We attended mass !

Today we arrived around 1030 am. When we arrived he asked where mama was, because Tony had walked in before me so they brought him in to us. We sat in the dining area and gave him his gifts.  He asked if we had brought stickers, which we hadnt. We went to the playroom for about half an hour and just sat and played with him. One of the caregivers asked if we wanted to go to mass, which was starting in just a few minutes. They said Owen really enjoys it, more so than any of the other kids. So we decided to go. He loves it ! The priest asked if were catholic- we arent. So he let us know that we could partake in the blessing and service but not the communion. I held Owen the entire time, and he was singing along to all the songs and prayers. We started the morning in the back of the room, but he asked to go up front. Sure kid, mama doesnt mind being in front of the entire room in a service Ive never been to and have everyone stare at me. Not a problem at all. Haha !  At one point he did the blessing on himself and then turned to me to bless me. My heart just about melted on the floor <3 Then it was time to go up to the front  and be blessed by the priest. So we did that, and Owen pointed to me as if to remind the priest not to forget mama. Tony and the translator went up next.  Once the translator got back to her seat I told her that we needed to step out because Owen had had an accident and I needed her to let the caregivers know. I didnt want them thinking we were just walking out for no reason ;)

The service ended shortly after and it was time for us to go so that the kids could enjoy some lunch and nap time.

He is really starting to open up to us and gets really excited when they tell him we are coming. They say he asks every morning if mama and papa are coming today, and when they say yes he wants to get dressed and wait for us. He still gets a little shy when we first walk in but it gets easier as the visits go on.

We walked around the city and ate at this "burrito type" place. Seriously, these things are yummy and cheap ! They are about $1.50 each, I am pretty sure this might be our new favorite lunch spot.

We went back to the orphanage around 3, as we walked in there was a birthday celebration going on. I am so happy that even while these children are waiting for families to come that the orphanage chooses to celebrate their lives ! Most children in orphanage do not have birthdays, or holidays. It makes me very happy that while we have missed 4 birthdays, at least he has been surrounded by people that love him. Hopefully he will be home for his 5th birthday !!!

He enjoyed playing with the balloons so much ! Tony was juggling several balloons and Owen was getting a kick out it. That boy has the sweetest laugh I have ever heard. I was sitting next to him eating some cake and drinking Coke. He kept trying to tell me that he could have some, and I asked if he was trying to trick mama he just laughed. I am pretty sure he has never had soda before :)

The caregivers asked if we walked to take him for a walk around the block and he really seemed to want to go so we did. By the time he was dressed to go we could barely see his face. They had him in 3 layers of clothing, a really big jacket, a hat (under the hat on the jackets) and some mittens. He was like a little baby burrito ;) He really enjoyed being outside ! We walked around for just a little while but he was starting to get tired. We were able to get a few videos of him, which are absolutely amazing.  In one of them you can see his entire leg move ! Which is a great sign for his mobility in the future !

Around 5 he decided he was done playing with us, hopped in his little wheelchair and left the room. We stayed in there and played with some of his friends before saying goodbye to him.

I also want to take a quick moment and let everyone know about our current fundraisers !

We are bringing back our ornaments from last year but with a slight twist. This year we are using Sharpies- because they are tinier and make for cleaner writing :)

 And our Blankets are back ! Keep warm this Winter while helping us bring this sweet boy home to his family.

Paintings can be made with your favorite quotes and colors !

We still have our VISA gift card giveaway board. (Stay tuned something HUGE might happen with this one ;) )
How it works: pick any number on the board that doesn't have a star over it and donate that amount to our FSP (link on side) Numbers 1-50 will be drawn for a $75 giftcard and numbers 51-100 will be drawn for a $150 gift card. When that is donate forward me your receipt at ashtonymcbride@yahoo.com to be entered into the drawing. This step is very important because the donations are anonymous and I will not know who donates.

 And today is the last day for our Scarves fundraiser, but if there is enough interest I could keep it open a little while longer. I was so happy about this one ! Its getting really cold out and I figured it would do really well. It hasnt, but we still have today!  My idea was that we could have an auction with scarves and the ones that were unclaimed could be donated to the women's shelter in our area. If you want to you can buy one and instead of having it shipped to you I can donate it too !
Click Here to view Auction

"Good job, mama."

