Did we forget something??

Probably. But the way I figure it, if we remembered our passports, legal documents and children - we are (as they say here in Alabama) "doin' real good". We are headed to get our amazing Christmas present tomorrow! Little Abby. We leave our house at 5:30a.m. - UGH. We will keep everyone updated as best as we can. Thanks to all of you for your help, prayers, words of encouragement, on and on! It has been amazing to see how awesome the body of Christ is! We have been blessed beyond belief!

A little Christmas fun...

The kids had a blast doing a gingerbread "Christmas Village" with Aunt Stacey. It is a good thing she did this with them, and not me...she had a lot more patience and cleaned everything up faster than lightening!

Praise the Lord - Abby here we come!!

Okay, so we are scrambling to get everything together and everything done that needs to be done to go and get Abby! I am hoping to post to this site, but will probably only send out email updates! :-)

Nothing new...

So, we are still anxiously waiting Travel Approval, and while it seems that we won't be going in December...the Lord never ceases to amaze us on this journey. For family and friends who haven't seen the kids in a while, I have posted a picture of the kiddos - all dressed up to head for church! :-)

"Do I look scared??"

Let me start by saying that we really don't force the kids to do any activities that they don't show an interest in (welllll, except for Luke and his piano :-) Emily did a ballet camp this summer at our church and absolutely loved it. Today, her first day of ballet, she had to be pulled off my leg - screaming and crying. All of the mothers were just staring at me...not sure what they were thinking, but their expressions weren't that nice. Of course, after she was done, she wanted to stay and do ballet "All Day".

Roller coaster ride...

Well, we just got a call from Immigration saying that they will need a social worker to visit our home and say that nothing has changed, since it has been a year since their last visit. A delay that I am sure doesn't surprise the Lord, but surely surprised us. What this means is that our I-800 Provisional Approval, which we need to move forward to travel, will sit on our Immigration Officer's desk until this home visit is completed and written up into an Addendum. I just have to trust that this potential delay is in the Lord's hands. Please pray for a quick home visit and that our social worker will be kind to us and write this Addendum up quickly and efficiently. Thanks to you all!!

"Transformers...?"

Okay, so I know that we have friends and some family who may be Democrats (WHAT?? - yes, it's true). So, I hope that you aren't offended by this. But, truly, the boys were sitting at the dinner table and came up with this song...on their own! I guess it is only funny if you remember the old Transformers' song.

Learn something new every minute...

Okay, so I figured out how to share the blog with only those "invited" and I haven't invited anyone that I knew might think our blog was a little "elementary" when viewing it. :-) So, I decided to add a picture of Abbey.

Experimenting with Something New

Well, I never thought that I would be doing a blog...but I figured this would be the best way to keep people updated on what is going on within our Symasek Family Circus. I'm not so sure that I will be great about keeping up with blogs, but at least this will be set up for our journey to China to pick up little Abbey. Ah, little Abbey :-)...the reason that I even begin this blog. Currently, we are waiting on our I-800 Provisional Approval. Our LOA (or Letter of Acceptance from China) has been signed and sent back to the U.S. Consulate in China. The next thing that we should receive is our Travel Approval, and then, Lord willing, we should be able to make travel arrangements and leave shortly thereafter to go get Abbey. As for the other 4 little monkeys...everyone is doing well. Drew, Luke, and Emily began cross-country last week. They all are such troopers, and run their little hearts out. Watching them stretch before their "training" is rather hilarious. The boys put very little effort into the stretching...I think they really believe it's pointless. Emily works incredibly hard at the stretching trying to make her stretches look more like ballet moves than stretches. Maggie just runs all over the place during their practices - attempting every now and then to do the stretches or "run" with the big kids. Oh, and I will be posting pictures as soon as I can figure out how to "privatize" our blog...the internet can be a crazy place sometimes!