Iler party

It just wouldn't be September w/o a party at the Iler's. It is always a good time of visiting, catching up, good food, etc...and this time we got to show of our picture of Olivia.

Volleyball at the Iler's

Justin and off in the distance...

I was reading a book to Justin, it was a longer book and he is doing well following the story. As we were reading along I read, "the farmhouse was off in the distance". I continued. We turned the page and moved on, then Justin begins to ask, "where is the dentist?, where is the dentist?" I took me a few minutes to figure out what he was meaning, then I said to him, "distance", "off in the distance, meaning far away". He was still looking for Dr. Mike somewhere in the book. He continued to think. A couple pages later, he then says, "you mean like Whiteblack, swam off into the distance?" Then I really had to think. I then realized he was remembering the phrase in another story. He still amazes me, how you give him a piece of information and then he moves on with it. So today as we were driving around, he kept asking, "is that car off in the distance", "do you see any cars off in the distance", "is that traffic signal off in the distance", etc. you get the idea.

Someone with the NBC has our file!

It appears that someone at the NBC office (that's National Benefits Center), has our file! The office of our Congressman has assured us that NBC is working on our file, though it is Friday afternoon so probably not a lot is being done, but at least it has been pulled and began to be processed. We are past the 90 days it was supposed to be processed. Hopefully we won't have too much trouble or too much...."Request for additional evidence". Please continue to pray that our case is processed quickly w/o much trouble. We've been OK'd twice with the I600a, so hopefully, even with all the addtional info., documents and evidence required for the I800a, we get through quickly. Thank you for all your prayers.

Formula and I600A

In the post below, if you following the link first there is info. on the tainted formula. Olivia's SWI is in Guigang, so hers is not even listed. That is good.

If you continue down the article/posting you'll get a very long explanation of some of what we are going through right now with our I600a which has turned into the I800a. We are at day 93 of being longed into NBC, not counting the month+ spent trying to get our forms/documents to the correct place. Anyway, keep praying that we are assigned a case worker, so that maybe a real person will work quickly on our paperwork to get them processed and accepted. We've tried begging and pleading, also our adption agency's case worker is pleading our case, plus Bob is on first name basis with our Congressman's office. Nothing so far has worked. As best we can tell, there are very few of us that are in this particular situation, where we have our referral, etc. and are still wading through the I800a (being OK'd for the adoption for the 3rd. time!)

Formula

We are very glad to finally hear that Olivia's SWI (orphanage) does not use the tainted formula in China. The above picture is where she is living right now. They did some renovations, so I don't know if this picture is before or after that.

http://www.jcics.org/China.htm is the official statement and listing of the SWI involved with the baby formula. Even though over 50,000 children were involved, the article states it was only a small percentage, unfortuately that is still a very large number of children to be affected.

Gotcha Day Party

A few Sunday's back, we celebrated Justin's 4th Gotcha Day. The day Justin joined our family forever.
We invited a few of Justin's friends, ate Korean food and just had a great afternoon/evening.

Chopsticks and Korean Food

We got chopstick lessons from Kathryn Y. plus MiHee cooked several Korean dishes for us and assemblied her rice wraps for us. Everything was great. Even though we had "American" food, everyone ate the Korean food. We loved the Korean cooking lessons MiHee! Thanks.

Happy Boy

We sent off a care package to Olivia today! We gathered several different items for her, plus a couple disposable cameras. The Yens helped us write a letter to be enclosed with our package (thanks Dave!). We also sent goodies for the care givers, so we sent Keebler Cookies. Justin got to have a left over bag. Unfortunately he does like chocolate.

Justin, Mosquitos and books

Justin called out in the middle of the night last night, that there was a bug buzzing his ears. Bob and I both turned on the lights in his room, looking for the culprit, but we were unable to locate any. So Bob pulled the covers up to Justin's chin and hoped for the best. Well this morning the little guy was covered in bites!! He must have a doz. on one arm and hand alone. Through the day he began to swell. We looked around for a very bloated, hovering mosquito, but could not find any. It must have died happy somewhere in the house. Since it is only 50 degrees outside, I'm sure the mosquito did not go outside. Anyway Justin is one lumpy boy and trying not to itch. Though he told Wendy that the mosquito bite on his leg was saying, (voiced in a rather deep and raspy voice), "You may itch me". Justin is quite the character.

As we were driving home from church yesterday (and trying to keep him awake till we got home) he told us that he was out of batteries .

One other thing, he has picked up a few of the Bob Books and started to read them. It is amazing that he has such a grasp of sounding out words. Along with clunking out (by ear) a few measures of "This is my Father's World" on the piano, he seems almost like the average 4 yr. old.

Our new daughter

Well, our adoption agency is one of those that recommend not putting our daughter's picture out on the Internet till we are in China :( We'll probably put it up on something that is password protected, but we're still getting to that. We're busy, trying to gather up all her info, sending forms back and forth to our agency's main office; marveling over her beautiful little face and trying to pack a box for her. Plus life is just busy in our household. We had Justin's Gotcha Day party on Sunday, celebrating 4 wonderful years. Daniel had his wisdom teeth removed this morning. We're still canning tomatoes and freezing peaches, and dealing with other garden stuff, etc... I think we're all still walking around wondering, "is this really real?". It is fun to see everyone so excited.

Just a few words about our daughter.

• Her favorite activity is to play with adults (in our family there is a 6:2 ratio of adults to children.)
• One of her favorite toys is....can you believe this??? ...A CAR! (If you are somehow unfamiliar with our youngest son, he lives and breathes cars, check out his blog. We are all much more involved in vehicles than any other family we know; when our adult daughters were heard discussing the differences between a Tahoe, a Suburban, a Yukon and an Escalade, we knew this is not normal, but it stems from Justin's love of cars.)
• Our Olivia is very active (as were all the Hill kids). (I keep warning Abbey and Josh).