Today we woke up and met with the other family to go to the market , and shopped with the local vendors. We got some super cool gifts, and hopefully we will get to go back next time ! After that we went to lunch with our translator. We still had a few hours before it was time for our second visit with the Little guy. So we took that time to continue exploring his city. Confession, before we left I was sure I would just want to stay in our appartment the whole time. I wasnt sure how I would feel being alone in another Country, with limited communication to our family at home. I wasnt sure how safe it would be for us to wander around. But it was a really safe environment, and I am pretty sure his city has nothing on New York, they literally never sleep. There are always people walking around, at all hours of the day and night. I ended up loving the atmosphere and not being scared one bit.

That afternoon we got ready to visit Owen again, and brought him some more stickers and a drawing pad. We knew he liked stickers before we came, because another family had given him some a few months back and some of the updates we received from the agency had him playing with them.  So this mama made sure to pack a couple different kinds to give to that sweet boy !

While we were there we started looking through the phone again and he was wondering when Ethan and Ashlyn would come to visit him. We had to explain that they had stayed home with Grandma Jersey, so they wouldn't be coming this trip. As we were sitting on the floor playing and just enjoying each other one of the caregivers walked in and he yelled " my mama & papa !" It was so sweet, talk about heart melting. He was snuggled up to Tony just looking through the phone, then he climbed into his lap. We were trying to be respectful of him, and not overwhelm him with too much affection right away. Because while we have known him for over a year, and spent about a year working really hard to get there, he had only just seen us a few days prior. We were strangers to him. I didnt want to scare him by being all over him so we decided to take baby steps. He was leading this process, and we were letting him warm up on his own time.

He started asking so many questions, questions we didnt expect from a 4 year old who has lived in an orphanage his entire life. But as a few other people who had met him before us said, he is an old soul in a little body. Do I get to go to school? Can I walk to school? Where will I sleep? Are there doctors in America? Will they fix my legs? Are they going to break them? Can I come home now? Does Zoey (our dog) bite? Does the cat scratch? It was extremely hard having to explain to him that this time he couldnt come home. That it would be just a few more months until we would come back. I was afraid that he would feel like we were lying to him. That he would fear we were abandoning him. But we tried really hard to make sure that he understood that we were most deffinitely coming back for him. The easiest way to do that was to tell him that after Christmas we would come back. His country celebrates Christmas in January so we figured it might be easier for him to understand.

He is the smartest little kid ! At one point he was trying to eat the stickers and Tony was telling him they weren't food, he was talking to talking about how he was going to eat them and Tony kept saying they wouldn't taste good. "I dont think you understand me papa!" With the most serious face LOL.
Soon after we left so that the children could eat their lunch and have nap time. We used this time to eat a snack and do some more walking around the city. We would be heading back that afternoon.

Our second visit of the day went really really well ! We walked in and he asked if we brought him anymore gifts (we hadn't.) but told him we could play with the ones we brought this morning. Around supper time I asked him if he wanted me to carry him into the dining room and he said yes with his hand held up. So I as I picked him up he hugged me super tight ! I almost cried, because it was the first time he had done that.He asked if we would stay with him while he ate supper, so of course we did ! As we were leaving I asked the translator how to say I love You in his language and when I tried to repeat it he looked at me like well at least you tried and said "Good Job, mama" <3 <3 <3

More to come :)

Meeting with the Ministry of Justice and First Visit !

MOJ meeting.
The day we met the MOJ I was a ball of nerves. seriously. I had packed our clothes in our carry on, just in case our luggage was misplaced- it wasn't! Thank goodness! But I was terrified to meet him. Everyone kept saying it was easy peasy lemon squeasy but that did nothing for the knot in my stomach. We got our clothes ironed and on and we waited for nearly 30 minutes for our driver to pick us up. Where is that time when we are home? Ha ! Once we got there and met him I couldnt believe I was so nervous. He was super friendly and it was a really quick meeting. He let us know that we would be coming back at the end of the week for our final answer, and to enjoy meeting our little guy.

1st Visit.
Talk about nerves. Seriously I thought I would puke before the 15 minute car ride from our apartment to his orphanage was over. We had brought him a few small gifts, and we couldn't wait to meet him ! But I was still nervous. Would he like us? Would he hate us? Would he be scared? Scream? Hide? Yell.Bite.Kick or hit? Would he instantly attach to us? Would he cling to us and never want to let go( which isnt actually a good sign for his attachment.) All of the above?
We pulled up and rang the bell to be let in, one of the caregivers opened the door and smiled so big "Owen's parents!" We sent them a photo album awhile back so apparently they all knew our faces :) We were met by one of the sisters, and she was so excited for us to be there. She held my hands and said that he had been waiting for us for so long. She advised that we wait a second downstairs so that she could make sure he was ready. She walked into the room and he yelled "mama!" so she told him she would come down to get us.

