What a great Easter we had this year!  Busy but wonderful!  Hannah has been practicing hard for her role as a flower blossom in Alice in Wonderland and finally she had her performances Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend.  She was an amazing little blossom! 

 

Grandma and Papa at the show opening night

 

Last weekend we had our annual neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  Hannah missed it because she was at dance practice but Reagan and Ben had a great time!  They both found golden tickets and were able to trade them in for extra special Easter basket prizes. 

 

Ben and his neighborhood buddies

Easter day was spent with breakfast at church.  Yum!  Easter worship and then home to make a yummy dinner and take a little nap while it was cooking.  A perfect relaxing day to celebrate our Risen King! 

Sending Our Love....

Oh, how I want to hold my precious little one in China...the wait is so hard. 

Yesterday was his 1/2 birthday, 1-1/2 years old.  Since we can't shower him with hugs and kisses we can at least send him some treats and pray he gets them.  We sent his first care package today.  Just a few little things that hopefully will let him know that there is a family out there who loves him and is waiting to bring him home. 

Here is what we sent:
A letter provided by our agency (in English and Chinese) that says how happy we are to be adopting and that we would love for our child to get what is in the box and that we would kindly like his things back when we pick him up.
Our copy of the pre-approval letter so they know which child is ours. 
Gerber banana cookies
A disposable camera (we hope they will use to take pictures and return to us when we get Eli)
A Zip drive that they hopefully will load with pictures
Lip gloss and chocolates for his caretakers
A board book of 100 first words
A photo album filled with our family pictures with little labels, mother, father, etc. in Chinese and English
A soft puppy lovey that I hand stitched his name onto (and that I may have slept with for a few weeks before sending)

The whole trip to the Post Office to ship was quite the ordeal....I have never shipped anything internationally before, had 3 children with me and a not very pleasant postal worker who had to assist me way more than she wanted to.  Nevertheless, the 2 pound 11 ounce package was on its way after I paid the $34 bill to ship.

We are hoping it makes its way to Eli but are a little uncertain now that he has been moved to foster care if he will actually get it.

My heart would be so happy if our next update contained a picture of him holding his puppy lovey.....

In other news, all of our dossier documents are currently at the Houston Chinese Consulate getting authenticated and our immigration forms have been received by USCIS and we are now waiting for an appointment to get fingerprinted and then hopefully in a few more weeks we will be able to send our dossier to China!  Little steps but I can start to see the end getting closer!

Two weekends in a row of celebrating our sweet Reagan's birthday!  Last weekend was her actual birthday and we had cake and celebrated her special day with the family and then this weekend was her party with her friends.  She wanted a gymnastics party and so we had one with her little friends.  They had a super fun time running, jumping, climbing and playing and ended with snacks, cupcakes and an awards ceremony.  She is growing up to be such a kind-hearted young lady and getting so big!

Happy 6th birthday to this sweet, sassy, funny, big-hearted, fashionable little girl. We love you Reagan!

Teaming Up With The Apparent Project!

We are teaming up with a great cause called The Apparent Project for our first fundraiser to bring little Eli home!

Ever heard of the The Apparent Project?   This is an organization that helps women in Haiti by providing them work opportunities which in turn allows them to make money to live off of and provide for their families.  The goal is to prevent child abandonment and decrease orphans in Haiti by providing families with the means to get income to cover their expenses associated with having children.

Sounds great, right?  The women and men are provided with supplies to make jewelry and are paid for their time and efforts to make them, which is where we come in.  We are selling these beautiful bracelets made by the women in Haiti as a fundraiser!  These specific bracelets are made by wrapping strips of cereal boxes round and round and then sealing the beads up.  It is really amazing work!  We will keep some of the profits to help us bring Eli home and then for each bracelet sold we send back some money to the Apparent Project as payment to the women who made the bracelets.  It's a win-win for us both!

So here's the details.....We are selling the bracelets for $10 each.  We have lots!  For our in-town friends just text, email or FB message me and let me know if you would like to help us out.  Out-of-town friends and family we would be happy to ship bracelets to you for a flat fee of $2 for as many bracelets as you would like.  Money can be sent through Paypal www.paypal.me/bringingelihome, cash or a check.


