Red Threads

(The red thread that connects us may stretch and tangle but will never break.)

We were LID 11/20/2001 and the wait was getting longer.   It had taken us 9 months to get RaeAnne's referral and this one was dragging on.  December 30, 2002 we knew we were going to get "The Call."   The Yahoo boards were full of people getting their referrals.   We slept in late because our agency is on the west coast and they wouldn't be getting their DHL packages until early afternoon. So we kept ourselves busy!

December 30, 2002.

The call came in at 2:10PM.   I said "Is this THE CALL?"  And she said, "This is Patty and Yes this is The Call!"  I hurried up the stairs to get my CALL list of questions and I actually held it together pretty well as she told me about our new daughter.  Huai Feng He was born on 3/7/02 and entered the Huainan Children's Welfare Institute on 3/10/02.  All the other information would be send overnight to us by FedEx.  I did ask Patty if she could email us a photo of her and she said that they were working on scanning all the photos.   Oh My Gosh!  I am a Mommy again!!  Her name is going to be KaeLynn FengHe VanCamp.  I think my feet were not touching the ground!  I was going to hook up the video camera to get everyone's expressions when we first saw her face.  

When we first opened the email with her photo I said, "She's beautiful!"  And started crying!  Daddy said, "She looks like a keeper!"  Big brother, Nicholas' first comment was that her shirt was way too big!  405 days waiting for our referral and now she is here!  I joined the Huainan group and was pleased to find out that they take very good care of their babies there.  

I spent a lot of time visiting on line with the other families in our travel group.  All their babies are also from Huainan and they are all very close in age.  We are getting excited about meeting the families we will be traveling with and all the babies.   KaeLynn FengHe we can't wait to get our arms around you!

We spent the next few days calling family, visiting with our travel mates and RaeAnne and I spent a little retail time.  These girls are going to look so cute dressed alike!  Mom's chance to dress them up like twins!   New Hope was telling us that we would likely be in China by or before KaeLynn's first birthday.  YES!

My Dad and I took a day off to spend time together.  Once we have two kiddos in the house that might be harder to do.  We arrived back home tonight, January 10, 2003 to find that Patty from New Hope had called with some up dates on KaeLynn.  She is now 18 pounds!  I hope they are erroring on the high side!  She also has 4 teeth now, so that must be why she is gaining weight!  I am sad that we were not there for these milestones in her life, but we are so glad that she is doing so well!

January 21, 2003 they called us and told us to make our airline reservations!  We need to be in Hefei, Anhui on February 23rd!  Yippee!  RaeAnne and I had to make a flying trip to Great Bend to get Nicholas' passport so we can buy tickets!  The next day our Visa applications are off!  

Friday January 25, 2003 we firmed up our travel plans.  And I started packing.  I think I am going to be able to keep the bags under 44 pounds each!

January 27, 2003  The most unthinkable, unbelievable thing happened.  I was busy finishing firming up our travel plans and had posted to our Dec 2001 DTC group when Patty from New Hope called.  The first thing she said was "Is Mark home?"  "I knew that this was not going to be a good call."

For some reason, which I am not really sure of, the Huainan orphanage took KaeLynn to the hospital.  They said that she was unable to crawl or stand by herself.  They did a CT scan of her head and they say that her brain is not "Normal."  There are abnormalities.  I felt like someone had punched me in the chest.  The CCAA, our agency's facilitator, Lin, and our agency are recommending that we decline Huai Feng He's referral.

We are so heartbroken and sick.  We have had her photos and reports for almost one month.  We are in love with this baby and now we have to decide if we should take her or not.  Mark came home from work as soon as I called him and told him about the phone call.   We broke down crying, sitting on the couch holding each other.  So many tears.  After all the tears and a lot of soul searching we decided that it would not be fair to our other children to take on a child with unknown handicaps.  That is if she even lives.  Now the guilt is setting in.  Why shouldn't we take her?  But we don't have the resources necessary to care for her.  We also decided that since we have been calling her KaeLynn and RaeAnne knows that KaeLynn is her little sister we gently tried explaining to her that KaeLynn is really sick and she will not be able to come home with us.  She will always be KaeLynn to us, the daughter that we just didn't get to bring home.   I made a special book to keep our memories of KaeLynn in.  I have studied her photos all day trying to see something that would give me a clue to what happened to our baby.  There are so many unanswered questions.  I know that most of those questions will probably remain unanswered.

