bodner004

  Our clan!  This was my husband's first time watching all five kids by himself....the bathroom is a good place to "corral" them I guess :) 13 days..... That is how long we have now been home.  Amazing how life has changed. It looks so different than it did this time last month.  And different is good even if it has been so overwhelming. We know that the feeling of being overwhelmed will get better for us and for Liliana who has certainly been dealing with way more emotionally, physically and mentally than we have.  The kids have all been adjusting really well to having a new sister, too.  Lily is just crazy about all of the boys and lights up whenever they walk into the room.  She is less crazy about Gabby, but is warming up to her. Gabby has been so sweet to her and is obviously made to be a big sister. Since arriving we now have some medical answers and explanations regarding Liliana which has given us a rest of thinking about it and imaging things ...

At the "farmer's market" in our hometown - 2nd weekend home :) Prior to coming home with Liliana I had felt almost as if the "end goal" was getting to her. Like that would be the climax of these incredible 3 year long adventure we had been on.  I realized pretty quickly though how wrong that thought process was. Well, actually I don't even know that it was something I had consciously thought about, but rather something that just was . Since coming home I have been really overwhelmed by the realization that this is really just the beginning of the adventure. Like everything leading up to bringing Lily home was the warm up or maybe the "huddle" (I have football on the brain! ;) Well, today is Sunday. Our second Sunday since arriving home and our second church service together as a family. It feels like it has always been this way already. Lily is so easy going and seems to be happy no matter what we are doing as long as she is with us (well, me reall...

**let me start by saying that there are probably numerous typos in this post, but just being able to get this out there while in China was a miracle so please bear with me on this one! I will try to correct once back in the states :) ** August 29th (Friday) We made it! We have been in China a full 24 hours now. We still won't get to meet Lily for a couple of days, but we have been having a lot of fun sightseeing here in Beijing. We spent the morning at the Great Wall. It was really incredible hard to describe! We also met three other families that are traveling with us and also adopting through our agency. We have connected very easily with them and they really make the traveling a lot of fun. I have taken a ton of pictures and will post a few in this blog post. I am just hoping that this all works. The Internet and especially blogging and Facebook is quite tricky here in China! September 5th (Friday)  Okay - so I wrote that and then lost internet connection and never got back to m...