Won't you help us out??  They are truly beautiful and would make great gifts!

For more information on The Apparent Project visit www.apparentproject.org

We are continuing to wait as patiently as possible as the adoption process continues on.  Our social worker finished our home study this week and it is being reviewed by our agency.  Hopefully within about a week and a half we will have that all finished up and finalized.  Then we will be waiting for USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) to approve our I800A form before we can send the whole big package to China for a letter of approval to go get our boy.  Still a long ways to go, but I can begin to see some steps in the right direction being completed! 

We hope to get started on our first fundraiser soon and once our home study is done it will be time to start the grant applications! 

In the meantime I started working on a care package to send to our little guy and the nannies that are taking care of him.  I spent nap time today putting together this sweet little photo book for Eli so he can get used to the faces of all of us waiting here to love on him! 

First sister audition!

Hannah and Reagan had their first audition together today for the spring ballet show, Alice in Wonderland!  They had a fun time. Reagan didn't get a part, but still enjoyed it and is looking forward to trying out again for the next show. Hannah got cast as a flower blossom and gets to wear green ballet shoes and a tutu on her head!  Her good friend, Caitlin, got the same part with her which makes it even more fun!  

Meet Eli!

Meet Eli!  We are excited to say that we have officially been matched with our new son, submitted our letter of intent and China has responded back with our pre-approval to continue the adoption process for this little boy! 

This is Eli.  He is 16 months old and will be 2 in September and we hope to have him home close to that time!  He is being cared for in the Zhengzhou City Children's Welfare Institute (ZZ CWI) which is in the Henan province of China.  This woman in the picture with him appears to be his main nanny and is in many of his photos and videos we have of him.  They seem to be quite attached and I am so thankful he has someone there loving on him and taking good care of him.  We are excited to now be able to share his pictures with everyone and would appreciate everyone's prayers as we continue on this journey to bring him home!

                                      Here are some pictures from when he was younger:

                   
Here is a link to our family's adoption fundraising page for anyone who feels led to help us bring the little guy home:  https://www.youcaring.com/sam-and-stephanie-sampson-510948

Adoption Update

We have been continuing to work hard on our adoption process and have been deep into paperwork, doctor appointments and paper chasing.  Our first home study visit is done and went pretty well.  We met with our social worker in our home and she talked with our kids and us and toured our home.  It was actually pretty intimidating at first since she really laid out many not so great adoption outcomes she has seen in the past.  I was getting pretty frustrated during this discussion, since she was making me feel like she was trying to talk us out of it, but I realize she was just giving us a reality check and wanted us to be aware of the possibilities that our little happy family may have some struggles with bringing a new little guy in.  By the end of the visit, things had turned around and she was being more positive and supportive.

Sam and I both have individual interviews left to complete with her, but first we have to get all our paperwork in to her before she will schedule them with us.  So....we have been working really hard to get this all together.  We visited the police station and got our clearance letters, both had physicals and lab work, ordered birth certificates and marriage licenses....the list goes on and on.

In much more exciting news......we got matched with a little boy a couple weeks ago!  After a few days of reviewing his file we decided to say YES!  We submitted our letter of intent to China and are waiting to hear back with pre-approval.  Basically that will be China saying that we are locked in with him and it is okay for us to proceed with the process of adopting him.  So exciting and we are anxiously waiting to hear back!  We can't wait to share more details about the little guy once we get our pre-approval!

 We had another great Christmas and were so happy to have Grandma and Papa up here now to celebrate with us!  The girls both got their gifts they asked Santa for.  Reagan really wanted a violin and Hannah wanted a fashion design set.  Ben got lots of boy stuff, although he only asked Santa for candy.  The kids got up at 6:30, opened their gifts quickly and then the girls played with all their new stuff while and Ben, Sam and I were all took a nap.  Then we enjoyed a great dinner at Grandma and Papa's house.  It was a wonderful day!