It's been

One year since we have seen your face, one year since we learned all about you. There have been some huge first this year, all the usual firsts, your first food, tooth, steps, fall, words, but one first that caught me by surprise... and that is how fierce and how much I love you! No one could have prepared me for these new emotions of being a mother to you Talia. You are an amazing girl, you have a strong sense of independence and a strong will that will get you far in life, but you have a gentle side of you that wants to make people laugh when they are sad and will do anything to make them smile. Happy referral day sweet pea! sorry T about the pajamas, although I remembered today, it wasn't until after your bath and jammies that I took the picture... OOPS

Our little Canadian Citizen!

Well... there was something special in the mail today, a letter to Miss. T from Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship welcoming her to the Canadian Family, along with her Canadian Citizenship card. Tres cool!





Miss T. was very excited upon hearing the news! :-)

Back home!

As we are still going through jet lag, I thought that I would just post some pictures for now and reflect later. I, however, will say this... Talia is an amazing little girl, she is a bit of a bruit, and easily the biggest babies of the nine that came from her orphanage. Talia is a, go with the flow kinda gal, which is perfect for us as we are also a go with the flow kind of family.
China in itself was..... different..... don't get me wrong, I LOVE China for it's history and strong culture and "roots" and everywhere we went, it showed strong and proud, in the people that we met along the way. Someday we will go back with Talia so that hopefully she can get a sense of what we felt ourselves on this trip.
So without further ado... some random pics of our trip.

No more days!

This is it, we are leaving on a jet plane, don't know when we'll be back again........... I am hopeful to blog while we are gone, if not I will post pics as soon as we come back!

Talia, here we come baby girl, Mommy and Daddy are so excited! I understand you may not be as excited to see us, but we hope with time, you will think that we are A O.k. people :-)

12 more days...

and only 14 until Talia is in our arms! I guess time has flown and the countdown has begun!! We are sooooo ready... kind of.... well not really... will we ever be really ready? I have just four work days left, and trying to get through all I have to do before leave will be challenging but I am sure it will all get done.

I am a little anxious about getting our passports back... we relinquished them to our agency back in July and do not have them back yet. We are supposed to receive them this Tuesday along with the last bits of information for the trip. Wowza!! I have found the last two weeks have sort of dragged on, but I have a feeling the next two will go super fast!

My niece is going to be staying with us as she goes to University. It is interesting because she is basically leaving all that she knows and is moving 8 hours away from home. She is an amazing young lady, and I am so happy for her as she is embarking on her dream of becoming a speech pathologist. She has a super kind heart, the patience of a saint and super smart. She is going to make a fabulous speech path!

I will try to post just before we leave, and if I can, will be posting while in China... As always, I can't have a post with at least one picture...



We are coming for you soon my love! We can not wait to hold you in our arms!

I love my agency!

So I was told that my facilitator requested up to date information on my girl, and today I received three new photos of our Talia Li Shun. We were also able to send a care package with our facilitator as she has left for China today and will send them to the SWI when she gets there.

Yes folks, she will no longer be known as BabyL she is now Talia Li Shun Laforest. Gotta nice ring to it don't ya think?

We have also booked flights and have a rough itinerary. We leave Sept 16th fly to Beijing arrive at 3 in the afternoon on the 17th Beijing time and we opted for an extra day so we will be on our own on the 18th and fly to her province on the 19th where we will meet up with our beautiful daughter.

One of the ladies at work noted yesterday when we were chatting that it was exactly 8 weeks yesterday that we will be holding our girl in our arms... When she put it like that, that doesn't seem like a whole lotta time and we have a whole lotta things to do :-) Somehow I know it is all going to get done.

Last weekend I sorted out the 6 rubbermaid containers of clothes that my sister has given us into sizes to see what we had. I think we will be o.k. for a while :-)

Other than that, things seems to be moving at warp speed and I leave you with a picture of my beauty!

Here she is!!!!!

Miss Yue Li Shun born January 28, 2011 (that makes her 5 months and one week if I do my math right) and she is from Jiangxi. We are over the moon!