100 Good Wishes Quilt

There is a Northern Chinese tradition of celebrating a new life in the family by creating a “Bai Jia Bei” or “100 Good Wishes Quilt”. It is custom to invite family and friends to contribute a square of cloth along with a good wish for the child. The quilt is said to contain luck, energy and good wishes from everyone who contributed a piece of fabric. The quilt becomes an heirloom and is passed from generation to generation.

It would mean so much to us for you to join us in this tradition. If you would like to participate, please send us one piece of cotton fabric measuring 9” by 9” (larger is okay if you don’t want to be exact). Any fabric that you choose, whether it’s new or “used and meaningful”, will be a beautiful addition to our quilt. Anything goes; life is an unexpected patchwork of happenings and events.

Along with the fabric, please include a wish for our child. Your wish can be simple or elaborate – of your own words, a prayer, favorite scripture, quote or poem. Please remember to sign your wish and include your city and state. Please attach a small piece of fabric to the wish that you are sending. The good wishes with the small piece of fabric will be put into a scrapbook. When our daughter is older, she will be able to match up the wishes and fabric to her quilt. The quilt will also give her some history. She will know that while she was in a Chinese orphanage, many people were thinking of her and praying for her.

To contribute and be a part of the quilt, please email me at starico32@yahoo.com . I will send you our mailing address. Thank you so much for helping us to make this gift possible for our daughter. Your kindness and support means so much to us!

Here are just a few examples of some of the fabric and wishes that we have received from fellow China adoption buddies:

This is one of the fabrics and wishes that I sent out to some of our China Adoption buddies:

The Latest from the CCAA

The China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) once again matched only a few days of dossiers this month. 6 days to be exact! For those of you that have just joined us we are logged in March 13, 2006. Back in the old days (nearly 2 years ago) the CCAA used to match a whole month of dossiers every month. Although we have continued to hold out hope that they would some day return to even matching two weeks of dossiers at a time. I think we need to give up on that and embrace this journey...this opportunity! I think the CCAA will continue to match only a few days of dossiers at a time. What does this all mean? Well, for us it will probably mean another year of waiting. But most likely it will mean we will head to China in 2009. It feels unbelievable to actual write that. When we started the process we thought we would bring our daughter home by late 2006 or early 2007. God truly has quite a different plan for our family. One that I surely didn't envision but one that I KNOW AND TRUST will be a marvelous work because it will all be in His Perfect Timing!

Awesome Version of Pachelbel's Cannon

Twas the month before Christmas...

*Twas the month before Christmas*
*When all through our land,*
*Not a Christian was praying*

*Nor taking a stand.*

*The "politically correct police" had taken away,*
*The reason for Christmas - no one could say.*

*The children were told by their schools not to sing,*

*About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.*

*It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say*

*December 25th is just a "Holiday".*

*Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit*

*Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!*

*CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod*

*Something was changing, something quite odd! *

*Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa*

*In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.*

*As Targets were hanging their trees upside down*

*At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.*

*At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears*

*You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.*

*Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty*

*Are words that were used to intimidate me.*

*Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen*

*On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!*

*At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter*

*To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.*

*And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith*

* Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace*

*The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded*

*The reason for the season, stopped before it started.*

*So as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream Tree"*

*Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.*

*Choose your words carefully, choose what you say*

*Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!*

Luminary Nights

This past weekend we headed to our city's Botanical Gardens for Luminary Nights. It's a fun tradition that we do each year. There are luminaries and lights all over the gardens and there is all kinds of musical events taking place. This year we enjoyed a bluegrass band, Desert Christian's Bell choir, a quartet and the Tuba cats while we sipped on hot cider and cookies. In the past there has been wonderful choirs, guitars, Japanese drums, harps and harpsichords. This year they also had a garden railway set up. Camden of course loved that! In addition, they always have a Santa that we stop by to see. Here are a few pics from our evening:

Gingerbread House

Today Camden and I created our annual Gingerbread house. It has become a fun tradition. Although Camden is more interested in just eating the candy than putting together the actual Gingerbread house.

As you will probably notice we don't do homemade Gingerbread houses! We use the kit that comes from Costco each year. We love it! It has everything you need and lots of candy!

Favorite Foto Friday

Can you tell what our 6 year old is in to?

Is it Live or is it....

Memorex? Uh...I mean Fake? Okay I guess I date myself with that one! :) Anyways, our family made a huge decision over Thanksgiving. We did what I said I would never do...we bought a fake Christmas tree! After being a "live girl" all my life we did it. I know....many of you are disappointed with us. Well, after spending every Christmas of our married life (we are going on 15) traveling and still wanting a Christmas tree we decided to just do it. If your not able to tend to the tree regularly it can become quite the fire hazard. We did mull it over for two years due to the ridiculous price of them but finally decided to make the jump. I do have to say after getting it all set up and decorated...I love it! No mess and we can put it up in September if we choose not that Doug would let me but we do have that option. I do miss the wonderful smell of a live tree though. Anyway, it's not the best picture of our new tree but here it is:


Last year we started letting Camden have his own little tree in his room that he gets to decorate himself. It's so cute! I love how he put almost all his ornaments clustered down at the bottom. Here's a picture of the sweet little thing:

Have you seen this?

A gal in my small group Bible study passed this on to me. A 13 year old boy named Logan called into KSBJ, a christian radio talk show in Houston, TX. He shared how he was feeling after having to put down his calf that morning. It is touching. You may want to have a tissue handy. Oh and don't forget to turn off IZ at the bottom of the blog. Enjoy!