The countdown ends...life with Aunna {almost} begins

We leave in less than 8 hours for our first flight of our adoption journey. It has been amazing sharing this process with SO MANY people! We truly treasure each and EVERY one of you!

Here is our last post before we head off to CHINA!

Our hope was to pack as light as possible. With taking our three older kiddos and adopting our little spit-fire we thought struggling with tons of luggage was a bad idea. 

The paperwork with adoption never seems to end. I spent two hours the other afternoon gathering our documents, copies, pictures and yada yada (when I wish I was napping).

A dear friend handmade this little doll for Aunna. The hands and feet of this sweet doll are just like hers. What a thoughtful and darling gift.

So many people have been generous in tangible and intangible ways through this whole process. This is a huge THANK YOU to you all!

{some last projects before we go...}

When I had my first, then second, then third kid I was determined not to be that mom that stopped taking pictures and making things just as special. Well there is pretty mch no way around that. To top it off after changing computers several times in several years I thought I had lost ALL of the pictures of Jumping Joy's 1st year of life (third child). Noooooooooo! I would be heartbroken if I had never found them. But, then I found them, printed them and have a photo album for them! They might not make it into that album until we get home considering I am typing this and need to get up in 4 hours to go to China, but it's a start!

I have been wanting to make new stockings for our family for few years. This year was perfect since we are adding a family member. I knew I needed to get them done before we left. So here they are!

I love how cheery they are! I have not yet decided how to get each person's letter on to them so I stopped with just the stockings for now.

The last thing I wanted to do was make a new valence for the girls room. Just a little freshening up. I had to improvise after I started because my fabric was printed quite wonky {grrrr} and the pattern repeats which I did not take into account when I bought it {grrrr}. So I added some toile to the bottom under the super-cute-but-you-can't-tell-in-this-pic dark grey toile rose-ish trim. :)

All done...nighty night. Next post...Beijing, China!

 feel free to leave us comments on our blog since we cannot post to fb on our trip :)