Happy Thanksgiving

Jon and I decided to drive up to LA and go to Universal Studios together. It was a lot of fun spending time as a couple and a nice distraction from obsessing about the fact that our adoption paperwork was waiting for the Thanksgiving holiday to be done to continue on to Tawain. (was that a run on or what?) Ha ha.

Here are the War of the Worlds and Psycho movie sets we saw:

Here are Jon and I at the Kwik-E-Mart. Thank you, come again!:

Paperwork Dance

So we finally have the paperwork out of our hands. It was not easy. First the whole packet was sent to the wrong address so that set us back a day or two. Then when we were downtown getting everything notarized and authenticated we found out that we had to send one thing to Sacramento and it would take 2-3 weeks!!

Thank God for my parents! They offered to drive to Sacramento and walk the document into the capitol to get authenticated so we overnighted it to them. When I finally had the whole packet back and was at Kinko's copying it all without taking out any staples (they are weird about this and it was over 80 pages!) I noticed that Jon's name was mispelled on one form!

Well, I almost had a breakdown! I had to wait for the next morning to call up to JOH and they said to leave it-as long as the notary had our names right, it should be fine. So I finally FedExed everything out Tuesday night. Sigh

What's In A Name?

We have decided on a name for our duaghter. She will be named Abigail Heng-Chen Wetmore, or Abby for short!

Abigail is a Hebrew name meaning "Father's joy". She is already making both her father and her mother joyful but we also hope she will be a joy to her Heavenly father as we teach her about God and how to walk in His ways. We love the story of Abigail in the Bible. 1 Samuel 25

Heng- is pronounced the same as similar looking word that means "eternity". But this particular character has its root tied to a very famous ancient fable, and it is the name of the beautiful, immortal Moon goddess. She represents eternity and elegance. So, in essence, the word communicates the idea of a beautiful lady.

Chen- It's literal meaning is "flourishing vegation" and communicates the meaning of abundance.

Wetmore-The surname of a family who has been praying that God would bring the perfect baby to complete their family and is now thrilled to be able to name her!

Our Daughter

Another possible title for this entry: EIEIEIEIIEIIEIEIIE!!!!!!!!!

We are thrilled to announce our little girl referral!! We are so excited and still in a little bit of shock.

Friday, Nov. 14th I was driving home when Jon called me and asked me if I was somewhere I could pull over. I was almost to the house so I said I would be right in. I suspected we had moved on the wait list, because that is always BIG news at our house.

When I pulled in the drive, Jon ran out to meet me. I asked, "Was there a referral?" Jon nodded and said, "There was a referral-it was OURS!!"

Well we just held each other and looked at our little girl's face for the first time. Sigh. I have no words to describe it and I have a Master's in Literacy!

Here are the facts:

Given Name: Li, Heng-Chen (Li is the family surname)

Birthday: October 24th

Weight: 5 lbs. 7 oz.

Height: 18 in.

Check out our adorable baby girl:

Who's Who?

We thought we would do a "Who's who" post so that when we talk about our family-you can have a face to put with a name. These are just some of the beloved people who are in our lives and are anxiously awaiting our little girl along with us.

Jon's family who live in Seattle: 
Sara and her parents who live in Fresno:

Here we are with Jamey, our brother who lives in Phoenix and works at ASU:

Here is our sister, Rachel and her guy, Jonah at Disneyland:

Here are some shots of Mom's horse in Fresno. His name is Gabe and we all went to love on him when Jonah was visiting this summer.

Of course there are more family members and friends praying for our new baby but these were just our immediate ones!

We are so excited to be near the top of the waiting list for a baby girl from Taiwan. Jon and I have been married for almost nine years and we've decided to add to our family through adoption instead of biologically. We will be quite a "United Nations" family with my Mexican heritage, Jon's Irish heritage, and our daughter hailing from Taiwan!

We live in sunny San Diego (the above picture was taken in February!) where Jon works as an architect and I work in the Academic Support Program at Santa Fe Christian School. Go you Eagles! We live close enough to Jon's firm that he is able to bike to work every day. My commute is a bit long but I work at Solana Beach and I can stare at the ocean every day so I am happy! We have a cat loaded with personality-pic to follow soon- and my sister lives with us.
We are super involved at our church, Emmanual Faith, and we feel like God has totally blessed us.

A New Blog is Born!

This blog is an account of how we go from a two-member family (not counting our cat Zorro!) to a three member family (and beyond??).