A nice suprise...

We just got an e-mail from our adoption agency about an e-mail that got lost in cyber-space and just now got to us. It's another picture and a very short update. We found out that she is potty trained during the day. A nice suprise - I was very willing to do it, but I guess when you adopt an older child, you get little things like this. In June, she was learning to eat finger foods and making a transition to a cup. There's so much that we have missed of her baby years that we can never get back, but there's so much of her older years that we get to be a part of.

Amanda: eta September 26 or 27

Brett's dad is currently booking plane tickets to go to China! I am so thankful he took on that part of the planning since I am up over my head with my other children (mostly Judah who is recovering from hip surgery). We have a conselate appointment in China which means they are getting ready for us to adopt this little sweetie:



It says on our paperwork that our group will take the oath on the afternoon of 9/24/09 which means on that day, she becomes officially a member of our family. She really has soulful eyes in this picture which makes me just want to kiss away all her woes. We got new measurements and she has grown a lot in the past few months. What I thought was going to be a little peanut of a girl has turned into a very typical size for her age. After such a long wait, we are ready to go.

Just because I have more pictures...

We have seen the blue circle thing in other pictures on our yahoo group for our specific orphange. It's really interesting to talk with others who are adopting from this same orphanage. It gives us a little better idea of what she's been living in and helps us to see that the kids are usually smiling in their pictures. It's a mind-blowing experience to have all these people all over our country adopting kids who have grown up together halfway around the world. It's a very wild and crazy roller coaster we are riding.

Meet Amanda Grace Benson

This is Xue Ru soon to be called Amanda. We're big about the meaning of names around here and picked Amanda before we knew what it meant. It means "worthy of love". Isn't that sooo appropriate?


Amanda was born in May, 2007, so she's a two year old already. She resides in the Xuchang Social Welfare Institute which is just a fancy way of saying she's in an orphanage. Through connections on the web, her orphanage seems to be a place where the children are well cared for and loved. This is from people who have adopted from there in the past year.



Xuchang is located in Henan province south of Bejing. It's light blue on the eastern side of the map. At almost 100 million people, if it were its own country, it would be the twelfth most populous, just behind Mexico. Henan is traditionally regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization. Our adoption agency has started working there in order to help orphans get registered to be adopted into families and to help the orphans left behind. Because of their efforts, children like Amanda are able to know the love of a familiy.

We waited 2 1/2 years from application to placement for Amanda and are thrilled she gets to be a part of our family. When they called and told us we had a little girl waiting for a family, we were in denial. We still have been a bit, but this past week, we got the official paperwork that says we are accepted by the Chinese government to adopt Amanda. We are just now waiting for final travel approval and then it's book tickets time, Brett's flying to China!