CNY

Unfortunately my photos aren't as great as I would like. I don't know why my camera took such crummy photos. I'm still trying to figure it out after having it for almost a year. Anyhow. We had a lot of fun at this years CNY celebration in our area. Eriks had a lot of fun playing with his friends Rachael, Reaghan and Riley who are Charlotte's adopted China kiddos. Rachael and Reaghan are wearing matching purple outfits and Riley is the one sitting next to Eriks. There were almost 300 people there. I got to know many more people this year than I did last year and didn't feel so quite out of place. We sat at a table with people from Lane's work. One of his co-workers with his wife adopted a daughter from China about 5 years ago. Their daughter is now 6 yrs old and in the 1st grade. The food and decorations were better this year too. I didn't take any pictures of the room because there were so many people up and around. I should've done it Saturday morning when I was helping set up, but alas I ran out of the house without my camera.
The kids did a ribbon dance and dragon dances. Eriks is the little kid with the jeans and the blue shirt under the dragon. He loved doing this. He still can't wait for his sister to come home from China but it is so far off from now I feel bad for him. After seeing all the little Chinese kids Saturday night he asked if we could go to China now to get his sister. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for SN.

After spending 3 hrs on Saturday morning helping with CNY setup, I rushed home to meet our social worker for our homestudy update so we can go get re-fingerprinted for a new I-171H. Ours is set to expire in March and the office up in Ft. Smith has a turn around time of 4-7 business days for a new I-171H. We originally had our fingerprints done in Memphis but were told to avoid Memphis and go to Ft. Smith because they're nicer and faster. The Memphis office treated us like criminals and I did not like that. The homestudy update went really well and they said there was very little they had to adjust and would have it done next week since we asked if it was possible because we wanted to get the extension for the I-171H over and done with so we wouldn't have to worry about it for another 18 months and hopefully in that time we'll have our daughter home with us.

And finally here is a photo of our gift from our Secret Pal this month. We really enjoyed it but of course we can't eat the chocolates they sent because Lane gave up sweets for Lent and I gave up chocolate. They'll have to wait until Easter. Oh well. The panda finger puppets are so cute! Thanks Secret Pal. We've immensely enjoyed our gifts!