Logan Crosses Over to Boy Scouts

Today was the Blue and Gold Banquet for Scouts. Logan and Barry had to make a cake for it with the ALOHA theme. They made a Hawaiian shirt and looked pretty good. All cakes were auctioned off and usually what happens is that we end up buying our own cake. This year, however, we had already bid on another cake, so luckily someone else bid on ours. Barry and LJ were supposed to plan the cake, buy the supplies and make and ice the cake with no help from me....flying powdered sugar and ALL! Logan crossed over to Boy Scouts and is anxious to give that a try. He and Barry will go camping next month and see how it goes.

Larry's Surgery

Barry's Dad has lung cancer and he had surgery 2 days ago to remove the tumor. He is still in ICU, but is doing OK. We were happy to hear that there were no cancer cells found in the lymph nodes and we are waiting to hear more next week from the Pathology report. We are thankful that he is doing well!

Anna Turns Three!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Anna! And Happy Chinese New Year's Eve! The day started off nice until about 9am when Anna got a big fat lip! Brandon was going down the steps at lightening speed and WHAM! It is a beauty!

We went to our favorite Chinese Restaurant for dinner and Anna wore one of her dresses we bought in China. My parents and sister also joined us. Chinese New Year officially starts tomorrow, so we thought it would be neat to celebrate that, too. Last week the owner of the restaurant invited us to celebrate tonight at 10 pm with them at their big party, but we thought we would be worn out from the big day. The woman gave each of the kids a red envelope with $10 in it. We were very surprised and a bit embarrassed. A Red Envelope, sometimes called a Red Packet is simply a red envelope with money in it, often decorated with lucky symbols, which symbolizes luck and wealth. It is called Hong Bao in Chinese. Children are given the envelopes with the money in it to bring good luck. They can then go buy holiday treats with the money. We had taken a Chinese New Year Card and given it to the owner as we got to the Restaurant.

After dinner we went back home to open Anna's gifts and have cake and ice-cream. Anna managed to open all the gifts at record speed and enjoyed her Little Mermaid-Ariel Cake. She had been singing to herself all day! When asked how old she is she says 2 and then 4. Ok...so we will work on 3!

I spent a lot of time this week thinking of Anna's birthparents. It is hard not to think about them. They made a decision to give Anna a future on Feb 28, 2004 that they felt that they could not. We are greatful to have her as our daughter and she has brought so much joy to our lives and so many others. It is hard for us to imagine what led to the decision to give Anna up. We will never know and I feel somewhat sad knowing that they will never know the wonderful girl she has become.

Anyway, we had a wonderful third birthday with our little Anna YanYi.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day! It was another NO SCHOOL day here in our snowy little town! We are hopeful that there will be school tomorrow, though.

Tonight was the Schmidt Annual Valentine's Day Treasure Hunt. The kids always look forward to this! It all started when Logan was little and Blue's Clues had just started on Nick Jr. Back then we made picture clues to a few surprises and it has evolved each year as the kids get older.

Here is a photoshow from our hunt! http://www.photoshow.net/schmidtfamily5

Happy Valentine's Day!

A SNOWY AND BLOWY DAY!

I don't EVER remember drifts like this. Blizzard warnings were actually right. Poor Barry had to shovel out 3 of the Credit Union Branches...now all a pointless effort. We worked some on our driveway so that we could get the neighbor's car off the street (snow emergency) and park it here. Fun day! Baked coffee cake and cookies and played all day. So....no school today and I really doubt that we will have school tomorrow. YUK!!!!

Pics from the trip!

Back from Disney World!

We had a wonderful trip at Disney World. We started the trip on Jan. 27 in Bloomington by visiting the Miller Family from our travel group and Robin and Kailee from our travel group were visiting there, too. The three girls had a great time talking and playing and the boys all had fun playing video games. We slept over at Michelle's parents' house and then flew out on Sunday at 6 am from Bloomington (after they de-iced the plane!)and it was 4 degrees. We flew to Atlanta and barely made our flight and then onto Orlando...but not before Brandon threw up all over himself and Barry. Luckily he missed the guy next to him. Brandon had never flown before and it got the best of him. It was much warmer that afternoon, but then got really cold around 6 that night!BRRRRRR. We lived in layers for the next 2 days and Anna was always wrapped in a fleece blanket that the Bentons gave us to use.

Sunday we ate at Downtown Disney with the Bentons...Barry's ex Boss' family ....at Rainforest Cafe. It turned VERY cold for Florida for 2 days, but it was still better than the temps in Illinois. It was warming up by Wednesday and hot by the end of the week.

We spent the week hopping from the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Epcot. Anna enjoyed every minute of it and had her occasional sucking of the fingers when she got tired. We were gone each day from the hotel for about 13 hours a day. We walked and walked! We saw many shows like the Lion King, Little Mermaid, Nemo and many more. They were all great! We all just had a blast! Even Barry who is usually "Mr. Anti-Vacations" didn't want to come home!

We returned on Saturday, Feb. 3 and BOY it was cold! Today it was -2 and the wind chill was much worse than that! I miss the warm weather already! I could go on and on forever, but I won't. All-in-all a wonderful trip! I will post a few pictures here and then there is a link to the photoshow site.

http://www.photoshow.net/schmidtfamily5

Enjoy!
Jennifer

Anna 2 year Referral Anniversary!

We were in Florida on Jan. 31, but I wanted to post this now.
Two years ago on Jan. 31, we received a referral from China of Jin Yan Yi. All we knew that day was that she was born in Guiping City, China, in the province of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. We were told that her birthday was Feb. 17, 2004, so she was just turning 11.5 months old. I received the phone call from our Social Worker, Andrea, that morning and I was just shaking with excitement! What a day it was. We were to receive the pictures of Jin Yan Yi the following day, but did not, due to a mix up. So, on Feb. 2, we received three pictures of our beautiful daughter. Hard to believe that it has been two years! Jin Yan Yi became our Anna YanYi and will be celebrating her third birthday very soon. We were ready to hop on the next plane, but had to continue to be patient and wait. Two months later, we left for Hong Kong and China to bring our little Anna home. She was 13.5 months old when we met her.

The referral pictures make me a little bit sad, but looking at her now makes me happy. She had little life and joy in the referral pictures and she is so full of life and joy now. She has brought so much happiness to our whole family. We do not know much about Anna's first 13.5 months, but we are forever grateful to her birth parents and God for allowing Anna to have a second chance in life here with us.