China Sister Fun.

We hosted a picnic today for our local South Florida Asia Group and as always when this group gets together we had a really lovely time. I am not sure of the exact number of people that showed up but we had a large crowd and the rain that was forecast stayed far far away. Jacob myself and Hollis were laughing at the fact that were 50 kids there but our 5 girls stuck together as if no one else existed. They played with the other girls for a few minutes but for the most part it was the "C" girls and "M" girls. Rosie thought this was her birthday party so she was in heaven and when Jean showed up with a birthday cake that had her name on it along with all the kids names that have had recent birthdays she was convinced it was all about her.

I met this little girl and her really lovely Momma. They live not far from us and we met through another blog and vowed to meet but never had until today. My goodness Tessa is really, really lovely. All our children are and we are so very fortunate to have a group as wonderful as this. When we joined it Lily was one of the babies but now she is one of the big girls and Rosie is one of the babies. We chat amongst ourselves about their heritage and how we keep it alive, we chat about the questions they ask, going special needs versus non special needs, whether it really is all that to stay at the White Swan when In Guanzhou or whether the Victory is better, we just chatter about adoption stuff and there is never a moments hesitation because you know the person you are talking to "get's it". Our old SW was there cos we invited her. She is an amazing woman and some people are still really shocked to find out that she reads my blog. She isn't some nosey instigator she is a professional who helps to unite families and she has become a huge part of ours. She loves to see all of "her" kids playing together at the picnics and seeing how many of her parents have become good friends.

Whenever we have a picnic we donate money to a worthy cause and we usually choose Half the Sky but this year due to the earthquake we decided to collect the money for Haiti. I am not sure yet on the total as some people still want to donate and our final figure will be matched.

At one point there must of been easily 150 of us but we failed to take a group photo but as the last of us were clearing up I decided we needed to get a photo of the kids....they were thrilled, can you tell? I love the choke hold one sister has on the other!


A close up of Miss Tessa! She would not smile for this but as soon as I put the camera down she cracked up!



Rosie's Birthday Cake.





A very small part of the group.


Bubbles




Why no pictures of Lily yo ask? Because she took off to the playground when we arrived, resurfaced for lunch and was gone again for hours shortly after that. We kept checking in on the big kids but they we very independent today and out of camera range....oh boy they are getting big!