Connor's Birthday Photoshoot

Thanks to Sarah for the awesome pictures for Connor's 5th birthday! Please visit her website and book her for your next photoshoot! She's super sweet and takes great pictures!

Here are a few of our favorites. Click here to see the whole album!

The Party!

Connor's birthday party was Saturday. Usually his parties are a little big, and I do all the food, gift bags, etc. myself. On Christmas Eve, it hit me that we were going to be gone for a week and a half, and I knew life would be crazy busy after we returned, so after opening presents, I called up Smart Toys and Books and told them I'd love to book a Star Wars party and was thrilled when they said they'd take care of EVERYTHING! It was money well spent, although it did feel a little strange Friday night with nothing to prepare for! We turned out to have more guests than we anticipated (14 Junior Jedis plus Connor), and the room was a little cramped and a little chaotic for my taste (I was trying to not act like a former teacher, but it was hard!) Connor said he had a blast, and it was wonderful to see how many friends my little social butterfly has! They played lots of games, dressed up as Jedis, ate a cool R2-D2 cake, and most importantly, had a giant lightsaber fight! Connor agreed to collect food to donate to a food pantry in lou of birthday gifts, and we collected a pretty decent sized box of food, plus about $28 in cash that we will give to the pantry so they can buy additional food. It was a great birthday for our little man....or I guess our big man now....sniff...sniff!

Happy 5th Birthday, Connor!

Here's what I remember about five years ago today....pain like I've never experienced, combined with puking on my doctor twice, add some more pain, and then the sight of the most beautiful creature I had ever seen of my life. I also remember these words....."Ten pounds point zero once ounce" followed by the shouts of my mother and mother-in-law..."Jessica!" "Are you kidding me??" I love to tell people he was ten pounds when he was born. As a skinny minnie as he is now, it's hard to believe, plus I'm not exactly built to house a ten pounder. I also love that fact that my sweet boy was sleeping through the night in a matter of two weeks due to all that extra body fat!!

There are so many things I love about Connor. Things that just amaze me everyday. His memory is crazy! He remembers things we don't think he should, things we think he's too young to remember. He has the funniest sense of humor, and we can already see he will be the class clown! He is so witty for a five year old! He has a innate musical ability already, just like his daddy. He watched the movie WallE twice, then got the soundtrack, and could tell me what scene every single song was from. He hears and understands music, just like his daddy! He's such a bright little boy with so much potential. He can built things from Legos by following the package direction pictures, with minimal assistance from Daddy. He's already reading simple sight word books, writing some, and using vocabulary words beyond his years. I am proud of and love all these things about Connor, but what I am proud of the most about Connor is that he has the most kind and tender heart that I could ever ask for. He truly cares about others, and he just loves with everything in him. This is my child who was excited when we asked him if he would be willing to forego presents at his party, and instead have his friends bring food for a food pantry. He responded by saying, "Sure, I'd love to help people with no food. I have a ton of toys, anyways!" I can only pray that he keeps his compassion through his whole life, and I will feel successful as a Mom!

I think what Connor wants more than anything for his birthday is a little sister! He prays for her nightly, asking God to keep her safe and bring her home soon. Always adding in..."We REALLY want to take care of her!"

I love you, Connor! Thank for you changing my world this past five years. I'm a better person than I ever was because you love me so much. I'm so proud to be your mommy, sweet boy!

(If you want to read a hilarious story about one of Connor's presents, click here to visit Greg's blog)

Taiwan Pics.....Finally!

We keep meaning to post a slideshow of our pics, but we have been pretty busy and tired since we got back. I got a snow day today, so I thought I'd finally post. Enjoy!

Last Blog from Taiwan

It's amazing what a difference a week makes. Tonight as we walked back to the hotel, I felt like I could stay here even longer. A week ago, when I walked the same street, I was absolutely terrified! The first time I stepped on the busy streets of Taipei on Tuesday, I wanted to run home! It was so scary, and the culture shock was overwhelming. I was wondering how in the world to communicate, what in the world I was going to eat, and honestly wanted to catch the first flight back to the U.S. While I still haven't gotten used to everyone staring at me, every other part of Taiwan has grown on us both. This is an amazing city with wonderful and kind people who have been so good to us. It is a place that Greg and I look very much forward to visiting frequently in the coming years. It's amazing that in such a big city, we've always felt extremely safe. To end our time here, I wanted to share a few more random things that we've noticed during our time here.

I saw rice for the first time tonight. Most people here eat noodles. You can't walk into a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. without getting rice, so I found this fascinating. We still didn't see an egg roll! The food here is incredibly cheap! Once we were comfortable enough after a couple of days to actually go into restaurants and try to order, we ate some really great food. We soon learned that most people do speak a little English and like Jodie, our cooking instructor told us, "If you want to spend money to eat, they'll find a way to handle you!" The one thing that has cracked us up is that you have to ask for a check, they won't bring it to you. There is absolutely no rush placed upon you here, and while it is a huge, busy city, at the same time people here are very relaxed and easy going. While everything is cheaper here, Starbucks is still the same price, and just like in the U.S., they are on every corner! Another interesting food fact, in U.S. the McDonald's have hot apple pies, here they are hot pineapple pies and they are quite delicious! There is also very rarely ice served in drinks. There are a ton of food options here, and you cannot even walk down a street without seeing several restaurants and many food vendors. Sometimes, some of the sights and especially the smells have gotten to me.

There are many, many people who live here in the city of Taipei! The people are not at all what I expected. They love to "bop around" and shop and eat, and even at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, the streets and subways are packed. They all have little dogs that they dress up in outfits. They wear a lot of American clothing, and sometimes clothing with hilarious English translations. The children are extremely well-behaved, never loud or causing a scene. The people are also quiet and calm and things are very peaceful, despite the fact it's a large city.

There's probably more to say, but I'll let Greg finish it out. Overall, we really have loved this country, and though we are so eager to get home to see Connor, we are excited about returning, and seeing even more of the country. Hopefully on the next visit, we'll be able to bring a new member of the Adkins family home with us. As we were leaving the orphanage yesterday, Sister Rosa said to us, "I don't know how to say it in English, but in Chinese it means, more than destiny, more than fate." I think Greg and I both know in our hearts that it means whatever plan is laid for us by our God, who we will continue to be faithful to, despite how hard the wait is, and despite how much we want to control things. He is in control, and He knows our Claire.

Please pray for safe travel as we travel home tomorrow. Thanks for following us on this adventure.

Taiwan Journal #9 - Back to Cathwel

Yesterday morning we went back to Cathwel for a second visit. They're technically closed for the holiday but Sister Rosa said we could come back to spend some time with the children and we were really excited to get to do that.

We arrived a little after 10:00 and gave Sister Rosa the rest of the money that was donated by everyone at Powell Church... it came out to $15,000 (settle down... that's about $500 US) and she seemed to be very moved by this gift. She wanted me to thank everyone there for having faith in what they were doing. She insisted on getting our address so she could send us a card... she's really sweet.

After we gave her the gift she asked if we wanted to spend some time with the babies and we told her we did so we scrubbed in (you have to wear scrubs and get washed up before you can go in with the babies) and went into the baby room. The area where the babies are is split into 2 rooms with seven or eight babies in each room... there were about five people working there with the children. We spent about an hour and a half holding them and playing with them and they let us give some of them their bottle (we do it a little differently in America so they had to keep showing us how they do it). Fortunately on Saturdays, there's a woman named Susan who works there at Cathwel who grew up in Manhattan so she was able to talk to us quite a bit. She put some of our fears from our first visit at ease telling us that she has seen many, many children be adopted by families who already have children.

I could go on and on about the children... they are just beyond precious. Most of the children we were playing with had already been adopted and were just waiting to go home... there are some very lucky families somewhere out there in the world. There was one little girl in particular who just completely melted both of our hearts. She was just so sweet. Really all of the kids seemed to be really happy and they all were very anxious to be held and played with.

To anyone reading this who is adopting through Cathwel, the one thing I would have to say to you is that your child is being incredibly well cared for. We've heard stories of many Chinese orphanages where there are 50 kids with 2 workers and they never get held or anything... that's far from the case here at Cathwel. They are well staffed and the workers there really are great with the kids... you can tell that it's genuine and they really love the babies. They seem to all get a lot of attention, everything is incredibly clean, and the babies are happy... it's still an orphanage, but I can't imagine a better setup for the kids. They're really doing a great job.

One interesting thing that happened... while we were there with the kids another couple came in... it was an American man who had a Taiwanese wife and they were from Columbus, Ohio. They were here visiting and are thinking of starting the adoption process. It was neat to meet another family from the US and I would guess after spending some time with the babies they're probably about ready to sign up!

We didn't want to wear out our welcome so after about 90 minutes with the babies we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel. I think after this second visit, Jessica and I both feel a little more at ease with the whole process. The waiting is probably going to be a bit harder now having spent time with these precious little ones but that's alright. When our referral finally comes and we have to endure that long 8 months of waiting to travel while all of our court papers are prepared, we'll be able to imagine where Claire is, what she's doing, and who is taking care of her, and we'll know that she's being loved... that alone was worth the cost of this trip.

