Just in time for Forth of July or the Consulate appointments

I just love this outfit! I wish it was in my size! this is availalbe up to a 6/6x and is custom made to order. $25.00 plus shipping. email me at roy_hardin@bellsouth.net for more details!!!! Availalbe in many other colors as well.

FUNDRAISING TO BRING OLIVIA HOME!!!

Katie and Ian hanging out at school having fun

Check out the adorable outfits available for your sweet girl!!! Made to order in various colors and sized and a bargin at that $25.00!!!!! Help bring our baby home. Bows to matcha and also made to order boutique bows availble at fantastic prices!!!

How's that for a fundraiser?

Cutest picture that I had to include ! Katie getting ready for the potty's in China

Gage and Kolbe sacked out with their cousin Coreyander after a hard day of playing outside.

Latest happenings and pictures of the kiddos

Katie trying to master the hoola

She just about has it down pat!

Introducing the 2nd place Divisional champions of Douglas County -- GO SIDEWINDERS!!!

Miss Lily modeling one of my fundraisers - a bandana outfir made to order - and what a deal at $25.00! Various colors to choose from. EMAIL ME!!! Help bring Olivia home

Meet Feng Ke Xuan soon to be Olivia Erin-Ke Hardin

Here is the long awaited photo posting for our little one. We received "PA" status which to those of you not familiar with the adoption jargon this is pre-approval from China for us to adopt Feng Ke Xuan. They have officially put a hold on her for us!!!

We are hoping to send a care package to her in the next few weeks and also request some updated photos and growth information. We get to send off 5 questions.

Jennifer

First water day for the kids!!!!

Make your own | Click to play

NWA Gift registry China bound

Well things are going by pretty fast here in Georgia lately.

We are in the middle of our home study for Olivia and the kids are on the last leg of this school year. It's hard to believe that the year is about over for them. Gage's grades are okay but not spectacular. I think it's because he knows summer is close and feels he doesn't have many days left to go. He received a few demerits (notes/write ups) this past few weeks on the all infamous talking/not following directions. Roy and I just do not know what else to do to make him understand the importance of following directions and doing what you are told to do. I finally broke on the last note sent home and I think I might have gotten some sort of lesson through his thick skull. It all started the day before when he came home with the note and was reprimanded for it by Roy with no TV or video games for 2 weeks and sent to his room. He asked that night if he could take his Star Wars Lite sabers to school and I told him no. Well the next morning I noticed his bag was pretty heavy,bulky and zipped up (which if you know our son her NEVER zips his bag and drops/looses everything). I thought to myself to just let it slide and see how things go. Well.... Home he comes with a note. He took the toys out and played with them on the play ground and ignoring Ms. Osborne's wishes on continuing to play with them and hits a kid. I know it was an accident but he not only ignored the teacher but also defied me in taking them in the first place. My opinion on toys at school past 1st grade is they belong at home. if you want to take something take a book. School is for learning and not a show and tell. The schools provide entertainment for the kids during recess so the toys need to stay home. Of course I was beside myself on what to do so I told Gage he needed to gather up all his Star Wars toys and take them to the consignment sale that our church was putting together. So off we go to church to donate his toys. I think he might learn something by this. Roy wanted to take baseball from him but my thought process was baseball is a group/team sport and he is suppose to play as a team so if we punish him we punish the team. That's not fair. As far as baseball goes Gage is doing great. He caught a foul ball for the 3rd out in the 6th inning. They still lost but we were short a team player and did not have our regular coach pitcher which I feel would have made it a win or a real darn close one. We lost 14 to 18. Gage had 3 or 4 base hits and scored I think 3 runs.

Kolbe is a growing weed. A good one. He seems more clingy since I started working at the pre-school 2 days a week. Kolbe is so smart it's scary. He has learned so much this year in pre-school. I am so proud of my little boy. His voice is about as big as his eagerness to just learn and do things now. I keep telling him and reminding him to use his inside voice. Bless his heart he takes after his mother and Aunt Ruby.

Katie is learning quite allot at pre-school herself even stubbornness, scratching, biting and hitting. Boy oh boy her attitude needs tuning. I am so not looking forward to her terrible horrible 3's if this is what her 2's are like. It could also be an adjustment things as well with me working and her going 5 days a week verses 3.

