Audrey's Horseback riding Adventure

Ok, am I crazy putting Audrey on a horse at 4.5 yrs old? This was actually just one of those fateful things that happens. I really had thought she was too young, but I had talked to several different people recently who had experience with horses and all informed me that it's not uncommon at all for kids to start riding after age 3.5-4. We just happen to have a riding/boarding stable literally within walking distance of our house so I have been inundated with requests from Audrey to ride over the past year.

Long story short, she is a natural and she had the time of her life. I myself love horses as well so seeing her learn to ride was wonderful. She takes another lesson this Wednesday and we are really looking forward to it.

We have our PA for LEI !!!!!

Although the PA (preapproval from China) is only one small step in our adoption process, it offically makes Lei ours as long as our dossier supports the information in our Letter of Intent (LOI), which it will. We finished up our homestudy last week and our SW is working on writing it up now. We just received our fingerprinting appointment Saturday and it is for October 26 so just a couple weeks away. If all goes as planned, we should be DTC early December. I still cringe when I think about Memphis USCIS though. They can take anywhere from 5-8 weeks to process our I-600A once they have the homestudy and prints. It only took 5 weeks with Rachel so I will be happy if it is the same for Lei.

Happy Birthday Rachel !!!

Rachel's Birthday was actually the last week of September but I'm finally getting around to posting. We celebrated with a small birthday party at home and it was perfect. I didn't realize how in touch Rachel would be that it was her birthday but she totally got it and she wanted us to sing Happy Birthday to her all day long. The only word she can say from the song is "Happy" so she just went around singing "Happy" all day lol. We picked her up a special little birthday cake and a Princess Balloon that sings "happy birthday" and she was thrilled. Throw in last years "carebear" birthday decorations and you have a great party ;-) The most memorable thing about Rachel's birthday party was the fact that she blew out her candle without any help whatsoever. This should not have suprised me though since she is very often full of hot air !