I called our local travel agency and canceled our tickets.  They were more than happy to accommodate us under the circumstances.  We don't know at this point if we will receive another referral in time to travel with our group.  To occupy my thoughts, I decided to gather things to send ahead to our new referral if we have time.  I don't know why, but this afternoon a "Calm" came over me.  It sounds strange, but it was like I had received a sign that everything will be alright.  I feel that KaeLynn will be fine and have a happy life and that our new referral is truly the child meant for our family.  I am still grieving for our loss, but someone is telling me that we had to have this detour to reach the right child. It is almost scary to feel this, but I feel so comforted and calm now.

Tonight the family was all over and I said it is time to stop calling our daughter "The new referral."  We wanted something unique so our daughters' will not have other kids in their classes with the same name.  We also somehow wanted a small part of Kae's name in it.  We decided to honor Kae and our facilitator in China, Lin.  So our new daughter will be called ZoraLin.  Zora means New Dawn and Lin is Good Looking. Now to just keep busy until we get the call again. The CCAA will be closed for over a week for Chinese New Year. 

February 11, 2003   Aaaarrgghh!  No referral today!  The CCAA is back to work and they have said that we will be able to fax our approval letter back to China so we should still be able to travel with our group!!  

February 13, 2003  Finally the CALL came at 2:18PM  Ning MeiHe was born on 5/17/02.  She is in the Taishan SWI, Guangdong.  We will be staying at the White Swan the whole time!  They say she is healthy and her photos confirm she is being well fed!  Tonight I sat down and reflected on all the red threads.  When we first sent our dossier off, for some reason I felt that our daughter would have Mei in her name.  Also I wrote back in April that I hoped her birthday was in May or June.  Our facilitators name is Lin Ning Sheng.  We decided to use Lin in the name and then our daughters Chinese name has Ning in it and part of KaeLynn FengHe's name.  It was definitely in the stars that we would be pulled to this child.  Daddy scoffs at all these "coincidences" but I believe!!

February 19, 2003  off on our plane to China!!  Just a short time ago I didn't think that this would happen.  ZoraLin MeiHe VanCamp will be in our arms on February 23rd!!

We love you to the Moon and Back Zora Mei!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Jordis and Tessa have been calling it Valentimes Day all week!  I wanted something different for the girls this year.   I think I found it!   Each girl will have their own coffee/hot chocolate cup!

RaeAnne

Zora

Jordis

Tessa

Kendalan

I didn't get to pick the words that are on the cup.  Just the first letter of their name and then the spelling of their name.   Then as I was walking through the grocery store last week I saw they had taken the super small pepsi cans and had glued the mini candy bars around the outside of the can.  I couldn't find the cans, but I found the small bottles.   I think they turned out pretty cute.  Can't wait for the girls to get up so I can see what they think.

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Happy Valentine's Day girls.   We love you to the moon and back!!

One of our past times.

The girls and I love to watch some TV shows together.   Tessa, Jordis, RaeAnne and I love to watch "Criminal Minds"  and "Stalker".   We have been known to watch other shows like "The Mentalist" too bad it is going away :(   A few of us love to watch "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette."  We love to pick who we think should win and then we love yelling at the TV when the girls turn into Drama Queens and do bad things behind the Bachelor's back causing stress and Drama in the house. We also like watching "CSI", "The Mysteries of Laura", "Scorpion" and we are looking forward to the new "CSI Cyber" show.  There are many more shows that we watch.   We kind of play musical beds because I like to lay in my bed and watch TV and the girls come in to watch different shows and then they will head downstairs to watch TV with their Dad on the big screen TV or to the living room to watch some Disney or Nick JR.show  "Spongebob" is in our house!

On some of these shows they show how young girls can get themselves into trouble by chatting on-line with someone who says they are one age and then they find out that they are an old pedophile.  So we have lessons learned about not meeting up with someone you "talk" to on the internet.   I hope the girls will learn to be wise in making some decisions.  I am letting them see what could happen if they would let their guard down but to not be too afraid.  

It is also a fun time when the girls come and snuggle in bed with me while we are watching TV.  We had to take a selfie the other night.   Dad had come in while we were watching the show and took our photo.  Oh how I love these girls!!

