We received the visas to go to China on Monday. It's been an unusual winter with tons of snow and temperatures below zero. We are watching the lunar eclipse from our home tonight. We can see Regulus on top of the moon and Saturn to the left of the moon. How immense the universe is and how little we are.

Chinese New Year Festival

Enjoyed attending the Chinese New Year festival at the UI. 2008 is the year of the rat. We are very excited about learning more about the Chinese culture and getting to know other families with Chinese children.

Getting ready!

K has been painting Sophia's room. We also went shopping for her today. It was a very cold day here (below zero!). We got a baby carrier and lots of things at ToysRus.

Getting the visas

Had our pictures taken for visas. Filled out forms and UPS documents to CaringHands. Got it all done on Saturday. We hope to get our visas back soon, because we need our passports to go to Mexico in March. K started painting Sophia's room and I started re-arranging furniture in the future guest room.

We have pictures!!!

Here's a couple of pictures of Sophia. She is six months old today!!! In her medical report they say she likes to play the drums and listen to music. Assen took the pictures of Sophia to school and showed them in his classroom. He talked about his sister in front of his class.

Washington DC

Well, I had to make this trip and didn't have a chance to go to Bethany's office and see the pictures of Sophia. I called K and A, and they told me they got three pictures of her, and she is adorable. We'll probably travel in eight to ten weeks. Assen was still not feeling well this morning, so he did not go to school. He was feeling a lot better when I called this afternoon.

We got a referral!

Karen has been checking the Rumor Queen (RQ) and found out we should be receiving "the phone call" very soon. We did today! The name of our daughter is Song Jiaqing and she is from Guangdong Province. We are so excited! Assen was sick today and school was cancelled because of an icy-storm we had this morning. We should be getting some more information about Jiaqing on the next few days. Karen will go to CR tomorrow and see the referral information and pictures of the baby. I will be travelling to DC, so I won't be able to see the rest of the information until I come back.