Those stairs felt like a mile long. Just a few steps were all that were separating me from our boy. It felt like it was taking forever. 5 steps, 4 steps ,3 steps, 2,1. We opened the door and little man was just sitting there. I smiled at him, sat down  next to him and said "Hi. buddy." Really, those were the first words I ever said to my son. It seems so silly now, because in my head I had been thinking of all the perfect ways to tell him how much I loved him right as I saw him. But we just went with it. He asked them if I was really mama, and they told him yes. He looked at me and asked if I prayed for him. I did, buddy, I did. We went to another room where we gave him his gifts and just sat next to him. That boy seriously loves some stickers !

He also really enjoyed looking through our phones and seeing his brother and sister. There wasa picture of Ethan at school and Owen asked if he would get to go to school too. We told him he would most deffinitely get to go to school ! A little while later he decided he wanted to color with his friends, so while he did that we visited with some of the other sweet children.  He took a little while to warm up but he really seems to take to Tony, maybe its because there aren't a whole lot of males in his environment.

Our first visit ended around 530 because it was time for his supper and we didnt want our first visit to be too overwhelming for him, but we will be back tomorrow !

Our week gets so much better, so remember to check back and read some of the other posts !

I will be uploading some photos of our trip in a few days, but none will be of Owen. We have strict rules that we can not share his photo at all. I know that everyone wants to see him, because trust me he is gorgeous, but we need to wait until he is legally our child. This wont happen until 2nd trip, which is still several months and several thousands of dollars away;)

Our 1st trip !

We have been back for a couple weeks now and I am ready to share about our experience. I will be breaking up our trip into a few blog posts so stay tuned :)

We got our travel invite on Oct 17. It was a Saturday. I wasn't planning to hear from Little Mans country. In fact I had just stopped obsessively checking my email a few days prior. My agency had said it would probably be November before we heard anything. It wasn't a super eventful day or anything, we woke up turned on some praise and worship music and started cleaning our house. My husband was at work so it was just me and the littles. Around 2pm I decided to check my email, and I am being completely honest it was because I get entirely way too many emails and my notifications on my phone was driving me a little bonkers ;) So when I opened the email and saw one from our agency with the subject line that said "travel time." my heart stopped. Could it be? In the middle of the month? No way. Shes probably just giving me another when to expect travel dates email LOL.

So after freaking out for several minutes I called my husband, mom and mother in law and told them the great news ! We were leaving Oct 30, so they needed to prepare for our arrival in NJ. Since we had decided the littles would not be coming along with us, my mother in law said she wanted to keep them with her. We booked our flight which was actually a total miracle ! They were less than half of what we thought they would be ! Miracles !

On Oct 29 (a wednesday.) Ethan went to school and I finished the last minute packing for the trip. Tony got off work a little early and we started the 10 hour drive to NJ. We arrived there around 4am on Thursday. We passed the littles off to their overly excited grandma and went to bed. When we woke up our bear had arrived and we put him in our carry on.

About the bear. I wanted so badly to leave Owen a bear with our picture on it so that he would at least have that with him until we come back for him. A friend of mine made the shirt with our picture and asked her husband to mail it to us, but something was wrong with our address and it never left the post office. We didnt realize the error until Wednesday afternoon so there was no way to get it. I was absolutely devastated. I knew that meeting him was so big, and in the grand scheme of things this bear wasnt huge. But my heart was breaking. Well Brook worked some social media magic and a a ton of amazing angels helped make that bear possible. She had some friends with USPS who held the truck for a few extra minutes until she could get there and my friend Carol covered the fee for flying it to NJ in time for us to bring it. Miracles. I am so thankful for them ! And by the way, he loved that bear. He snuggled it so hard and asked if he could put it in his bed when we left <3

On Thursday night my MIL drove us to the airport and we waited 5 hours for our plane to leave at 1:45am on Friday. We flew for nearly 20 hours and arrived in little mans country at 12:30am. And then went to sleep :)

We met another adopting family for breakfast along with our translator. When we were finished with that we toured the city a little and visited the cascades. The time difference was kind of sorta kicking our butts but we were so excited to finally be in little mans country. The place of his birth, his culture and heritage, the place he has spent the last 4.5 years in waiting for his family to come. It was an absolutely beautiful City and I can not wait to go back!

More later :)