Two New Cousins for Louis!

Louis doesn't know it yet, but he gained two new cousins--Lily and Joseph--this week! My mother and I visited Lily and her big brother, Andrew, yesterday, and she is beautiful--and very much Andrew's sister. It was lots of fun to play with Andrew, who is just three months older than Louis and loves toy cars, though we had a great time pretending to eat a plastic carrot. We hope that when we drive to Lily's christening in the spring that Louis will be here (please, please, please) and that he'll have a great time playing with Andrew.

John has been hard at work on the house, putting finishing touches on Lou's bedroom--note the great letters our friends Catherine and Arman gave us--and hanging a few more items in our dining room. The stained glass piece that our friends Catherine and Rob gave us for our wedding has been through two moves with us and is now safely--and beautifully--installed in our bay window. When we bought the house, we knew it would hang there, and there it is, a mere two and a half years later!

We are still waiting for our travel approval to arrive. It is a little hard to see people who got in line after us receive theirs before us, but our agency assures us that ours will come. Every day we marvel at how much you can miss someone you haven't even met! But, as much as we had hoped to leave for China on the 19th, we were happy to be here this week to be part of the excitement of Lily's and Joseph's births. Nothing beats a middle-of-the-night phone call to say you are aunt and uncle again!

Almost every day we try to list the reasons why it's good that we haven't traveled yet (1. look how the house is coming together, 2. we have no worries about having enough vacation time, 3. I got to hold my new niece yesterday! 4. we'll enjoy my mom's pumpkin pie this week, 5. no problems paying for those plane tickets, 6. look how much we've done on the house--oh, I said that), we are ready to be on our way to Beijing!

Come on, travel approval! We are so hopeful that it will come this week, but I am apparently an incurable optimist, and every afternoonI expect to hear. Maybe by the end of the month, we'll have news. Either way, we will have plenty to be thankful for on Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving!