Nursery and Quilt

These posts are a bit sporadic-- but there really isn't a whole let to tell at this point. Just a tremendous amount of waiting. During the wait, a lot of house painting. We probably should have done some before and after photos, but I just am not quite that with it. The part of actually getting to the "after the before" is enough.
:-D

I think I have figured out the camera well enough to finally upload some photos of the nursery and the 100 wish quilt.

This is the tree that took me ~4 1/2 hours -- that is just for the tree. Please don't ask how long it took to do the entire room! We did it over a period of several months.


I also made/am making the cushion in the chair. I still have a few more things to do to it.


How do you like the pelican toy holder? I got that at Ikea. They have the greatest stuff!


Below is a picture of the bunny that Gabrielle painted--next to it is the wishing well she painted. She did both free-handed. Pretty darn good!





















Xavier painted the flowers and dragonflies (using stencils). He used silver and gold colors for his because he wanted them to be valuable.


You may have noticed that the bunny is yawning. That is because the bunny is next to the crib and I painted a night-scape in this corner. I used stencils for the stars.


The 100-wish quilt is draped over the crib-- and you can't really see it very well so there is one more picture of it below.















I am going to try and be better about posting-- I will try to post at least once a month when referrals arrive to let folks know where we are at. Right now, referrals are still arriving for the month of October 2005.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day 2006 was a wet one! All of us traveled to visit relatives in Portsmouth, RI, enjoy some turkey and all the fixin's.

The day was pretty uneventful but it was nice to be together with family for the Holiday. Gabrielle and Xavier enjoyed playing bumper pool. Although, Xavier was a bit beside himself because Gabrielle kept winning.

We managed to get a couple photos of all grandma's grandkids sitting together at the same time. From left to right there is Nate, Gabrielle, Abbie, Xavier, and Ethan.

We can't wait to add our little Josie to the happy picture. Hopefully-- next Thanksgiving she'll be in there with her sister, brother, and all her cousins.

Starting to Blog

Hi. We are Reena Shaw and Wim Chase. The picture to the right is of us at a wedding for Wim's cousin, Jon. The kind of wierd looking guy behind Wim's head is our brother-in-law Bob. He doesn't ussually look so funny. I think he got a bubble in his eye.

Also in our family are Wim's children from his first marriage, Gabrielle (10) and Xavier (8).



We have one kitty, Anita. She came with Wim and his kids, so I affectionately refer to her as my step-cat, need-a-kitty. Not to be forgotten is Xavier's leopard gecko, Dave.

We began our adoption journey well over a year ago with our homestudy. We managed to navigate through all the paperwork using a homestudy agency, Red Thread Adoption, located here in New England and an adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoption (GWCA), located in Texas.

We completed our paperchase on December 9, 2005 and our dossier was sent to China. Our log-in-date (LID) is December 20, 2005.

It has been very tumultuous waiting this past year. When we began the process the wait time to referral was 6-8 months. When our paperwork was sent to China, our agency told us the wait time had increased to 8 to 10 months.

The referral wait time is currently 14 to 15 months and growing. Right now, Wim and I are hopeful that we will get our referral this summer in June or July, meaning we will have waited 18 months from our LID and nearly 2 years since we began the paperchase . The last batch of referrals arrived from China on November 30th and covered log-in-dates from August 25th through September 8th of 2005. We are slowly getting closer.

Right now we have contact our local Center for Immigration Services because our fingerprints will expire this month and we need to have them re-done. Here is an example of how screwed-up our government is-- how exactly does one's fingerprints expire? The cost of re-doing the fingerprints is $70 each for Wim and I. Why can't they just run our prints through the system to see if we have committed any felonies. It's crazy!

Although, we may as well get use to it. With this wait getting so long, we will have to re-do all of our paperwork for the US government--not China-- USA. Can anybody say cha-ching? For those wondering, the biggest part of the cost of adopting goes to our very own Uncle Sam and we all know what he is doing with it these days.

I am keeping busy decorating the nursery. I am painting stencils of flowers, birds, a tree. Those who know me well are surprised to see how much Michelangelo I have in me, LOL. I also purchased a sewing machine and a friend is going to teach me how to sew so I can make a 100-wish quilt for our little Josie. We already have the 100+ quilt squares, I just need to sew them together. A somewhat daunting task for someone who has never sewed more than buttons on a shirt.

We will try to get some pictures posted soon.