She seems like a good fit and must be our daughter; isn't God amazing.

We have a Daughter!!

http://www.maps-of-china.com/guangxi-s-ow.shtml


We received the call this morning. Our daughter is from the GuangXi Provence. We are so very thrilled. She is about 10 mo. old right now. We'll know more as the week goes along.

The above map will give you idea of where she is from. She is in the GuangXi Provence, just north east of the city of NanNing. An easy way is to locate the area, is to find Viet Nam and then find Hong Kong, from those two locations work your way to the middle, it is about in that area.

Referral rumors....

A couple European agencies are saying referrals will go all the way to 2-9-2006!! That is really only 4 days, but no matter we would be in that batch. Again, our LID is 2-6-2006, that is the first day CCAA is working with so we should be in, no matter what. (well as best we know!!). Nothing is ever for sure with international adoption, but we are hoping everything goes along as in the past. Some people hope referrals will come out tomorrow, but the referrals have not been coming the first of the month for some time; therefore we are still aiming more towards next week. Through this upcoming week , we should be able to see some of what is going on, I'll post on Olivia's blog for the day to day stuff, just so everyone can see what we're going through this week. It will be a very anxious, "almost in labor" week for us.

Gotcha Day #4

Justin and Mom and Dad, Gotcha Day party, Aug. 2008. Below pics from Justin's first meeting with his new family, August, 2004.
We love you Justin!

Indiana

Justin was drawing, so when he came up to me to show me his drawing he said, "Look, it's Indiana, I drew Indiana"... and yes it looks like the state of Indiana. We'll just be in trouble when he starts recognizing the shape of WV and then drawing it.

Abbey and tomoatoes

First pile for the canning. Wendy was a little disappointed with how few cans there were in the end. Wendy ended up doing almost (if not all) of the work. Thanks Wen.




Abbey arrived at our house Friday morning. She said hi, then had to make a quick visit to the "little girls room". Justin had been following her every move, so once she went in, he just sat himself down by the door waiting for her to come out. He said, "I'll just wait for her here." He (and the rest of us, still miss her a bunch.) Thanks for coming by Abbey and helping us with the tomatoes.

Peaches too

So far we've frozen peaches (from SC), still working on the MI peaches, green beans and broccoli. Canned the tomatoes and dried basil. We're still trying to figure out what to do with mounds of peppers and celery. We're eating well

Bethany picnic

Justin on the pony ride. Though he much prefers cars/trucks he was able to get near the animals w/o too much stress. The Bethany picnic is a yearly event put on by our adoption agency.

Presley Reunion, Aug., 2008

This reunion has been happening every year for the past 22 years. ( I remember b/c I was VERY pregnant with Abbey; Bob and I did not attend that 1st. year.) It is the reunion of the children born to Ollie and Glen Presley. My grandmother, Ollie Presley attended many of these first reunions, but has since past away. There were 10 original children, my mom is #9 of the 10. There are 30+ grandchildren (or the cousins), the cousins have a bunch of kids (the great-grandkids), we're beginning to have a run on cousins becoming grandparents so these are the great-great grandchildren; there are great-great grandchildren that are adults, so maybe there are even great-great-great grandchildren to Ollie and Glen, but there are so many of us, I just don't know.

The above pictures are of the original siblings. I didn't manage to get one with all of them together, so I had to paste one together. Picture of the 3 girls, Aunt Wanda, Aunt Geneva and my mom (Verna). To the right my Uncle Carroll, he is one of the twins.
Uncle Bill sitting, he lives in MB, SC by my mom and dad. Uncle Joe bottom right.

My mom and my cousin Larry



My Aunt Naomi, started and helped organize this reunion, but she was unable to attend this year because of health reasons, Naomi is the first born of Ollie and Glen. My Aunt Naomi always kept a book, made sure everyone signed in and then made a recap of the year and of the reunion. So I'll try to do so here... There was a good number of attendees for the reunion, I think 50 or 60 relatives and spouses. We met at the fire house in Dawson, WV. Sherral and crew (Kevin on the grills outside) did almost all the cooking this year. Great as always. The oldest attendee was my Uncle Joe, the 3rd born of the original children. The youngest was Carson, who was just a couple months old, plus he was a preemie, so he was a peanut. Carson is Audrey's, daughter Amanda's 2nd child. My cousin Wayne and his wife had not been to the reunion since the early 90's (their children Kevin and Kelly had attended in later years). The oldest cousin attending was Audrey or Sandy (not sure which one is older-I may get myself in trouble, I'm fairly sure they are close in age.) The oldest great-grandchild...I'm not sure maybe Brad or Amanda. Kevin (Brenda's husband) had a trailer with a huge grill and then other smaller grills, we feasted. All the food was great. We ate, visited, talked, teased (lots of teasing going on, it is a Presley thing), played games, ate some more, talked some more, told some more tales. It was a wonderful afternoon.



Recap of the year: Many gathered in NC, just a couple weeks prior to the reunion to mourn the passing of my Uncle Mark, my Aunt Wanda's husband. He is remembered fondly by all of us and was a loving and amazing man. Weddings: our Abbey was married Feb., 2008. Babies: Robin's Heather had her 2nd baby. Sherral and Brenda both had new baby grand-daughters born to their sons. Sandy's son Randy adopted 3 children last August. I know there were graduations and probably more babies born, but I'm remiss. I'll need to add to this as I can remember occurrences or as people remind me. Let me know what I've missed.