Category: Elspeth

Uxbridge – Day 2

Okay, so off Katrine goes with her father.  They spend a great morning at the games.  He gets her into her national costume and off she goes to dance.  She dances her flora and lilt great and comes home with two third place medals.  How proud of her am I right now?

Tonight she showed what type of big sister she could be (as if we didn’t know already).  Great.  We had our travel group (minus the Ottawa crew but plus an honorary family who adopted previously from Elspeth’s orphanage) over for a barbeque.  We thought that it would be great to get to know each other and reconnect before we set off in a week’s time.  There was one little girl who came, not yet three.  Katrine was patient with her.  By the end of the night the pair of them were swinging and making “soup” in the kitchen.  Katrine even shared some of her precious watermelon with her.  Can’t wait to see her and Elspeth together.

 

What is new with us

Only three more weeks until we leave for China!! Very exciting.  Everyone is being really suportive and we appreciate it.  It has been a long road, but no longer than the road to Katrine in some ways, and we are almost at the end.  We got a treat a week ago.  It was given to us by a family who had traveled to Elspeth’s orphanage in the spring.  More photos.  Such a serious little girl.  What a gift they gave us with these photos.  It is like a window into her life for two years.  I don’t know if they will every know how truly thankful we are for their willingness to take and share these precious photos.

We have planted our garden as per usual.  However, this year we chose slightly different crops given our travel plans.  We planted mainly squash and potatoes.  We do have two watermelon plants so we will wait and see what happens there.  Right now everything is looking green and leafy but we do not have any flowers yet on any of the plants which is a bit concerning.

We have also been busy out front of the house.  The “Pony House” has made its yearly reappearance.  This year the ponies have been able to upgrade their accomodations.  They now have actual walls (thanks to our new hedge trimmer which works great for trimming unrully flowering trees) and beds (actually piles of dry grass cuttings).  Overall a comfortable abode.

 

What else?  Oh yes, Katrine spent the first week of her summer vacation at skating camp.  Her choice I might add.  She had a grand old time skating at least two and a half hours a day plus off ice training for five days straight.  She must have gone to sleep easily each night! No way, not our girl.  That said, she was always easy to get up and raring to go.  Glenn was at work of course and I spent my first week of holidays organizing our house and getting things ready for us to go.  It will be really nice when the house is finally sorted and the basement set up.

First Dance Competition of the Year and a Surprise!

Today was the Georgina Highland Games as well as Katrine’s first outing as a Beginner!  She was a mixture of excitement and nerves.  Over all, she danced really quite well.  There are definetely things that she can improve on but she did well nonetheless.  Well?  Two thirds in her first outing.  We had been preparing her all week for the distinct possibility that she would not win a medal being that it was her first outing in a new and harder group.  She was over the moon.  To make it better, my parents decided to drive down to see her dance.  She was just happy to have a larger cheering section.  All of the girls from Katrine’s dance school did well which was nice because no one was left feeling left out of the celebrations. Once the girls had got their medals, a whole group of them went to the craft zone to do crafts and get their faces painted.

Katrine also chose to do the mass fling at the opening ceremonies.  Mass fling?  Well it is every dancer that they can convince to walk into the middle of a empty field and then do the fling in front of the crowd.  It is actually really fun to do because it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake or remember all of those things that you are suppose to.  Instead, it is a chance to just dance and entertain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for the surprise, I woke up this morning and went to check my email before setting off for the competition and what should be there?  Two new photos of Elspeth and a brief update!!  She has grown a whole centimeter and is up to 20 pounds.  Her feet are TINY.  Only 4 1/2 inches long.  That is like 12 month robbies and she is turning two in October.  She has more hair now, all spinky like.  Anyways, I promised more photos once we had some so here they are!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn and I?  I got burnt at the competition as is my usual at the first competition of the season.  Doesn’t look too bad though.  How I managed to get burnt with sunscreen on while sitting under the trees remains a mystery to me.  Glenn has cleaned up all of the crap from the basement and has the ceiling painted.  Yes painted.  Tomorrow it will be on to the walls.

The curse is lifted!

This morning Glenn took the forms to Purolateur and couriered them off to our agency.

Sigh!  The curse has been lifted.  Yippee!

Once again I have to say that our social worker is the one who broke the curse.

Now we can just enjoy our girls.

The Curse of the Forms

Part one of the curse drew to a close just before midnight tonight.  There is a slight repreave before the beast rears its ugly head again tomorrow night.  Beast you ask.  Yes, that hideous, cramp causing, sore eye causing, headache inducing monster known as adoption paperwork.  The curse will be lifted after we complete our visit with our fabulous social worker tomorrow night (she really is amazing, a godsent) and Glenn sends everything off in the courier on Friday.  Then we wait and go back to playing with toys and looking at clothes.  Until then.

More information

Got the UPS information package today so here are a few more details about our cutie based on an assessment in March of this year.  She is healthy and already has 8 teeth.  She is small – only 72 cm tall weighing in at 18 pounds 7 ounces.  She appears to be on a diet similar to the one I will be on in China – rice, rice, rice, congee with a little fish or meat.  No wonder she is so tiny.

Developmentally she does not appear to be where Katrine was at the same age which is not surprising.  She has at least 10 words, crawls, stands, walks holding a hand, tears paper.  She can put things into and outof a cup and bang things together.  She does not yet stack blocks and it appears as if she has never seen a book or crayons.  That will change soon enough.

