Hello everyone, this is Nancy.  Scott & Shelby asked me to post a note here because they can't get to the blog or facebook so they're writing about their travels at http://www.stothepowerofsix.wordpress.com/ and will keep us all updated on their amazing journey bringing Saige home!  Hopefully they can get on here to post travel notes and most importantly PICTURES!  Can't wait to see a photo of the "S to the Power of Six!!!" family in one shot :-)

Getting Ready to GO...

We are almost all packed and ready to go.  The van will pick us up tomorrow from our house and take us up to JFK for our first leg of our trip to bring Saige home.  We should be arriving in Kunming around 12:30 am local time on Sunday the 18th (Saxton's Birthday).

The next time you'll see a post from us, we will be in Kunming. 

Last Minute Update!!!

We just received new pictures of Saige today.  Check them out:

Isn't she Beautiful?!!!!

Travel Update!!!

We are leaving, on a jet plane....next Friday!!!  We will be flying from JFK to Beijing then onto Kunming, arriving in the very early morning of the 18th.  We get Saige the very next morning.  We are so excited to bring to whole family to meet this precious little girl that we already have her suitcase packed.

Keep looking at the blog.  Once we start this portion of our journey, I will be updating as much as possible.

One Step Closer....

We had our "Travel Call" with our agency on Friday.  This means we are close to traveling, right?  Well, not exactly.  We still have to get our Travel Authorization(TA), which is estimated to come to us in late June.  Even after we get our TA, we still can not travel right away.  Our agency is saying it has been taking three weeks to get an appointment at the US Consulate in Guangzhou due to the backlog during a recent world convention which was held in Guangzhou.  I should of been paying attention, but I got lost at Consulate Appointment.  If all plays out they way it looks like it could, we could be meeting our new addition in Kunming around the 26th of July.  This would be four years and one week to the day we met Sawyer in the same city.  We are very excited and now we are in a mad rush to get Saffi's passport and our Visas.

I know you are probably saying, "why did you wait so long to get Saffi's passport.  That is very poor planning on your part."  Well, the back story is we just completed her re-adoption in the US on April 30th and still had not received the necessary paperwork to complete the passport application until just this past week.  So, let the mad rush begin.

Saffi is very excited to have a little sister and she was a great help when we rearranged her room to make it her and Saige's room.  All we have to do now to get her room ready is put a step stool together and get the girls dressers (we ordered them, but the store ordered the wrong ones.  We are waiting on the replacements).

To ease my tension, I wet out to Seattle last weekend and went deep sea fishing with some old friends.

We had a great time and we caught a lot of fish.  What I mean by we is they caught a lot of fish, I caught a total of two ling cod, a halibut and three rock bass(the limit is ten bass).   Everybody else caught there limit on bass.

A couple weeks ago, while Shelby was away on business, I took the kids outside and took some pictures for her Mother's Day gift.   Here are some of those pictures.

Keep checking back for more updates.  One the ball starts rolling on our trip, I will be updating more and more.  Additionally, you all will be able to follow our trip, once again, right here when we bring Saige home.

We Have our LOA!!!

82 Days after our Dossier was logged into CCAA, we received our LOA yesterday.  We promptly signed it and sent it back today.  If all goes well, we may be bringing Saige home in late June.  We are over the hill with excitement!!!!

Hello again....

Well, it has been awhile since I updated the blog and many people, mainly family members, have been asking me to get this thing updated. So, here is what's been going on over the last few months.

Saige is one step closer to coming home. We were logged into the CCAA on January 28th. So we should be getting our LOA here in the near future. We have been looking at furniture and playing with ideas for the girls' room. We haven't settled on anything, yet but we know at least there will be two beds. Figure that, two beds for two girls. Who would of thought? We hope to be traveling to bring Saige home in June or July. Depending on how it plays out, we could be in Kunming four years to the day we adopted Sawyer. Now that would be exciting.

Sawyer's vocalizations have been exploding over the last few months. He has gone from saying nothing, to saying close to 100 words. He has been uttering 3 to 5 word phrases on a regular basis. Even though most of them are hard to understand, we are ecstatic that he is finally talking and attempting to communicate with us. Enjoy this video.

During the kindergarten readiness testing at his daycare, he was one of the only kids who could identify all of his letters and count to thirty. We couldn't be prouder of him.

Saxton is also doing very well in his preschool class. Because of his cleft lip and palate, his speech has been delayed and unclear. But because of intense speech program he has been in, his speech has been becoming clearer and clearer by the day. That is Awesome. Both he and Sawyer have also been growing like weeds. We just bought them 4T clothes in December and the pants already look like high waters. Guess what we are doing over the Easter weekend.

Saffi continues to make bigger and bigger strides in school. She has been doing very well in Math and her English is coming along very nicely. A lot of people find it hard to believe that she just came home just over a year ago. It has truly been an amazing ride. Saffi also has been involved in Daisies. Thank goodness for her involvement in Daisies, otherwise I don't know how I would have got my Girl Scout Cookie fix this year if she wasn't. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a Father/Daughter dance. I had a lot of fun trying to teach her the Hooky Poky and the Chicken Dance.

As for us parents, Shelby has been trying to get her yearly traveling done before we head off to China to bring Saige home.  I have been working for the phone campany again as a contract engineer.  The best thing about my job is my commute.  From the bedroom, down the stairs and to m our den.  It's awesome to be able to work from home. 

Between the snow and the rain storms, we have been trying to build a garden in our back yard.  We are pretty excited at trying to grow our own herbs, vegetables and fruits this year.  Should be exciting.

Anyway, here is what you people really come here for, pictures.  Enjoy.
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