Busy Weekend

For a weekend that had almost no formally-planned things on the agenda, it's been a whirlwind of activity around here.

I took the girls to have portraits taken. I've decided that the annual portrait budget will probably triple - photos of one, photos of the other, and photos of them together. Yikes. EJ did some shots in her dance recital costumes. Wait until you see the ballet ones - beautiful!

Next, we took some of Sophie in her gold dress and hat from China. She did okay for a first time portrait sitting; she definitely wondered what the heck was going on. Why was everyone trying so hard to make her smile? She just sat there as curious as ever. It didn't help that the studio was training new photographers and there were three people in the room (in addition to the three of us). Finally, EJ put on her gold gown and we took some shots of them together. Sophie got a little pouty and teary-eyed toward the end, but we were able to get a few good shots in. The pics won't be ready until next week, and I'll be sure to post some here.

On Saturday morning, I went to the office of our adoption agency, China Adoption With Love (CAWLI), to train to be a PTAG leader. PTAG is the Parent Travel Advisory Group, a group of parents who help prepare other adopting families for travel. It is just one small way I can give back to the agency who did so much for us.

Since our wait was so long, we actually attended two PTAG sessions while we were waiting! Sitting through it a third time was a good refresher for all the content, and WOW...I really thought about it all so differently now that I'm "on the other side"! The things I panicked about before travel (gifts for the nannies, in-country travel) ended up being nothing to worry about. Saturday's PTAG leader was a mom from my travel group who adopted her second daughter from China. It was nice to see her and her husband and kids after a few weeks!

Saturday evening, we went to a local pizza shop to grab sandwiches for dinner. While we were waiting for our food, we gave Sophie her dinner - apricots and mixed fruit. It was so good that she decided to shove her toes in her mouth after each mouthful. Nice.

Sunday morning, EJ and I ventured out to the beach for a few hours. We ALWAYS go early in the morning to make sure we get a parking spot, and then we leave shortly after noon to avoid the afternoon sun (we pale-skinned people worry about this stuff).

We got there around 9:15. EJ wanted to head down to the southern tip of the beach to dig for crabs, and while walking there, we ran into some of our best friends, the D family, and suddenly we had three boys to help us dig for crabs. They found quite a few, including a baby one that they named Bobby Joe?!? EJ wanted to bring them home as pets, but I convinced her that we couldn't make the right kind of salt water to keep them in. The weather wasn't nearly as hot as it was supposed to be (78 instead of 90!), but it was still a nice day to hang out. On the way home, we had (shhhh...) ice cream for lunch!




Sunday afternoon, our social worker stopped by for a welcome home visit and to meet Sophie. She will have to write two reports over the next year to submit to China, updating them on Sophie's health and well-being.