(any families adopting from Cathwel who have any questions at all, please feel free to email us and we'd be glad to answer any questions.

Taiwan Journal #8 - Jetlag Makes Blogging Hard!

Hey everyone,

Sorry we haven't done a better job of documenting everything that's going on over here... this jetlag business has been a little tougher than we both thought it would. When we get back to the hotel every night, we are usually just exhausted and it's been all we can do to stay awake. Everytime I sit down to write something I end up dozing off!

We've been having a great time though... I'll try to hit a couple of highlights of what we've been up to the past few days.

On Thursday (New Year's Day) we signed up for a bus tour of the Northern Taiwan coast. On the brochure it had pictures of busloads of tourists so we figured a bus would come to get us and we would do this tour with about 30 - 40 other people. Instead when 1:30 came and it was time for our tour bus to pick us up a man came into the hotel lobby and introduced himself as Chong and led us to the backseat of a minivan. Turns out we were the only ones who signed up for this tour so it was just us!

We were a little nervous at first... I mean, how good can the tour be if no one wants to take it but Chong put our fears to rest very quickly. He spoke very good English and pretty much as soon as we drove away from the hotel he began sharing interesting things about Taiwan with us. He had a great sense of humor and he finally explained why everyone here drives scooters. I asked if he drove a scooter and he said he did... he said "you drive car, city controls you... you drive scooter, you control city." From what we've seen that is most certainly true!

The drive out of Taipei to the northern coast took about an hour and I'll have to say, the coastline here was really amazing. The landscape reminded me a lot of the Highway 101 / Big Sur area in California but the water here was much more violent... the waves were the biggest we've ever seen.

High up on the mountain overlooking the coast was the town of Jioufen which is an old gold mining town that is now famous for its teahouses overlooking the water. Our tour driver said he had never seen it as crowded as it was... New Year's Day is a national holiday here and it seems like the whole island had gone to the coast. We spent about an hour walking through the packed streets before heading back to Taipei... it was really cool. We'll probably do a whole separate post about the markets / shopping here in Taiwan.

We were craving some American type food when we got back from our tour so we headed down to the Taipei 101 area where we found a German / American bar type place... it felt like a fairly typical American brewery style restaurant and best of all, they had an english menu available. It was pretty exciting to find a chicken artichoke pizza and southwestern eggrolls so far from home!

We walked around a little downtown after dinner and we explored the Eslite bookstore which is like their version of Borders but it's seriously like Borders on crack. It was 7 stories tall and every floor had like 5 or 6 other stores as well... it was kind of like a bookstore surrounded on all sides by a mall. They even had a place where they offered music lessons and we saw a fairly young boy receiving painting lessons. This place was seriously huge and really nice. I would have bought a book but there were all in Chinese!

We were pretty tired after this (and it was only like 9:00) so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed. This jetlag is seriously kicking our tails... we normally are night owls but here we have been getting just completely exhausted by around 9 or 10 every night. I can't imagine how goofed up we're going to be when we get home.

Okay... more to come! Thanks for reading.

Taiwan Journal #7 - Top 8 Foods We've Seen Eaten on Sticks

Here in Taiwan there are many, many street markets. They're everywhere, they're fun, they're crowded, and there are LOTS of unusual foods served by street vendors. We've only been brave enough to try a few (giant fried chicken which was kind of gross and pork dumplings which were amazing) but we hope to get a little bit braver to try some more...

Back home when we're at the fair, there's nothing better than snacks on a stick... corn dogs, corn on the cob, pickles, whatever. Here in Taiwan, they have also discovered the joy of serving food on a stick. Here is a list of the things we've seen eaten on a stick.

8. candy coated strawberries

7. candy coated cherry tomatoes (like a candied apple except it's a tomato... weird)

6. tofu

5. corn-dog

4. fish balls

3. crab legs

2. grilled squid

1. octopus tentacles

Taiwan Video #4 - Jodie's Cooking Class

Taiwan Journal #6 - Jodie's Cooking Class

On Wednesday, we had an amazing experience taking a private cooking class with Jodie Tsao. We heard about her class on Trip Advisor and it was rated very highly so we contacted her and set it up and we're so glad we did... it was just awesome!

Jodie speaks perfect English even though she is from Taiwan. She has traveled all over the world... she said that her cooking style blends native Taiwanese cooking with concepts she learned while traveling in Italy. She has been on TV a couple of times, most notably on a Discovery channel program about Asian food. We're going to try to find that on a rerun sometime!

