We Are LOA!

We just received our Letter of Acceptance from China today!  WooHoo!!!!  Now we turn in our paperwork to the United States to petition for approval to adopt ChunMing specifically.

Care Package Is Off

Our care package is off to China!  Among some art supplies and cars for ChunMing to share with his roomates, we sent a disposable camera and  a photo book especially for him.  We have hopes that he will take photos of his friends and nannies to bring back with him to the USA.  The photo book included photos of all of our family members, our home, and even our cat Snickers.  Thanks to a sweet friend, we had a letter especially for ChunMing translated as well.

Notice the hand coming in to snatch whatever goodie he can during my moment of distraction. :)


All this time we thought this care package would be his introduction to us, but we just found out that the orphanage told him months ago that he had a family coming to get him.  Apparently he asked the assistant director, "Why haven't they come to get me?" but then he said he figured we hadn't got there yet because we live so far away. 


On one hand he will be well prepared, but on the other, this time must be very difficult for him as other children find out they have families and leave before his even gets there.  More incentive to push this process through as quickly as we can.


Here are a couple of photos of ChunMing that a friend took for us a couple of weeks ago while she was there to pick up her son.

Elisha ChunMing

With each of our other children, including William, we scoured for names from movie credits, book authors, naming books, family names etc.  We then listed our favorites and brought them with us to the hospital.  It wasn't until our baby was born and we spent a little time with them that we settled on a name; sometimes from the list and sometimes something completely different.

Not thinking clearly, we thought we would do the same with ChunMing.  We both knew we wanted to keep his given name which means "king", "spring" and "bright" by the way, and he was just going to be stuck with "Cook" whether he liked it or not, but should we add a middle or first name? 

Once finding out that of course we needed to have his official name chosen prior to the adoption because that is what would be on all of the official paperwork, we had a dilemma; the debate was on.

The hunt began.  We had a short list, but nothing felt right.  Yesterday, recognizing the urgency due to the fact that I was holding on to some paperwork just because we had to pen in his given name, we had a little family meeting.  The desire was to find a name that fit his personality.  We went over each name on our list and its meaning, but none connected.  In a hurry, we stopped and had a prayer.  The answer was direct; his name would be Elisha, ChunMing, Cook.  We looked up Elisha in the Bible dictionary and it fit like a glove.  Besides, the story of Elisha praying for his servant to see their heavenly support is one of my favorite scripture stories.

Will he go by Elisha or ChunMing?  The choice is his.  Now we move on to the next step to bring our little "king" home.

Sidney an Orphan?

Last week I was watching Sidney through the window as she played with William in the back yard.  Sophia found me in my contemplative state and asked what I was doing.  I responded, "I am just thinking about what a sweet sister Sidney is and how lucky we are to have her."  Recognizing right away the burden I placed on Sophia to work through an identity crisis, I tried to restate my response, but before I could, she retorted, "Yeah, if we found Sidney in an orphanage we would pick her right away!"