We haven't even met Lauren and she is already growing up. Here is another picture that arrived today as part of our official package from Children's Bridge. More information a little later when we have time to write it.


Almost a month since my last update and much has happened. There was a flurry of paperwork that went back and forth which needed to be viewed by our doctor and approved by our adoption practitioner. We had a slight problem in the wording of one of our documents that worried our agency . We eventually made the deadline for the and with more pictures of us and our passports (for our Chinese visas) the last package of documents was finally off.

We has a very pleasant surprise that our agency was considering sending us all to China and back before the Chinese New Year 4705 that begins on Feb. 18, 2007! We will be traveling to Vancouver on Jan 31 for a 2 hour layover then another 9 hours to Beijing. We are traveling 2 days early to get a little jump on the jet lag and get organized. The combined group (28 families) will be split up to 2 different provinces and then again split across orphanages in the respective provinces. So we don't know exactly who we will be traveling with as one provincial group is going a day before the other. We do know that we will all be traveling back together. Just image 29 babies (1 family got twins) on a plane for 15 hours!

We are awaiting our final documents from China. Our visas and the Letter of Coming that states that we are formally adopting Lauren (Feng Ke Wen) and removing her from the country. This should arrive shortly. We will be focusing on 2 main things in the next few weeks. Preparing for trip, which includes packing very carefully what we need and organizing documents and money. The last objective is to get Lauren's room ready. I can smell paint already.

After nearly 18 months of waiting our referral from Children's Bridge finally arrived. At this point all we have is a photo and a brief description of her. The official package is being translated and will arrive in a few days. Here is what we know as of right now. Her name is Feng Ke Wen. Feng is her last name and Ke Wen is her first and middle names. She was born Feb 13/06 in the province of Jiangxi and currently resides at the Fengcheng Social Welfare Institute in Jiangxi, China. She has big round eyes and pale skin and weights 5.78 kgs (12.75 lbs) as of Aug 4th. Needless to say we are very excited about her arrival and plan to travel to China in the next 6 to 8 weeks. We will continue to post information as we get it.

t's with great sadness that we are announcing the passing of Smokey who was a member of our family for more than 8 years. After a routine yearly vaccine he came down sick in about 30 days. The vet diagnosed him as having a urinary tract infection and prescribed antibiotics. Smokey continued to lose weight and started to drink a lot of water. 30 days later he was getting sick a few times a week. We got him back to the vet after he stopped eating. This time he was diagnosed as being diabetic and we quickly realized that as well as being a very expensive few months, we could not care for our sick cat long term. It broke our hearts to make the decision that we needed to make. Our little buddy will be missed very very much. A few pictures will be up shortly.

Bella comes to us from the Cambridge Humane Society and is 6-7 month old female (we think she is a Russian Blue) that is all gray with green eyes, mauve pads and on the petite side. She has a squeaky meow, lots of energy and loves to play. Bandit needed a day or two to adjust to her but are getting along just great now.



An old Russian prayer reads:

Hear our prayer, Lord, for all animals,
May they be well fed and well treated and happy.
Protect them from hunger and fear and suffering.
And, we pray, protect specially, dear Lord,
The little blue cat who is the companion of our home.
Keep her safe as she goes abroad
And bring her back to comfort us.