…the goose is getting fat…oh, yeah, and I got my PA!!!

I do admit to loving the holidays. I am a smushy ham about it. I think it has to do with nostaglia, actually–although my sister isn’t particularly holiday-happy, and we grew up in the same household with the same potential for nostaglia…so who knows.

Here’s a couple views of the tree that we started last weekend and finished this morning–the star’s still crooked, but starshine gone askew seems apt somehow:

Here’s the ornament we bought for Emme Lu this year–it’s a bee!

Here’s my very first ornament (the little pink cherub), from Christmas 1966:

Some more random ornaments:

And, in other news, we got our PA! It’s 63 days today since we sent our LOI, although I suspect it was a little bit faster than that, but we only called our agency and asked about it today. Our agency contact also said she doesn’t think we’ll get a new LID, since our dossier was already through translation when we pulled it and switched to SN/Agency #2, which is good news. So, TAs are averaging about 100 days right now from LOI. We’re on Day 63…so it potentially could be the end of January when we hear the TA news, and we could probably travel before Chinese NY in February that way.

Here’s the stats:
DTC 7-14-06
LID 8-3-06
LOI 10-11-06
PA 12-13-06
TA?

Oh, and here’s the reason we call Emme Lu “The Bee” (without the password protection):

Some weird, weird photoshop going on in China, there! And another:

Sun Fu Lu (soon to be Emerson FuLu)
b. 8-1-05
Yancheng City SWI, Jiangsu Province
She is apparently extroverted, likes to go outside, and laughs out loud a lot! And in the bee photo, she is learning to walk, and that was taken in August when she was 12 months. She is 16 months now…so who knows how big she is or whether she grew some hair!

I am putting together a care package to send over by the end of the week: a blanket that I’ve been sleeping with so it smells like mama; a stuffed rabbit that has mama’s and baba’s voices speaking (”wa ai ni” etc.) when you squeeze its arm; a little fleece jacket; some plastic toy links; a photo album with labeled pictures of the whole family; and a disposable camera. I am having a letter translated right now, and I still need to buy some sweets for the nannies to stick inside.

2007 is looking good.