Happy Hauntings

Our Princess and Angel!

This angel doesn't like her halo.

Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, we have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
Humbert Wolfe



What a fun holiday! Joe and I took the day off work so we could host and assist with the halloween parties for both of the girls classes. We had so much fun! We saw Hannah off on the bus and then went to Elainea's party. We helped get the kids in their costumes and then helped the teachers with the activities.
After we went straight to Hannah's school to work with her class. The kids were so much fun. It was nice to be able to see Hannah in her class and to see how she interacts with them. We had four activities planned and three parent volunteers to help. They were awesome. The party was so much fun. We were so busy that we did not have time to take pictures.

Joe took the kids trick or treating. Elainea did not understand the concept of doing more than dressing up until her big sister filled her in. Then Elainea started jumping around the house chanting "candy". Then they shuffled out the door and I stayed behing to hand out the candy. The kids were so cute this year.

I think I will look for some costumes for next year tomorrow. Hopefully they will still like them when it is time to wear them.

We hope all is well with you.... God Bless!

Looking For Pumpkins

Posing with Papa!
Mama loves her girls!

We were impressed with her determination to pull the wagon.

We caught her trying to sneak another one!

The air is crisp. The leaves are old. Rake them all - the red and gold. Scoop them up. The pile's so tall! Jump right in! I just love Fall!
S. Morrey

We went looking for pumpkins and had a blast. Elainea and Hannah were brimming with excitement over the idea of selecting a pumpkin. We went to a pumpkin patch up the street and the girls took turns pulling the wagon and picking out the pumpkins. We had so much fun! It was truly a miracle to see our girls working together. It gave me a sense of peace to know that they will always have each other.

Elainea continues to progress on her speech. She gets better and better all of the time. We are trying to set an appointment to get her hearing checked. She has been in the early intervention program, but when she turns three she will transition into head-start. Given the tough criteria for head-start I do not think she will qualify for the program. Part of me is excited, but part of me is scared at the thought that we will no longer have help for her.

The pregnancy is progressing well. We found out that we are having a boy. The baby now has a name, Hayden Patrick Rockwell. This way he will be named after his Grandpa and Dad. The name is a concatenation of both their middle names, so he will be named after them without having to name him Joe.

We continue to enjoy God's abundant blessings.

Life is Full of Surprises

A girl after her Daddy's heart!
Would she feel the same way if she were not floating on a sea of grass?

Elainea and her Mimzi.

Hannah at her first day of school.

I am ashamed when I look at how long it has been since I posted. So much has happened and every moment is worth sharing. Hannah started kindergarten and loves it. In fact she comes home in the afternoon and wants Mom to continue her school day. I really like the idea of all day kindergarten. She keeps telling me that she can not wait to start first grade so she can have more school in her day. What a difference from the scared and clingy little girl at kindergarten roundup in May.
She has an awesome teacher that we really like. I feel good that she is with Mrs. Shelley when she goes to school. The transition for me has been easier than I thought. I only cried once and that is when I put her on the school bus for the first time. Every protective Mom instinct came out and I had to force myself to let her on the bus. It felt strange to hand her over to people I did not know(the bus driver and assistant). Hannah had an adventure the first time she rode the bus home. She has a regular schedule, but she does not ride the bus home every day. On Mondays and Fridays either Joe or I are home and so she can ride the bus. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays she is picked up by her daycare. Well the first full day of Kindergarten was on a Wednesday, and they put her on the bus to come home. I was in Ogden with my Mom getting eye surgery and I get the phone call. One of the school secretaries ask me "Where would she go?" I felt the blood drain from my face. I pictured our daughter roaming the streets by herself crying and feeling abandoned. Luckily Hannah has memorized her parent's cell phone numbers. What a smart little girl we have. She was calm the whole time and requested the bus driver to call me. How grown up is that! Well when she called I was already on the phone with the secretary. Fortunately they felt they should take her back to the school where her daycare was waiting for her.
Elainea is doing well. We had her evaluated by early intervention because she is struggling with her speech. I see her get frustrated when she wants to have a conversation and she only can say certain sounds. She is making up signs to communicate words to us, but I can tell that she wants to express her thoughts and ideas. We were quite proud when she was evaluated on target or advanced for most areas, but her expressive language skills she falls short. They tell me she is on the level of a 14-month old. We start speech therapy this month and that should help her catch up.
Elainea is doing pretty well physically. She is only in the 25 percentile in height and in the 50 percentile in weight (she is totally American!) Her immunizations are finally caught up. The monthly trips to the clinic were starting to wear on me. Now for the interesting stuff. Utah has had a HUGE outbreak of a nasty parasite called Cryptosporidium. It is a fungal protozoa that is passed through fecal to mouth contact. Well these little parasites are in a protective hard cyst when you pass them through your system until someone swallows it. Then in your intestines it starts to break out of the cyst and make the poor victim sicker than sick. Well every public pool in Utah has been infected, and because they live in these little cysts, the normal water chlorination does not kill it. Needless to say we went swimming at our local pool and poor Elainea got infected first. This sickness is horrible as it gives you severe diarrhea and makes you throw up. Our poor daughter was so ill and so lethargic! It was strange to see her want to lay down instead of getting into mischief of one kind or another. She got so dehydrated that we took her to the doctor where they took a sample and verified that she had the parasite with a lab analysis. Joe was the next one to go down. Luckily he has a strong stomach so he was mostly just inconvenienced by the whole deal and had to cope with the cramping and eating near a bathroom.
I got a get-out-of-changing-the-stinky-diapers free card being that I was already fighting dehydration with my morning sickness. Yes you read that right. Joe and I are now part of that infamous statistic group where you adopt and then get pregnant. Despite our best efforts to avoid me getting it, I just came down with it. Boy is this awful! I had to go to the emergency room to get an IV because I could not even swallow without getting sick. We called my midwife who made an appointment for me to come in yesterday. Our midwife did an ultrasound and determined that the baby is no worse for the wear, but Mom is miserable. Baby is now due on April 6th. This would be fun because he or she would share a birthday with one of Joe's sisters.
My Mom did well with her surgery. The hole in her retina was surgically maintained and she has been positioning for two weeks now. Positioning involves holding your head down to the ground so the air bubble inserted into the eye settles over the hole letting it heal. This doesn't sound bad until you consider that you have to do it for 50 minutes of every hour! She has endured the trial remarkably well. We managed to borrow a massage table and put a flat screen TV underneath it. She has many friends and neighbors that brought in food. I had to keep a distance because of the outbreak at our house. My oldest sister stayed with her for the first three days and we are so grateful for her efforts. I call her daily and we are so fortunate that so many people love to help take care of her.
I have rambled on enough for one night. Take care and God Bless!

Readoption Day!

She is mine, mine and all mine! Proud Daddy!

Happy Girls!

Whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come.
Lucy Larcom

Today we went to court to readopt Elainea in the state of Utah. It was a day full of excitement for the two girls. It was clearly manifested in their behavior as they ran up and down the courtroom hall before we convened. Our lawyer had a look of panic on his face at the thought of taking these two little girls before the judge.
I called Hannah over and told her how important a judge was and how we need to respect his authority. I told her that she was to sit down at the table and color and be quiet as a mouse. I must admit that I was a little nervous on how they were going to behave in front of the judge. We went in the courtroom and I was surprised at how well behaved Hannah was. A magical transformation came over the girls and they were little angels. Imagine that from hooligans to angels in less than five minutes. Who would have thought?
The second district court recorded the adoption proceeding and gave us a copy. The judge asked us some relatively simple questions and then asked Hannah if we should keep Elainea and she very politely replied "yes". I thought we had pulled one over on the judge by sucessfully hiding the hooligan-like behavior sucessfully. He then looked at us and winked as he said, "It looks like you have your hands full." I think I turned 10 shades of red. then a sense of relief as he saw the good and the ugly. He continued to say that he thought we had a beautiful family. Then it was official, she is ours according to both countries! We then went to verify the information for her birth certificate. It has Joe and Pam Rockwell as her parents. Just think the only way people will know that she is a adopted is by seeing us all together!
We are so blessed and I can not even remember life without Elainea. Miracles happen!

Six Months Anniversary!

Hannah in her China Dress.

Elainea in her China dress.

Our Family Photo.


Twenty Little Princess Toes.


Elainea and her cousin Katy.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan

My how time goes by so fast. I can not believe that it has been six months since Elainea joined our family. In a way it feels like she has always been here. There is no doubt in my mind that Elainea being part of our family was predestined and it was God's will to build our family using both methods.

We went to celebrate our six month anniversary by eating out at a restaurant. It was the first time we have had a nice dinner out in several months. We enjoyed ourselves and Elainea was on her best behavior so all of us got to sit through dinner. Elainea was being really cute with the waitress. She wanted to learn how to carry the tray.

