THE LATEST PICTURE OF OUR LITTLE OWEN!

Here are some new pictures of Owen that were taken on the 28th of January! I can't believe how big he has gotten! It took me a few minutes to realize that he is the little guy on th left on the bottom picture. When we adopted Olivia she was wearing the tiger outfit and now Owen is in the chick outfit. hmmm....is this an indicator of their personality? ha ha ha

xin nein kuai le!

xin nein kuai le! Happy New Year! Welcome to the year of the Mouse! The new year actually started last weekend but we had our Chinese New Year celebration last night for our adoption group. Olivia and her Chinese school performed at the celebration. Well.....Olivia actually stood there watching everyone else! It was pretty cute and we had a great time seeing all of our friends. Our friend Teresa joined us for the celebration and it Olivia was very excited to see her! Thanks for coming T!!!

Valentine's Day Celebration

To celebrate Valentine's day our good friends Vicki, Abby, Ellie, Maddie, and Annie all came over to play and have lunch. After lunch each girl was able to decorate her own cupcake and was able to chose which color frosting they would like to make. Abby chose Green, Ellie chose Yellow, Olivia chose Blue (of course) Maddie chose Purple and Annie chose Pink. It looked a little more like Easter then Valentine's Day. We had so much fun!

A new look

I have to admit that I am getting tired of the pigtail look for Olivia. It's super cute but I wanted to try something new. She doesn't wear her hair down too much becuase it always ends up in her face. So, I tried braiding her hair. I'm not too good at working with thin straight hair, but I'm trying. I put her hair in braids when it was wet and when I took the braids out of her hair it was really frizzy and stood out at least 5 feet (I'll take pictures of that next time!)

Let's Celebrate!

Last night, Eric, Olivia and I went out for Chinese food and then came home to eat cupcakes and sing "Happy Birthday" to Owen. Olivia got to chose what color frosting she thought Owen might like and she choose.....PINK! She then got to blow out the candle for him, and she wanted to keep doing it over and over and over again. It was pretty funny. We had a great day together, the only thing missing was our little Owen!

I was able to send him a cake to his foster family's house along with a birthday card, some pictures of Eric, Olivia and I, and two disposable cameras. It's amazing how the internet has really provided more opportunities for people then ever before. We should get the cameras back when we travel to China and then we will be able to have pictures from Owen's first birthday.

I didn't want him to think that we weren't going to celebrate his birthday so I took pictures of Olivia eating the cupcakes and video taped her singing "happy birthday" to him. She has such a quiet voice I'm not sure you can even hear it on the tape!!

Happy 1st Birthday Owen!!

Owen makes his first YouTube appearance!

Love without boundaries posted a YouTube video which highlighted many of the kids their organization helped, including Owen. His picture is found at 1:37, it's a picture that was taken when he was pretty sick and in the hospital. As you can see from the video he has improved a lot since then!

Owen's Guardian Angel

Scotty
Owen

Look Scotty and Owen are wearing the same outfit!

Many of you already know Owen's story. He was abandoned at a hospital in Shantou City when he was just 8 days old. His parents must have known he was sick and that is why he was left at the hospital. They must have known that they couldn't take care of him. As it turns out Owen was sick. He actually was very sick and at 2 months old he almost died. He weighed only 8 lbs and was in desperate need of heart surgery. At the same time in the same orphanage as Owen a little boy named Scotty wasn't as lucky as Owen, he passed away due to complications from pneumonia. His adoptive parents never got the chance to meet Scotty and but they loved him none the less and grieved over the loss of their son. They decided they didn't want their son to die in vain so they started a memorial in Scotty's name. They also decided they were going to work with an organization called Love without Boundaries (http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/ ). This just happened to be the very same organization that was working to raise money in order to save our Owen's life. Scotty's parents heard about Owen and with the support of their family and friends they had enough money to donate so Owen could have his heart surgery. To make everything a little more sweet Scotty's family lives only 30 minutes from us and they are very excited to meet Owen when he comes home!

Silly girl!

Olivia has a new fasination with wearing goggles. She has them on about 80% of the day. She just thinks she is so cool wearing them. It's pretty funny. Sometimes she will wear them on her face, around her neck, or even around her waste.

We started swim lessons with her a few weeks ago and she hadn't figured out that the goggles were to be worn while she was swimming until last week when she saw another kid wearing them in the pool. Her reaction to seeing him was really funny and since then she has been wanting to wear them when she swims.