Last but not least Daphne has finally finished her first Science Fair project and I am sure glad that's over. She decided to do a study on mice so we started with 4 and now have 2 left. One died and the other is MIA. I hope it wound up in one of the kitty's belly and not still running loose in my house. I see no evidence that it is still alive so I am optimistic that it was a snack. Now that the project is over the mice are going bye-bye. She told me a few days ago that her mother and father are letting her come back this fall for another year so I have to call Arlington to see what arrangements need to be made. I know it's hard for her parents but she is enjoying this school so much and seems to be doing great. I hope the Lin's know they are always welcome here anytime. It has been such a pleasure for us to have her this year. She enjoys the kids and I know they are gong to miss her this summer.

Well as for the topic/title of this excerpt I have established a registry for Roy and I on Olivia's adoption journey. This will allow anyone that is interested in helping us with bringing Olivia home to do so. We have talked about taking the kids with us to get Olivia but it is pretty costly for 3 or 4 extra round-trip tickets. I received an e-mail from NWA (Northwest Airlines) about a new gift registry that couple/people could register for and send out information regarding the need. Most of the registrations are things like wedding, graduation and retirements but I know allot of adoptive parents that have set something similar up. So here is our information:

Visit https://www.nwa.com/GR/?omni=em.solo.20070426.giftregistry.cta2

and enter my first and last name along with the state of GA.

Example - Hardin - Jennifer - GA or you can enter the registration id number as

070426050000533

or

just click here https://www.nwa.com/GR/GRContributeController?task=contributeInputPage&firstName=Roy&lastName=Hardin&regID=070426050000533

Once you are in the registry everything is pretty self explained. So for those of you wanting to help us out in our journey to Olivia anything would be appreciated. We officially submitted on April 13, 2007. It should take about 4 to 6 weeks for us to receive our PA (pre-approval) from China on Olivia. This is an important document pre-qualifying us and holding her as our daughter and her perspective adoptive parents. We are on target to have our dossier submitted to China sometime mid-July or August. This might put us to travel by the end of the year which would be great but most likely it will be early 2008. I am bummed about the time frame but know in my heart the longer the wait the better chance we have to afford taking the whole family to China to pick Olivia up and bring her home. This would be such a once in a lifetime experience for the boys. Gage is at the age he will remember this for the rest of his life and Kolbe should remember almost the whole trip but at least the important parts. Katie is too young to remember anything but would benefit by not thinking we are leaving her again. I hate the thought of her thinking we are abandoning her. There have been several of our church friends that have volunteered in helping with the children if we have to travel by ourselves. They are such a wonderful bunch of people.

It seems like my novel is about to close for this entry.

I hope things are going well with all that is following our blog.

Blessings,

Jennifer

Easter Day 2007

Easter Day 2007

Easter day 2007

 

 

 

Well .. Spring break is here.

I posted a few pictures of Kolbe and Katie at the Easter egg hunts. They had so much fun. We all have a stomach bug this week. I started the week off with it then passing it along to the kids and Roy ended the week. Gage missed his Thursday night game and Kolbe missed his Saturday game and Easter egg hunt at the church. I also got an email from Kolbe's coach that Kolbe's baseball team has been picked for one of the pre-t expo game at the Braves game on April 12th!

This week is spring break for the kids. We will most likely just do some things around the house. I think I'll try taking the kids skating early this week so hopefully there will be no broken bones. Roy is planning on taking a half day Thursday to go fishing and just maybe we will see about Six Flags on Friday. With it also being Easter weekend coming up we will want to be home so the Easter bunny will not get to confused.

We finally started our home study this week. I just hope it goes smoothly. I really like the agency we chose. We also narrowed down a name for baby Ke. I believe we will bring her home with the name of Olivia Erin Ke Hardin.

Well March has brought madness to our home once again. Baseball has begun for the boys. Kolbe has 10 or 12 games all around 10 a.m. on Saturdays and practice on Thursday evenings. Gage's schedule is a little hectic. His games range from 2 to 3 per week with a total of 18 games then tournaments. Practices are twice a week unless a game is scheduled for that evening. Gage has improved tons since first starting ball last year. Kolbe's main interest right now are finding a mud puddle on the field and a dirt mound to dig in. Hopefully this is a temporary obsession for him. Of course he was the first one to do a "oh no" at the opening game. He hits the ball and takes off for third base instead of first base. I know people tell me it's just T-ball and every kid has one of those moments but why oh why does it need to be Kolbe on the first one game. It was rather funny. Gage's team got stomped for the opening game but had a come back last Tuesday winning. Gage caught his first pop fly fowl behind home plate and it was awesome. When he came up to bat he hit a triple sending a few more guys home and landing him on third base to later run in a score.