The class was held in her home... she lives in a mountain suburb just outside of Taipei with an incredible view looking down over a valley into the city down below. It was so neat to be able to spend some time in someone's home. She had us remove our shoes and wear slippers which is customary in most asian cultures but other than that, her home wasn't much different from anyone's back home.

The class lasted about 4 hours and for the first couple of hours, she taught us about the basic ingredients of Taiwanese cooking. Jodie is a total foodie... she gets really excited about organic, natural ingredients... she talked a lot about how when you eat healthier how much better it makes you feel. It's hard to argue with that. She taught us about different kinds of sesame seeds, sesame oils, different kinds of salts and sugars used in Taiwanese cooking, different kinds of vinegars, different styles of soy sauce... it sounds kind of dull but she was so passionate that it made it really interesting.

After that we started cooking... it was a total blast. We made spicy szechuan pineapple, white sesame paste and black sesame paste (both were awesome as a vegetable dip, salad dressing, or on noodles), spicy szechuan cucumbers, chinese green onion pancakes (delicious... we told Connor about them though and the thought of onion pancakes grossed him out! He wanted to know if we made chocolate chip), and Jessica's favorite, she taught us how to make authentic Hot and Sour soup. She's ruined us though... after eating her soup, the kind you get in American Chinese restaurants just can't compare. If you've ever eaten it and wondered what all that stuff is, now we can tell you!

The cooking was a lot of fun but the best part was just talking to and getting to know Jodie. We learned more about Taiwan and its culture in a few hours with her than we'll probably learn the whole rest of our trip combined. Jodie asked a lot about the United States as well and I think she was very surprised by some of the things we told her. She said in Taiwan they view all Americans as being very rich and also very strong or powerful. She made it sound like they were a little bit intimidated or afraid of us. She was really surprised to find out that the rich only make up a small percentage... there are a lot more homeless people in the US than there are here... we haven't seen any here in Taiwan and she said that you generally don't. I told her about how many people come through our church food pantry or call asking for help with their bills and that seemed to really surprise her.

I was able to shoot just a little bit of video of the class... I'll try to put that together and show you some of it sometime later today. It was a great experience and if you're ever in Taiwan, we strongly recommend taking Jodie's Cooking Class... you can find her website right here.

Taiwan Video #3 - Random footage of our first 2 days here

Taiwan Journal #5-Jessica's Random Observations About Taiwan

Greg posted his observations so far, so I thought I'd post some too! Here's what I've noticed!

1. All the young people here dress incredibly stylish! It's insane, even the men alway look like they stepped out of a magazine. The girls are so cute, and even though they dress well, they are modest. No one here dresses sloppily!

2. It is so cold here right now! I packed just terribly wrong! I wish I had my coat and sweaters with me! I've been freezing. Every time I get ready to walk outside without being bundled up, the concierge, bellman, and front desk workers all come to me worried about the cold. "Don't you need your jacket?" they all say. They are so kind!

3. Some men here carry their wives/girlfriends purses for them. It is not uncommon at all to be walking in the mall or on the street and seeing the men carrying purses. It's very kind! I even saw a little boy with his mother's purse last night!

4. Men also carry "man bags". Most men here have these stylish little bags that they wear as well!

5. The food here is incredibly, incredibly different. It has been very challenging for this picky eater! Some of the smells that I've encountered as I've walked past food stands have literally left me about to throw up! There have been two nights here that I've not even eaten dinner. It has been much more challenging than I thought.

6. Everyone, especially the young girls stare, point, and sometimes even giggle at us! One girls sat down right beside me, and just leaned her head on her hand and stared at me for at least five minutes. In America, this would be considered so rude, but here, everyone does it! It has been VERY hard for me!

7. I've traveled all over the United States, to all of the big cities. I've been to many, many malls! I've never seen a mall as nice at the one in Taipei 101. It's huge, clean, and incredibly nice. Name any high-end store that I'd never be able to afford and they have it. Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, etc. etc. etc.! Five floors full of stores with socks I couldn't even afford, and tons of people everywhere! The residents of Taipei have some money!

8. It gets dark here around 5 p.m. It's so weird! Greg and I usually stay up late, but because of the early sunsets, we're usually exhausted by 9 p.m.!

9. The night markets are insane! They are so cheap and so crowded! It's hard to be in the mood to shop in the crowds though, and as your walking past stands selling roasted locusts for a tasty snack.

10. Everyone here has been so nice to us and helpful. They have tried to accommodate us as best as they can. We've found more and more people who speak a little English as we stay longer. The first day was really rough for us, but it has gotten better every day.

We have had two encounters with two different Taiwanese people who have taught us a great deal! We'll post about our wonderful private cooking class, and our private tour of the Taipei coastline next! Stay tuned!