Happy FIRST Birthday!

Sam is ONE today and we are very excited! We are truly blessed to have such a happy, healthy, smart child. He makes us laugh and melts out hearts every day. He began walking around Halloween so now he is practically running! He babbles constantly and keeps mom company all day.

We also recognize today that halfway around the world Sam's birthmother is having a very different experience than us and so we ask for prayers for Mei-Chen. That God would comfort her sorrows in this loss.

Here are a couple recent photos. Sam bundled up for the cold winter, petting the Nina kitty, and then just being cute!

Baby Dedication Video

Here's the video of Sam's baby dedication. At our church, we don't baptize infants, but we bless them and dedicate ourselves as parents to raise them in a Christian home. You can see Sam try to grab Carter Moss's notebook. (Carter is our campus pastor). He also lets out a nice squeal or two near the end. Enjoy! Thanks to Opa Barsch for videotaping it.

Growing Up

I know- we use the same excuse as any parent- we are TOO busy to keep this blog updated on a regular basis. Oh well. Here are some of the latest photos. Sam will be 10 months on Sunday and is healthy and happy as could be! We are blessed.

Taipei Airport Video

Here's a great video of Annie and Sam playing at the Taipei effort as we wait for our flight. Other passengers were very friendly and loved Sam. Thankfully, he behaved himself on the flight so he didn't change their minds. In this video, Annie references a You Tube video of another laughing baby, so I posted that one, too.

Laughing baby video

OK, so this isn't Sam, obviously, but we love this video of a German baby with a great laugh. Annie references it in the Taipei airport video, so I thought you might want to see it.

Swing!

Here's a trip to the park and the swing set.

Updates...Finally!

Well we've been home several weeks now with no updates...sorry to you all. It was a whirlwind of chaos- the good kind with tons of family and friends stopping by to meet Sam and bring us meals. Since arriving home Sam has grown tremendously! He is now 22 lbs, he crawled within 3 days and now stands on his own. He is trying hard to walk and will accomplish that soon. He's gotten 2 haircuts and 3 more teeth to bring that total to 9. He's gone swimming and loved it- played in the grass and hated it- and played in the sand and is questionable. He likes to swing at the park [see photo] and gets into everything. We absolutely love him and know that God intended him to be ours all along. Peter is cleaning up some home videos so those are soon to come. Enjoy these recent photos!

Procrastinate no longer...

Ok, so I now have about two more days until I start back to school. 'Bout time I take these videos off the camera, huh? I'll put a few more up in the next few days as I get them ready.

Thanks for your patience and your emails!
Here's a video of us playing with Sam in our Taipei hotel room.

Settling In

Now that we are home and on week two things are a little more predictable. I figured I'd take a little time to share some of our family photos. Grammy and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Aunt Squee and Uncle Joe are shown. Sam is doing great! Sleeping a little more, eating a LOT more, and still teething. He began crawling today and pulls himself up to standing whenever he can. He is an absolute blessing!

Recovering!

Hey everyone! Thanks so much for your support, love and prayers. We've been working on getting Sam to sleep during Chicago's nighttime, and get used to the new digs. I'll put up more pictures from the trip home in the next few days. Thanks!

Yeah, so babies & museums don't mix...

We went to the National Museum, an amazing collection of Chinese art from the last 8000 years. Sam decided to enjoy the sound of his loud squeals in any large, echoing room we encountered. He liked that so much, he kept doing it in the little rooms, too. Yeah, so we weren't there very long. Good times!

Tonight we're going to dinner with Annie's second cousin & his family. (Annie's mom's cousin's son...follow that?) He lives in Taipei with his wife, who is Taiwanese, and their family. Then one more night & we're on our way.

Keep on praying!

Taipei 101

OK, so I can't seem to get a good picture of the outside of Taipei 101. Here are some from the internet. Enjoy! (Oh, and I still think the Sears Tower is taller. Yeah Chicago!)

And now...the reason we're here.

Here's Sam being cool.

Shrine of Fallen Soldiers

This is a GORGEOUS shrine to fallen soldiers in the history of the Republic of China. It was about 100 degrees and humid, though so we didn't stay long. They had soldiers doing the "I'm-a-guard-so-I-stand-real-still-even-though-it's-freaking-hot-and-I'm wearing-wool" kind of thing. Impressive, very impressive. It's very "The Last Emperor."

Pics of the Grand Hotel

This is a gorgeous hotel made to look like a Chinese palace. Cool gardens outside, too.

Pics of Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is the tallest building is the world. I'll get some pics of the outside up later, but here's the inside and views from the top. Notice the hottie with the baby carrier. There was a cool storm while we were up there. It doesn't turn out great on the pictures, but hey...

Sights around town

Wanna see some pictures of Taipei? OK, here you go.

My wife is a genius

My wife is a genius. We'll explain later... Notice I'm writing this at TWO-THIRTY IN THE MORNING!!!!

At long last..

In this video you can see our first meeting with Sam. The first woman you'll see holding him is the foster Mom. Sorry for the bad camera work. My attention was on him, not on framing the shot perfectly. Enjoy!

No more waiting!

We got Sam today! This morning our guide Fion drove us down to Feng Yuan (which sounds like Fun-gyuen to my ears). We went to the local office of the adoption agency and met his foster mother Ms. Liu, who had him in her arms as we walked in. (By the way, "This is our God" was playing on the radio in the office when we came in...CCC people know this song by its chorus which keeps repeating "This is the one we have waited for...") We said hello and sat down and Ms. Liu put him in our arms. Annie and I were worried we would burst into tears and grab him from the arms the first moment we saw him! We didn't want to do freak him out (or Ms. Liu, for that matter) so we prepared ourselves for the moment. He is a BIG baby. Not really fat, but BIG... He has four teeth across the top, and none on the bottom. He likes to bite Mommy's kneecaps. He took to us really well. He smiled at us from the start and takes a bottle easily. (Though he'd probably take a bottle from anyone...Big eater, this one). The first video I will put up will be our meeting. Here are a few pictures of the trip and then pics of him in our hotel room. It's 10:15 PM here now and we're trying to get him down for the night. He just wants to roll around going "thbptbptbptbptbpt!!!!" and stick out his lower lip like Popeye. Thanks for everyone's prayers. We know they are working!

We're here!

We've made it! We're in our hotel: the Evergreen Laurel in Taipei. We're so beat right now. I'm going to post a couple of pictures of the hotel room on the website and then go to bed. It's ten at night here, but it feels like 9AM with very little sleep on the plane. We chased the sun, so we had daylight until just before we arrived. We met our adoption agency contact Fion, and she is sweet and helpful. Tomorrow we drive down to meet Sam and the foster family. It looks like the birth mother has decided not to meet us, which we respect.

The flights were very smooth. China Airways is very nice and professional. Our 747 was sweet, although you can hardly see it in the picture...nice photography, Pete.
Love,
Peter & Annie

We Travel When??!!

Today we learned that Sam had his final hearing this morning! This means we will travel later this month to get him!! We will leave the States on 6/24 and return with him on 6/30. What a perfect gift for our 5 year wedding anniversary on 6/29. Please pray for safe travels and understanding plane passengers : )

6 month video

He can almost roll over!

I'm a BIG boy!

These photos were taken on Sam's 6 month birthday. He is growing so fast- he needs to come home!!

New video

Five Months Already!

Here's our growing little boy. He's 5 months in these photos, weighing in at a whopping 18.5 lbs and he's 26.4" long. It looks like he found his feet too. We love him!