Photos from China

 

On the airplane ready for takeoff.

 

About halfway through the 15 1/2 hour flight.

 

Final pic of the Mason Three.

 

Eden having fun doing her favorite thing... in China!

 

Meeting Zoey for the first time.

 

Eden doing some artwork in our down time.

Sisters getting to know each other.

 

Eden and Zoey with their grandmother, Roberta McWhorter, who joined us again this time around.

 

Our entire adoption travel group.

 

Zoey and Keri feeding the fish.

 

Eden and Zoey at the Guangzhou Botanical Gardens.

 

The Mason Four at the Guangzhou Botanical Gardens.

 

Zoey on our orphanage visit day.

 

Standing at Zoey's finding spot in front of the orphanage.

 

The Masons down by the Pearl River with the Guangzhou skyline behind us.

Meant to Be

Keri recently spoke about our adoption at a church Bible study and I made this video at her request to show at the event.  Hard to believe it's been 3 years since we stepped off the plane from China with now-not-so-little Eden Hope.  Enjoying every minute of it!

Design on a Dime

I know, don't have a heart attack...I'm actually posting TWO days in a ROW!!! If you haven't checked in on us in a while, there's a recent post from yesterday. Okay, I am quickly becoming addicted to HGTV. I love the show "Design on a Dime." While I am nowhere NEAR their expertise (and my definition of "dime" greatly differs from theirs right now), I have been having some fun getting creative with some little projects around the house. I have had little time for decorating since Eden came home, but thanks to Mother's Day Out, I've been able to do a couple of projects the past few weeks.

I wanted to do some family pictures in Eden's room, but don't have a lot of table top space in there. And, I wanted to utilize one of the Asian silk dresses we bought her in China. So, I set out to Michael's craft store to see if I could muster up some creativity. I am NOT artistic at all (my sister got that gene from my mom) so I needed it to be fairly simple and impossible to mess up. Here's what I came up with:

I was able to find a wall shelf that would hold frames that also had pegs so I could hang the dress. The frames and "E" letter were $1 each and the shelf was $10 or so. They were unfinished wood and I painted them with acrylic paint. So this whole project with paint (I had the spray sealer and brushes already) was about $20. Not bad!

Here is a close-up of the shelf and frames. The flower appliques for the frames were already painted and I just glued them on.

I also needed something with a few hooks for purses/bags. This also came unfinished and I painted it pink and glued the froggy on it.

Also, I love family pictures!!! The walls in my newly painted craft room were bare. So I picked out several pictures that I love of our family and changed them to black and white in i photo. Then I sent them to Wal-Mart digitally to be printed in a variety of sizes. I spray mounted them on black foam board and attached some chocolate brown ribbon that I had left over from a wedding to them for hangers. Here's how it turned out. I love it!!! I'll just go in there a stare at the walls, and these will be easy to update and add to as our family grows and changes.



That's about all we've been up to this week. Stay tuned for a post tomorrow or over the weekend titled "Real Pink Cowboy Boots." You can imagine the sassiness of that one!! Love you all!

Finally an Update!!!

Okay Cheryl, here's the update I promised. Sorry to everyone for the delay. I have lots to catch up on but here's a start:

Eden started school! She goes to Mother's Day Out 2 days a week and was apprehensive at first but is starting to love it. On Monday when they came to get her out of the van in the carpool line she confidently announced to the lady, "Mommy always always always comes back!" as she hopped out of the car and walked in like a big girl. How far we've come!!! She is in the Groovy 2's class with her great friend Mia, who is also in her class at church and gymnastics. Thank you Lord for knowing how much a familiar face would help her feel secure! Boy,0 does God watch out for our little ones or what? She has her own school bag and a Dora lunch box. Mommy LOVES school (8 hours a week alone makes a huge difference)...and I'm even the room mom! Here are some pics of her leaving her first day.

Such a big girl!

She loves Dora!

The rest of these pictures below are just some that capture her sassy, silly and precocious personality. She is a mess, a handful, and an angel. I am amazed daily by the words she is learning. Gene was tickling her the other day and she busted out with, "You're driving me crazy!" He laughed for 5 minutes. I have a feeling her 3's are going to be much more challenging than the 2's have been. She is becoming so opinionated and bossy (much like her mommy, I think). Sometimes it is so funny, but other times so disrespectful. Lord help me as I try to shepherd her heart towards You...so challenging!

Right now my focus is authority. God is daddy and mommy's boss, and we are her boss. We are beginning to teach her Scripture and she knows 4 verses. Her memory astounds me. Now we have to work on making sure she knows what they mean, and how to apply them to daily life, right? Knowledge without obedience is useless.

Sleep continues to be our most difficult challenge with her. We switched her to a "big girl" bed (toddler bed) and now she crawls out of it every night and comes to our room. This is better than her screaming in her crib 3-4 times a night. We have put a cot at the foot of our bed and are trying to train her to crawl in it without waking us up so she can be near us if she needs to be without being IN our bed. She won't let anyone but mommy put her down for bed. She still has so much anxiety with separation at night. Maybe she will always struggle with this. I'm trying to redefine "normal" and adjust my expectations while still gently pushing her towards more confidence and independence in this area. She is now going down to sleep in her bed which is a huge step. She just doesn't stay there. You'll never guess how we got her to do it...she asked if our Lab, Maggie, could sleep in her room. Sweet Maggie!!! She's 9 and just goes with the flow. It comforts Eden to have her in the room.

Here are some recent pictures I thought you'd enjoy. I'll post more soon!

Love yall!

This is how Eden wears her tiara...she is learning she is God's little princess...just like GiGi (a children's book series we love)

We were finally able to buy Eden her long-awaited tricycle because she now is fully potty trained and pooping in the potty like a big girl!

Eden's new big-girl bed.

