Sam and I are ALWAYS eager and happy to recieve any and all updates on our girls. We look forward to them, as they really lift our spirits! How could they not? THey're such cute, special children! :)
Last week, we took it upon ourselves to send the girls an "update" on who their parents are! Both Social Welfare Institutes (orphanages) are aware that they have a family coming for them, but they know nothing about us. They have no information to prepare the children (not that you can grasp what adoption means at two years of age), so, though a service, we sent them some - an update, if you will! :)
There is a service called The Red Thread that puts together care packages for children in Chinese Social Welfare Institutes. We used this service because we want the people who are caring for our children to know how much we appreciate the love they have put into the girls. We also want the girls to be able to look back and see that we were thinking of them (ALL THE TIME) and sent them a little something! Mostly, we wanted to be able to send pictures of ourselves and our home so that they might be a little better prepared to meet two overly excited Americans that have longed and waited for them since they were created!
We chose to send a food gift, a picture album and a thumb drive (we sent the thumb drive so the people caring for our children can download any and all pictures they have of the girls and of the places they grew up and the people they drew up with). A 400 word letter was also included in the package. It was MUCH harder to write than I thought it would be... I mean, what do you say to a two year old and the people that have been caring for them in only 400 words?!
Here's Charlotte's care package. We originally wanted to send a cake for her whole foster family and/or preschool friends to share, but it was way out of our budget (along with so many other things I wanted to send!!!
As you can see, our letter has been translated into Chinese. We had to keep the language of the letter fairly simple so that nothing would be lost or misinterpreted in translation. We chose to send a special Chinese treat called "moon cakes" that are made with lard and have a boiled egg in the center. :) The Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up, and we thought this would be an appropriate gift to send to her foster family, though the SWI (orphanage) may keep it. I once thought I might attempt to make moon cakes myself for Chinese New Year... they are sooooo complicated and require a lot of ingredients (probably expensive) that I'm not sure where to find! Plus, they really don't sound very yummy to me, if I'm being perfectly honest. :) Maybe I'll make them with the girls some day when they're older! Or maybe we'll just make chocolate chip cookies!
Next up is Flora Lin's package! It is almost exactly the same, except for the treat. We chose individually wrapped candies for her package because they could easily be shared with the many children in her SWI and the caregivers that are her family. Again, we REALLY wanted to send a cake for her to share with everyone, but it just wasn't affordable. :( We'll make lots of cakes at home, though. :)
You've probably noticed the "Who Loves Baby" album and wondered what was in it (as in, did we send them a picture of you, loyal reader :)). We only had six spots for pictures in the album, so we kept it fairly simple. We chose two pictures of Sam and I together, a double picture of one parent individually and with a pet (we've got pets everywhere, so they need to be prepared!), one of their room and one of their new sister! Once we are home, we hope to put together an album with all of our fantastic friends and family in it, so feel free to send us your favorite picture of you. :)
Anne, who owns The Red Thread service, labeled all of the pictures for us in Chinese. Hopefully, this will clear up any confusion if they think they are pictures of us visiting a petting zoo! :)
We hope that when we meet each of our daughters on their Gotcha days that they will bring with them a thumb drive full of pictures of their life in China and a worn and well loved photo album of two people who love and care for them more than they will EVER know!
Lin-Lin and Lottie Pie, we love and miss you soooo much! We can't wait to start the rest of our lives with you and make moon cakes, cookies, mud pies or apple pies or whatever pies you want! :)
We're going to have so much fun together!
I have never attempted making moon cakes (and this mama had baked 30-60 gingerbread houses each December for over a decade for my kids)!!! At first I ordered them from China Sprout, but now I drive to a Chinese grocery store to get our annual supply. My little girls and I LOVE the red bean paste filled without any yolk! We've tried a variety of flavors, but this is our favorite. I developed the taste for red bean paste during our adoption trips. Chinese sweet treats are not nearly as sugary sweet as our American sweets! Oh, but I how LOVE and miss Chinese yogurt! It is drinkable. You poke a straw in like you would a juice box. My girls loved it so much that we would take an extra one from the breakfast buffet until we bought extras at Wal-Mart or Carrefour to put in our hotel room mini fridge. (We had our guides ask the hotel to empty out all the "For Purchase" items so our girls never helped themselves and emptied our pocketbook.) They enjoyed waking up in the morning to a pre-breakfast in bed and drinking a yogurt. It made it easier on us to get them ready and then really fill their tummies from the buffet. Soooooooo excited for your family as you establish new traditions and memories together!!
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