A gift for XuXu

After a lot of research on how to send it, we finally decided to send XuXu a care package ourselves. I finally finished putting it together today. We hope she will receive it before we get there. With the severe winter weather China is having and the Chinese New Year Holiday, there may be delays.

I made a little album of family pictures with captions translated by my dad and I made her a baby blanket and I put in a cute little bunny that makes a "boing, boing" sound when you squeeze it. My dad also graciously translated a letter to accompany the gift. I'm so grateful that he is fluent and literate in Mandarin.

Today, I also worked on the gifts to bring to the nannies and orphanage director etc. etc. and a couple extra just in case.
And over the weekend we worked on getting her room ready. Bill had been using that room as an office. So we started cleaning out my art studio so that we could combine his office with it and get XuXu's room ready. I'd say we're about 50% done. There is still so much to do in such a short time.

Such as Packing!! I have a lot of packing anxiety! I am a notorious over packer and can't do that on this trip, but still need to be prepared for everything. How do you do that!?!?!! I'm praying we find out some concrete travel days soon. The guessing is making me nuts. I need a goal line to look at to plan better. Well, we're getting there little by little. It's getting more and more real.

Last summer I found this quote at a gallery in Ojai and felt it described feelings we had for the daughter that we did not yet know, perfectly:
"For a long time there were only your footprints and laughter in our dreams, and even from such small things, we knew we could not wait to love you forever."

Some times I'm overwhelmed by the fact that those dreams will be reality soon.