Playing dress up with sweet Maggie. Poor dog!

I LOVE her in dress up clothes!!! Check out the jewel necklace!

Silly bath time.

More silly bath time.

Beach Trip

Hey everyone! Eden and I (mommy) were able to slip away to the beach for a couple of days last week with my mom, grandmother, brother, and niece and nephew who are here from FL for the month. I am going to get Gene to help me do a slideshow later because there are so many AMAZING photos. But, I'm posting a few of my favorites to "hold you over" since I haven't put pictures up in a while. Hope you enjoy them!

We went to Gulf Shores and it was Eden's first time at the beach. She kept calling the ocean the "big pool." She LOVED it and the sand didn't bother her one bit. In fact, she had sand in places that the sun don't shine, people! Eden loves the water. Several times I sat in awe as I remember how absolutely terrified she was of even a bath 11 months ago when we brought her home from China. Now, she will jump off the diving board with no hesitation..."all by herself."

She is so strong willed. Her favorite words these days are: "No mommy, Eden do it!" We are coming along well on potty training. We have pee pee down but poo poo is still an issue. She just prefers to do it in a pull up. Any suggestions? She will say she needs to go, we will sit on the potty and read for like 30 minutes and nothing happens. But then she'll poop 10 minutes after we get up in her panties. Help experienced moms!

We went to the cleft clinic for our 6-month visit last month and got a great report. We will go for a full speech evaluation in 6 more months and if that is normal then we won't have to go back until it's time for her first cosmetic surgery when she is 4 years old. We LOVE Dr. Grant and his team.

That's really all that's new with us right now. I can't believe our 1-year anniversary of Gotcha Day is next month...July 23rd. It seems like she's been mine forever, and yet the last year has flown by. Eden loves to pull our the "China DVD" that Gene made me for Christmas. She narrates each part and loves to tell others her story as she watches. She'll say, "poor Eden" on the parts where she is sad. And the funniest thing is the footage from Gotcha Day where Eden was sitting with the nanny looking at me and I'm trying to get her to come to me, she'll say, "Eden not know," which is how she expresses that she didn't know us and was unsure about letting me hold her. It's a hoot!

Well, I need to go. I still haven't finished Eden's "Life Book" from her adoption and I'm bound and determined to get it done. She's with her Ba-Ba visiting Meemaw and Peepaw so this is a good time to work on it. Oh, and did I mention we got a Guinea Pig and named her China? So now we have 2 dogs, 2 turtles and a guinea pig. Am I crazy???

Here are the beach pictures. I'll post the slide show later.

Playing on the beach.

Check out those legs! Couldn't you just eat them up???

Eden loves the sand!

Precious, just precious! These are the shots that will make me cry when Eden is all grown up!

I call this the Pottery Barn Kids photo. I don't know how my mom managed to get this one...Eden is never still!

I love candid photos like this. Eden loves her cousins, Hayden and Savannah.

Easter Photos

Sorry it's taken me so long to get these up. We had a great 1st Easter with Eden. Gene and I gave her a basket of gifts on Saturday night. Her "big" gift was a small pink New Testament Bible with her name on it. It's exactly like the "B-I" (that's what she calls the Bible) that she uses in her church class for Bible story time. She was so proud to get it. Now she carries her Bible to church like a big girl.

We also dyed eggs. Here's a picture of Eden with her basket full of "real" eggs.

After our church service, we drove to my parents' house in Anniston for lunch and an Easter egg hunt. Ja-Ja (my mom) bought Eden's new dress. Gene didn't get a great picture of her dress, but you can see the smocking pretty well in this shot. The lavender looked SO good on her!

Eden was so cute hunting eggs and Gene got some GREAT shots of her outside. She is so funny...she kept doing this thing where she would drop the eggs out of her basket and say, "Hide them, hide them," like she was hiding them by just dropping them right by her feet. Then, she would walk off and act like she was looking for them saying, "Eggs, are you?" over and over. At one point, she even put her hand over her eyes like she was looking. She is such a little ham!

Finally, after a long, hard day of egg hunting, Eden enjoyed the "fruits" of her labor by eating one of the THREE (thanks, Mom) ring pops that her Ja-Ja put in her Easter basket! I'm just kidding, I LOVE that my mom spoils her :0)

We had a wonderful day with our daughter as we were reminded again of our Father's great love for us. Having a child brings new understanding to what it means that God is our Father. And adopting a child humbles me with the great truth that God chose us, pursued us, sacrificed for us, and loves us unconditionally. What an amazing God He is!

2 New Additions

First of all...sorry it's been so long! We went to Oklahoma for a week for my sweet cousin, Mandy's, wedding, had construction done in our basement, and Eden and I have been passing a nasty cold back and forth. Life has been crazy! We are finally settling down a little.

The big news at the Mason house is our new pet turtles. Yes...turtles. Eden LOVES looking at the water turtles every time we go to the pet store. A couple of weeks ago, Gene got word that a friend had 2 water turtles he was giving away. We talked about it, researched it, and decided to take them. Needless to say, once I got the "habitat" for them including aquarium, filter, UVB light, basking lamp, cleaning supplies, turtle dock, etc., my "free" turtles were not so free. But they are SO fun to watch.

Here's the funny part. When my friend came over to bring them to us, we had a 30-minute conversation about what they like to eat, how much they poop, how to clean up after them, etc. Well, as Sam was leaving he asked Eden what she wanted to name them. She proudly answered, "Eat" for the little one and "Poop" for the big one. How appropriate! So our turtles are named Eat and Poop. Ahhh, the simplicity of the 2-year-old mind.

Hope you all have a great Easter! We are going to attempt to dye eggs today. I'll post photos of how we do. I promise to update more often!! Below are pics of Eden and her turtles. Enjoy!