Last month I was reading on a site that I visit often that a little girl that was adopted from China, home only 3 or 4 months had been hospitalized and in need of a heart transplant. I felt so deep for this family I began to pray and looked to more of my adoption sites that mention the bible and do prayer requests. I had not frequented this site as much since we have been home with Katie but felt I needed to sign back on to getting mail. After being a regular reader I also started cruising some of the special needs children listed to be available for adoption in China and Taiwan. I know some of you are at this "ought oh" mind set now. Seeing these children needing homes starting tugging at my heart. I started feeling like asking Roy to consider adopting again. Of course he looked at me like I was crazy. He said our house was like a zoo. I old him a good zoo full of love. I ran upon this one agency site that had an older child waiting. I again asked Roy about bringing an older child into our home. This was a quick no way response. continued to persue this desire and once again was shot down until one Sunday afternoon he agreed to think about adopting again but really wanted a younger child rather than spending a good bit of time trying to catch a older child p with language and schooling. Feeling a little bummed about this I took one last look at the agency site and I never expected to see what I saw next. Staring back at me was almost a mirror like thinner image of Katie. I just sat here looking at this photo of a little girl about 7 months old at the time of the photo glaring back at me. When Roy arrived home I showed him the little face and he turned and asked me who this child was. Well the next day I called the agency and inquired about her. The lady had stated she was from Jiangxi province and was in foster care. I then asked her if by chance was she at the Fengcheng SWI? She hesitated for a moment and then we made the connection. This child I was inquiring about, totally out of the blue was in the same exact orphanage as Katie. How bizarre was this.

So if all goes as I am hoping we should be sending off our intent to adopt her this coming Monday morning. We will be a house of 6! WOW.

I will keep everyone posted on the upcomings. I have to put the little ones to bed.

Blessings,

Jennifer

I finally have time to sit and update you all......

It's been 3 months since I actually sat down and took a few moments to myself to update you all on what's been going on with the Hardin's.

Well let's start with December. Christmas came and went quickly. Winter break was interesting with all the kids home for 3 plus weeks. Kolbe got a big wheel for Christmas from my mom and Gage got a bike from Santa. First day out a few days before New Year's Kolbe flips his big wheel and breaks his arm! What a fun New Year's Eve in the emergency room. He went a whole day convincing us that his arm was fine but with the year ending and the deductible getting ready to reset as of Jan 1st we opted to take him to the emergency room just in case. Well it was broke but they could not cast or split it because of where it was (his upper arm near his shoulder). It heeled i a few weeks and nothing slowed him down.

Okay January was a whirlwind. First Katie's 2 years old! We just had family and a few local friends over for cake and she had a ball opening her gifts. She grew so much over the winter break with her speech it is unreal. We are attempting to potty train her and she's not happy. Dora seems to be her favorite along with the cars and trains. She is mesmerized by the movie Cars and loves to dress up. Towards the end of the month Gage decides to swallow a lead magnet ball. I could see Kolbe (3yrs) or Katie (2yrs) doing this but a 8 year old. He claims Kolbe put them in his mouth. Okay you know as well as me that a 3 year old can not over power a 8 year old unless he is a willing participant. So yet again I spend a full Sunday afternoon at the emergency room only to find out it is about to be expelled from his bowels. I told him that if he passed it before we saw the doctor I would be pissed.

Well here's February! Kolbe's birthday party is today. I have invited all of his friends from pre-school and most of them are coming. He is in 2 different classes so this is 18+ kids. He of course wants a Cars party so I have been working on this. Roy was sick with the flu for 3 days a few weeks ago so I am behind on house work and laundry. I think I have the house in order enough for the party. To top this all off our attic pull down stairs decided to call it quits and we still have our Christmas stuff in boxes all over the house. Kolbe's big birthday items are in the attic and we can't reach them. Roy's shoulder has been hurting him and he can not lift the new attic stairs to place them in position to hang them so we are waiting on a friend to come and help us. So maybe by the time we get this fixed we can just put the tree back up for Christmas.

Daphne continues to do very well in school here. She wants to come back next year and go to Arlington or a public school but I am not sure what the Lin;s will do. She has made Beta Club (honor student) and is bringing her Health/fitness grade up which has been her hardest subject to study because of the terms they use in the book.

I have signed up to be a local representative for Forte International Exchange. My task is to try and find host families for the students for the upcoming school year. I hope to be able to find families that are needed.

Well this is my novel for now and I will try to post pictures this weekend.

Thanks for keeping up with our family.

Jennifer