They also told us that she is very energetic and likes to be outdoors.  Plus she is extroverted.  Sound like another daughter?

It looks like we are going to be a family of early risers.  The orphange has the kids getting up at 6:00am and going to bed at 8:00pm with a 1 1/2 to 2 hour nap around lunch.  The nap in the middle of the day will be good once we get home because she will be awak for the arrival of Katrine’s bus from school.  I can’t imagine how she is not a total crank keeping those hours.  It must be the long nap.  I think that mommy will have to nap with her.

There you have it.  That is our Elspeth in a nutshell.

A weekend of fun

It has been a nice weekend.  Katrine got her Canskater of the year medal on Saturday along with a nice framed certificate.  Her proud Grammy took her to the RHFSC’s end of the year banquet.  She was just beaming about it.  In fact, when she came home she went right upstairs and hung her medal up on her bulletin board.

On Saturday,Glenn and I got to attend an absolutely lovely wedding.  The weather held so the service was held outside and at the beginning of the service, the clouds parted and the sun shone through.  It was beautiful.  The groom and ushers looked smart in their formal wear as did the bridesmaids.  The bride looked breathtaking.  A delicious dinner and fabulous dancing with friends.  It was a wonderful way to spend an evening.

Today we headed out for a family movie day.  Kung Fu Panda 2!!  It was a really good movie.  I liked how it approached the two families of adoption and how each can love you.  Katrine cried a bit, laughed a lot, had fun.  We had some good discussion tonight about her two families and the similarities and differences btween their stories.

Now for our final piece of news.  Our referral is on a plane from China.  We are hoping to have it in our hot little hands by Wednesday or Thursday.  Katrine is pretty excited.  Glenn and I are like little ducks.  Calm on the outside but paddling furiously underneath.  Keep your eyes open for more news.  We will share as it arrives.

What else? The robins have hatched and are getting bigger.  Unfortunately they are fairly protective so we can’t get any really nice pictures of them.

We have also managed to get our garden planted in amongst all of the rain.  Flowers out front and veges out back.  We have sunflowers (for the seeds…we hope), carrots, watermelon and two types of squash (summer and acorn).  In addition, the strawberry plants that we planted last year are growing like crazy.  I expect that Katrine will soon be picking of the berries while she is playing outside.

Have a great week.

Big skating news!

Yes, it is another skating post.  Before I bring you up to date on Katrine’s skating exploits, I thought that I should tell you where we are in “The Wait”.  Last week they sent out referrals for up to June 15, 2006.  If we are lucky, we will be included in the May referrals but we are not expecting our referral until June.  Of course we will let you know once our referral arrives but now on to skating.

Today was the last skating competition for this season which means we have a bit of a break before the dance competitions begin in June.   Anyways, Katrine skated really well today (it was one of those times where everything you’ve been working on just comes together at exactly the right time) and got first place for her group.  It was also great because all three grandparents were there to help her celebrate.  Katrine was almost as excited about her prize from the contestants draw area…glittery lip gloss and a medal what could be better?

Now for some more skating news.  This is the BIG skating news.  On May 14th Katrine will have the honour of receiving the BMO CanSkater of the Year award for Central Ontario.  She doesn’t know yet, we are going to tell her after her birthday so that she doesn’t get overwhelmed with everything.  We found out two weeks ago and have finally come out of the shock phase as we didn’t know that this award existed until Glenn got the phone call from Skate Canada central Ontario.  If it took us two weeks to process this I am not sure how Little Miss will react.  What is the award?

The BMO Financial CanSkater of the Year Award:  Emphasises talent and skill achievement coupled with the spirit of a champion. These skaters will have the desire to continue and succeed in skating.  Each club in Central Ontario awards one CanSkater of the Year medal to one skater, under the age of 8, at their club.  They then submit this name to Skate Canada Central Ontario officials who chose the top 13 skaters in that section of Skate Canada and from those 13 they chose the top one.  This year Katrine is that top one.  So, on May 14th we are off to an ice show so that she can get her medal in front of a bunch of people.  Her name has also been submited for consideration for the National CanSkater of the Year award but we won’t know more about that until May 14th.

Anyways, I guess this means that we will continue to spend vast amounts of time at a variety of arenas.  It also means that we will likely to continue to provide skating blog posts for many years to come.  Surprise!

Happy Year of the Rabbit!!

Happy Lunar New Year! The year of the rabbit began with a lot of celebration.  We went to the FCC New Year’s Banquet at the end of January.  It was throughly enjoyed by all.  The food was yummy and the company even better.  It really is a fun evening because alot of the Toronto area families from Katrine’s travel group go as well.  We have a chance to reconnect.  Plus, whenever the girls get together there is definetely free entertainment.  The icing on the cake for that evening (for Katrine at least) was the lion dance.  Once the real dancers are done, they let the girls use their lions.  This year Katrine got to go around the restaurant in the head.

On New Year’s Eve we had just a family evening.  I made a few chinese dishes at home (as you can see from the photo, many less than most years because I am still smarting from my spectacular fall at skating class).  It was a great family evening nonetheless.  Katrine loved her hongbao.  She stuffed all of her new years money into her piggie bank for use in China.

Normally I don’t have anything exciting to report about our second adoption.  For the past few years, my updates have basically been that we are still waiting.  Yes, we are still waiting BUT they are now into the files registered in China during the month of June 2006.  That is our month!!  We are hoping that the year of the rabbit will bring us our referral and trip back to China.

Happy New Year!