Don't Give Up the Fight . . .

When I read this Gathering Peeps post in my friends' blog it completely changed my attitude on our adoption process from being this poor, pitiful, waiting momma to a momma bear willing to fight tooth and nail for her child. It was when we realized that satan does not want families to be together. He wants an easy target and orphans are easy targets. And if you are wanting to bring an orphan home then you must EXPECT opposition, but KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that God's plan WILL prevail. It may not be the exact plan you thought you and He were on, but His plans are always better than ours!

The Holy Spirit might be speaking to you about adoption - a little nudging. Be prepared to have an amazingly wild and very rewarding ride!

Lost in Translation

Lyndal and I found some of the sign translations pretty humorous so we took pictures of our favorites. Hey, we understood what they meant . . .


These first three were at the zoo in Guangzhou:
This one sounds like maybe one of our mothers was telling us to 'don't spit your gum out all over the place!'

Dead Bodies. The bird looked pretty healthy. 'Nuff said.

How do you flap glass?

This was at the garden in Guangzhou. It says, "Take good care of life and enjoy nature." Perfect!

The signs on the grass in the Olympic Village personified the grass. Our guide told us that they felt that if the grass had 'feelings' then we would be kinder to it. Works for me!

These were at The Great Wall . . .

And who says God isn't in China? He's actually ALL OVER THE PLACE :)!

Sometimes Mandarin to English doesn't translate as we are accustomed to seeing it :).

We did NOT do this, but since we got one of these we thought we should photograph it for all posterity!

Chairman Mao says that you aren't a true hero until you climb The Great Wall. Apparently you can't get one of these unless you are a true man either.

Mother's Day Together!

We may have a new tradition at our house! But, dummy me did not take any pictures of the actual event, thankful I at least had these very recent pictures of the moms involved. We had a "Mother's Day Extravaganza" at our house with my mom (can you tell which mom is mine?) and Lyndal's mom (Nicci's twin :) - their significant others were there, too. Lyndal cooked the burgers (he was a little demanding as to when the meat should be ready, didn't he know it was Mother's Day?) and hot dogs, Nicole and my mom whipped up the fruit salad, we opened a few bags of chips, snarfed down some yummy banana pudding and brownies and had LOTS of laughs!

Lyndal and I have wonderful moms!! Without them we wouldn't be who we are today or where we are today. Thank you to our moms, we love you very much!!!