We need some photos of the family to send to CCAA for our post placement study. My Aunt graciously volunteered to take pictures for us. We always manage to have a picture of three of us but never four because one of us is always behind the camera. We went to her house after spending the afternoon at the swimming pool. Well Elainea and Hannah had their fill of each other and wanted nothing to do with each other during the photo shoot. Elainea was wired and did not want to sit still for a minute. We ended up with one that will just have to do. Elainea has her tongue sticking out and she is trying to get out of my lap. Hannah is not smiling and is growing her bangs out so they are in her eyes. Oh well. Our family is not perfect, but we love each other and are happy so I guess they will just have to deal with the photo we send them.

We put the girls in their Chinese dresses and took some additional pictures. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Time goes by!

I promise this pose was not coached. She is all glamour and glitz!

Waiting for the fireworks to start can be so hard when you are a kid! Elainea wasn't sure if anything was worth staying up for.

Mornings are a little brighter with these smiles around!

You are never too old to play peek-a-boo!

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott

I can not believe that the month is almost over. How times flies in the summer. We have done so many things since our last post. We have had a family reunion, a BBQ with some of the families that we adopted with in China, went to our Adoption Agency picnic. Hannah finally passed level 1 in swimming. This after a lifeguard had to pull her out of the pool when she went swimming with her preschool. She never quit breathing, but her Mom did when she found out! Hannah thpught that just because she was in swim lessons that it meant she could swim. When we knew she was going swimming with her class we told her she could go if she wore a life jacket and stayed out of the deep end. Well she made some bad choices and told everyone that she could swim as she headed off to the deep end. I hope she learned a valuable lesson from this.
Pam's Mom has ripped the retina of her eye. This will require corrective surgery. As it turns out the surgery is the easy part, the hard part is the recovery. She has to lie face down for 50 mins of each hour for two weeks! Pam also learned that her Aunt Arlene died this week. This means that out of her Dad's brothers and sisters only her Uncle Ken is still alive. We are very close to Ken and hope that this does not take a huge toll on his life. Pam's Aunt Arlene was a very kind and sweet woman. She donated a block to Elainea's Good Wishes Quilt and we will treasure it for always. She will be missed.
In the last couple of weeks several people have asked about the carrier that we used in China that worked for both Hannah and Elainea. It was a wonderfu carrier you can check them out at http://www.sutemigear.com/. This carrier can be used as a front, hip or back carrier. We bought one from the seconds page and it worked really well.
We are currently working on our first post placement study. Our social worker came to the house to complete her observations for her home study report. Well the girls got over-stimulated with the idea of a guest at our house that was not a relative. Furthermore she was paying attention to them. They were so rowdy. I figure that it is better for her to see us as we really are. We are a loud but happy family. Do not expect to come to our house for peace and tranquility. I guess that stage of life will come later, but not now with our dynamic duo!
Hannah starts school in a mere thirty days. My baby is growing up. How did it happen so fast? She has really started to mature in the last three months. I am so proud of the girl she is developing into to. She has a huge heart and a good moral compass. As a proud mother I could keep bragging for pages about my kids! They are such a miracle and I could not imagine our lives any differently. God is good!

I love this picture of Hannah.

Anyone ask for a ham sandwich?

Swimming with cousins on the 4th of July.


Fun in the sun.

The finished product.

All green and fair the summer lies, Just budded from the bud of spring, With tender blue of wistful skies, And winds that softly sing.

Susan Coolidge

Summer is upon us and so our family is once again instantly busy at all times. It is like there is an invisible threshold between spring and summer and once you pass it your family life kicks into high gear.

This last week was eventful in many ways. The house is finally complete, we celebrated five months since Elainea joined our family, and she celebrated her first 4th of July as an American citizen. Hannah surprises me all the time with her observation skills. She came up to me and told me "I am so glad that we live in America so we can have twelve-hundred and sixty-six children if we want them." I do not know where she got the number from, but I thought how profound that is. There are many personal liberties we have in America that many people have payed the ultimate sacrifice so that we may enjoy them, and in some cases take them for granted.

I am once again reminded of how I felt when we landed back in the United States. Do not get me wrong, China is a beautiful country with wonderful people, but the people still struggle under a communist-like government. I keep thinking of how blessed we are together as a family. I wish there were some way that we could let Elainea's birth mother know that she is so healthy and happy now.

I will write more later....