WE PASSED COURT!!!

Maura Genet Jan. 10


Feb 2010


Praise the Lord! We passed court today! I received a phone call from Lisa, our Ethiopian adoption director, this morning. We are super excited. We will get our Embassy date within the next week or so. LiLi and I will be traveling to Ethiopia within the next 4-6 weeks. Please continue to pray for a safe trip and a smooth transition. Hope you enjoy the pictures of Maura Genet.

2nd Court Date Tuesday, Feb. 16th

I received an email from my agency this morning. Our court date is this Tuesday! Please pray that all of Maura Genet's paperwork is in order and that all the key people attend. I will post as soon as I hear something.

LET IT SNOW!!

Don't laugh at my snowman!


My wonderful honey!

YUMMY Hot chocolate! Bella's

with whipped cream, LiLi's without!


Mommy making a snow angel












The Thornley Family...missing

Anna, Maura Genet and Thomas

Baishi! (And of course Chris and

Alison).


Today has been a blast so far. We woke up to about 6 inches of snow. After a couple of hours of freezing rain, the temperature dropped and we had lots more snow. It is currently snowing 2 inches per hour. We took the kids outside for about an hour and built a snowman. This was the first time that either George or myself has built a snowman. We didn't have anything to make eyes, nose or a mouth with..but it was a lot of fun. After making snow angels, we headed to Cosi for hot chocolate and coffee.

George has been reading today and I have been scrapbooking while the kids have been playing. George has a big pot of seafood gumbo on the stove. YUM

Maura Genet Update: As it turn out, we didn't have court yesterday. There was a problem with translation and it wasn't scheduled for yesterday. Our "real" court date is either Friday or Monday. I appreciate your continued prayers and support. We have been able to send her care packages through our families traveling. It was really neat to see that she was wearing the necklace that we gave her in December in some pictures that were taken a couple of weeks ago. :) We can't wait to bring our baby home~!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

SNOW and stuff!!

Christmas Morning

George and Anna C.

I love my black onyx necklace
that George gave me for Christmas~
Thanks Baby~!

Christmas Morning

Love this picture~

LiLi and Bella with their friend

Bodie

LiLi and Bodie

Between Friday night and Saturday afternoon Center City Philadelphia had 26.7 inches of snow. We had a great weekend. On Saturday, we played many games with the kids and watched a movie. After Bella took a 3 hour nap (first time ever) we headed out to play in the snow. The kids made snow angels and attempted to throw snowballs at mommy and daddy. We took them to The Naked Chocolate Cafe (a speciality chocolate shop) for hot chocolate to warm up after playing. Today we went to The Please Touch Museum for a few hours then had an early dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Center City. I just found out that LiLi's school is closed tomorrow due to the snowfall so we will have one more family fun day..except tomorrow will be minus George since he has to get back to work. :( It was so great to spend a weekend with NO commitments.

I have a couple of funny stories..one from each child. We will start with LiLi, age 5:

She had on a pair of pajamas that has the flap on the heini (I think I spelled that right) that buttons. She asked George what it was for and he explained that a long time ago when it was really cold and people went to the bathroom in an outhouse..they would wear them so they wouldn't have to take their pajamas off but could still use the bathroom. LiLi looked at George so seriously and said, "Daddy how would you get your penis all the way back there?" It was hilarious.

Now on to Bella...age 2. We were reading a book on colors last night. Bella looked at me and said, "Mommy, you're white and I'm brown and white". I said, "really". She looked at her skin on her hands and said, see brown and then turned her hands over and said see white. Then she pointed to her feet and said see brown..then showed me the bottom of her feet and said see white. They are too funny!!!

Maura Genet: We have her court date on Tuesday. We are praying that we pass. If we do..LiLi and I will be leaving for Ethiopia in 4-6 weeks. I will definitely post as soon as we hear something.

We are heading to New York this weekend Friday through Monday. We are driving there on Friday morning. We plan on visiting a few historic places and then going to our normal M&M store, Toys R US, and Ruby Foos's for dinner. We also plan on taking the kids to Central Park. We are trying to take several weekend trips to New York since we are moving back to Charleston in August. We are keeping the condo in Philly since George will be working up here Monday-Wednesday 3 weeks a month and then will work in the Charleston office every Friday and the 4th week of every month. We will definitely miss Philly but we are so glad that we will still be visiting often (during school breaks).

Today was the last day of Bella's medication. She has been on Rifampin for 6 LONG months since her TB skin test was positive. She didn't have active TB but was exposed at some point..or it could have been from the TB vaccine that she received in Ethiopia. There is really no way to tell so to be safe, she was on the medication for 6 months. It was somewhat difficult because she had to take it on an empty stomach and couldn't eat for an hour after taking it. Today was her last dose!! :)

I am posting a couple of pictures. Hope you enjoy!!