexie!!

Since we reached another step in our journey, which was getting our hearing date, we decided it was time to get our next item on our list, which was a stroller. After shopping around and taking several strollers on test drives, we decided on the Maclaren XLR. It's a little bigger than what we originally wanted, but it has a lot of nice features and again, it was made for Lexie - pink & brown!! We also had to get it quickly because the price went up $15 since we first looked at it and it's gone up 10 more dollars since we bought it.

We're eagerly waiting to get our next item on our wish list, which is a crib. We have one in mind, so as soon as we get our first ruling from the judge, we will be buying that crib so that Eric can put it together and we can start getting Lexie's nursery ready for when she comes home.

Happy 5 months!!

Happy 5 months, Lex!!! We're looking forward to getting our next update to see how much you've grown. You're probably beginning to roll around now. You might be starting on solid foods soon. We wish that we could be with you as you reach these little milestones in your life, but we know that you are being well taken care of until we can finally become a family.

We're asking that everyone send good thoughts to Taiwan tonight at 9:30pm. Taiwan is a day ahead of us, so Lexie's case will be going to court at 9:30pm (Hawaii time), which is Monday at 3:30pm in Taiwan. We hope to hear from our social worker whether the judge requires more information or he plans to make his ruling. It's hard to determine what the time frame of the ruling will be. I've seen some as fast as 2 weeks and others that have dragged on for 6 months. So, keep Lexie in your prayers tonight and send good vibes to her judge and hopefully he hears us and lets us bring our sweet little girl home really soon.