Shadow’s wild adventures!

We had a very eventful evening and morning. Our “teenage” kitty Shadow, almost 6 months old, had not been seen since about 6 pm. We turned the house upside down, and called her inside and outside, opened every door, closet etc but we could not find her. Sophie was pretty upset and I was worried sick. Of course, there’s always the threat that a raccoon could have gotten her, especially since she had pawed at one just days ago. The other possibility is that she would have been run over. The last, better, option is that she was hanging with our cat-loving neighbor, who must have a dozen house-cats and feeds every stray in the area. This brought back memories of when our beloved Murphy (a beautiful Himalayan, and Yoda’s baby) came missing. We never did find him. We suspect he was stolen because he was so beautiful and sweet. Of course, it’s very unlikely someone would still Shadow, she’s a just a regular black cat. I was up pretty much all night, hoping she would just show up. I had left the cat door open just in case. Well, this morning, still no sign of her. Finally as I’m getting ready to load the kids in the car, Sophie is screaming. We can distinctly see a pair of ears in my car. She must have jumped in when I unloaded Margaux. She was locked in there all evening and night with no food. I brought her in, fed her, and locked her in. No open cat door for her today! I am so relieved she was found safe and sound as she is the sweetest little creature! Now I have to make it through a day of work with little to no sleep! I’ll load up some new pictures this weekend!

First Family Day!

Today is our first family day. One year ago we went into the conference room of a hotel in Nanchang and met Margaux for the first time. Se was not nearly as impressed with us as we were with her. It's hard to believe it's been a year already. Time really does fly. I'm so happy she is with us and she truly has completed our family. She's a little bundle of energy and mischief. We are just planning on a little celebration with a cake this evening after work.

10 Years ago, 1 Year ago

Thursday was a big day for this family, the big fat 10 that is, our ten year anniversary. It's just so hard to believe it's 10 been years already. It's gone by so fast! Of course our greatest accomplishments are our two beautiful little girls. 9 years of of these 10 years were at least partly consumed with family building. We went through 3 years of infertility, including 3 IUIs, 1 IVF, and a failed adoption before finding out right before Valentine's day 2001 that we were expecting Sophie. It was a natural pregnancy, a total surprise. The pregnancy itself was a difficult roller coaster. I had just about every complication on the book. I had a dozen ultrasounds to check on Sophie and ended up being induced because she was IUGR (intra-uterine-growth-retardation). That was a scary word! She ended up totally fine albeit tiny at 38 week gestation and 4lb15oz. After Sophie came more infertility treatment including 3 IUIs, and more failed domestic adoptions. Finally we started the China process in January 2005, were logged in Sept 2005, and traveled to China on our 9 year anniversary last year.
So on the 21st 10 years ago we were getting married, and 1 year ago we were on our way to our beautiful Margaux!

To celebrate our anniversary, Chuck cooked a nice dinner on Thursday, and yesterday we went out for dinner and a movie (Juno, which was very good). We would have done more, but we are trying to save money for the summer to go to France since we have not been in 5 years!

Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Valentine's day. I woke up to two beautiful cards from the girls. Margaux's had a panda mommy and baby (how appropriate!) and Sophie's had a fat cat. Both were very sweet. Daddy did a great job picking out the cards as usual.

A face that says it all

This is an out-take while trying to get Valentine-cherub pictures taken at Penney. I had these done several years with Sophie at picture people, but they shut down half of their locations including the one in Memphis, so I had to call around. Sears retired their wings and Penney has them but won't take pictures of baby girls without a top after a year old.. I was disappointed but I went ahead and did the pics with a little white dress.

This is Margaux showing her true mischievous side...


And this is my favorite, looking just too sweet...

For the actual Valentine Pics, you will just have to wait until Valentine's day!

Crazy week

We made it to another Sunday! It's been a crazy week in Memphis with tornadoes ripping through the town on Tuesday night. It was a pretty scary experience to say the least. I left work at 4:30 and rushed back home. By the time I got 5 min from the house the sirens were going off. We all stayed close to the TV and cleared our closed, ready to jump in. We watched channel three and followed the storms. It came very very close to us, way too close for comfort around 5:30. Tornado ended up touching down in Southeast Memphis and causing some major damage and some casualties, It also touched down in Southhaven MS. We are very happy we did not sustain any damage, not even a lost tree. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the families affected by this horrible storm. President Bush came to town yesterday to survey the damage.

Girls are doing fine. Margaux was oblivious and just playing with blocks. Sophie was terrified and just stayed on top of me the whole time.

Tagged by Bev!

by motherhood and other ramblings to reveal 7 weird things about myself and then tag 7 more people leaving the unsuspecting 7 tagged messages on their blog. So here goes:

I'll do the 7 things about me, but I don't know who else to tag... Will have to think about that one.

1) I'm fascinated by ears. I always look at people's ears and I usually remember the shape of their ears rather than what they look like overall.

2) I cannot use the same dryer sheets all the time, I like to rotate scents

3) I don't care that I don't tan. I would NEVER go to a tanning salon, and I don't mind looking like a ghost. It was fashionable a few centuries ago, the look might come back, right?

4) I have flat feet, very flat. Think duck-like flat. Funny thing is so does Margaux! She was meant for us! :)

5) Chuck and I are 10 1/2 years apart. From the stats I have read this is very unusual.

6) I had a weird summer job, where I had to type up messages that people would call in onto other people's pagers and cell phone. People would always call in a pretend it was one of these "special" numbers. It got old very fast.

7) I love radishes.

That's it... Weird enough, Bev?