New Friends

The girls had their eyes checked this year.  We used a new eye doctor because he accepted our insurance.   He is a very nice person and we were talking during one of the exams and he mentioned that his family has a friend who they met through Washburn's Friendship Program.  She is from China and even though she has spent her time here in Topeka and has returned to China, they are keeping in contact with her.  COOL!

So I asked him how could we sign up for this?  He gave me the name of the person who is in charge of the program.  Mark sit down that night and emailed him.   Next thing we know there are three Chinese students arriving in Topeka January 10th.  They wanted to stick together, would we be interested?   YES!

Emails were exchanged and last Saturday we picked them up at the college and brought them out to our house.   They are Ava, 21 from the Shandong province.  Iris and Yoyo from Shanghai.  They all know each other because they have been attending the same University in Shanghai.

We got to know each other and then the kids took them to the basement to play on the Wii, board games, puzzles, Uno and watch a movie.  The girls are so excited to have three "big" sisters!   They said that they were really into Cheeseburgers and French Fries.  So we took the to Conrad's in Overbrook cause we love their FF's there.  

When Mark was taking them back to the dorms Saturday night they decided that they wanted to come out Monday morning and cook for us.   And WOW did they cook!  They brought chicken, all kinds of vegies, egg noodles and they stirred up a lot of good food.   It was kind of a soup with the noodles and vegetables all cooked into it.  Y.U.M.M.Y!

They are only going to be here for one semester and will go back to college in Shanghai in May.  So we hope to keep them busy getting good grades and learning about Kansas and the USA!

Cookie makers

The girls love to bake cookies.   I bought several different kinds of the pre-mixed kind at the store because they were on sale and for the price they are really economical and super easy!

Of course, we were baking some for Santa.   We had enough for an army.   But you would have never know it because the next morning they were all gone!!

Nothing like a sugar high on Christmas morning!!

Mom is a total klutz

The day after Christmas we were going to have surprise guests.   Surprise for the girls that is.  Uncle Colin and Aunt Melissa were coming up from Lexington to see Dad for his birthday and to deliver a present to Nick's girlfriend.   So I needed to get some long awaited painting done.  And I do mean L.O.N.G. awaited.   I started painting RaeAnne's room soon after we moved in.   Then the girls started playing musical beds/rooms.   It was quite a while before they finally decided who slept in which bed in which room.   And sometimes that is subject to change.  Once we were pretty much done with musical beds I had Rae pick out the colors she wanted her room painted.  Her comforter is orange, pink and yellow.   So she picked a bright yellow and orange.   Paint was purchased and then chemo started and my energy level dropped to nil.   So I decided to get it painted once and for all.

Then she decided she wanted to paint it different colors...Really?   She picked a bright pink called "Hot".   She wanted to paint the whole room that color.  Nope, can't do it I have other paints and I had already painted one wall the bright yellow.   So Christmas day I was painting like crazy.   We had "Hot" all over two walls.   Really it is not that bad of color for a 15 year olds wall.   Then we finished with the yellow.   Now it is time to put the orange called "Carnival" up.  I didn't sleep last night and I drank two glasses of "Spark" which has caffeine and vitamins in it.  I was buzzing right along.  Had a half gallon of Carnival in my paint pan.   I am up on the ladder carefully painting along the ceiling.  Time to get down and move the ladder a bit more.  And I moved my left foot.   I immediately felt the ladder shift and the WHAM, BOOM, SPLAT!   I started yelling for help!  The orange paint is dripping off the mattress, the headboard and all over the floor.  I am almost screaming, I am tangled up in the ladder and both legs feel like they are broken.  I can't move because I am afraid too.   Finally Zora came in and I said get your Dad NOW!  Kendalan walked in the room and started crying and wanted to know if I was going to die.  

Okay the room wasn't quite ready for company, but they were great about it.  Colin even offered to finish the painting for me!  I am going to get back up on that ladder, I will not let it scare me I may have someone holding it very tightly as I stand on it this time.  Unless they make it wiggle and then my life will flash in front of my eyes again.

Santa had treats at our house this year!

Kendalan was not going to stop until I caved and we baked cookies for Santa.   I think the girls also were full of cookie dough before we were done.   Then I forgot to take a photo of the finished product.   We also left a glass of chocolate milk.   I had to drink the milk down soon after the girls went to bed because we have a couple of cats that would have their noses in it if I didn't.

Yummy, cookies for breakfast.  Isn't that what the champions eat?