HELP DIABETES RESEARCH FUNDING!

Congress is voting this week on a proposed budget that slashes funding for diabetes research and prevention programs.

In all, we're looking at roughly $100 billion in cuts to vital federal public health programs. These cuts will jeopardize research underway and undermine proven prevention programs. Given the magnitude of the diabetes epidemic, we need to make sure Congress knows these cuts are simply unacceptable.

https://donations.diabetes.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2082

There's no time to lose - your Member of Congress needs to hear from you! I already sent mine a letter - it just takes a minute:

Thank you for your support!

Reached her Goal

Especially proud of these two today!!

I got a call from Lila's special ed teacher today.  She has been working with Lila to make sure she is learning at the appropriate level and not being hindered by her lack of speech skills.  Holly said she has reached her goals for the year!  She will continue to work with her for the rest of the school year but on a very limited basis.  Lila continues to work on pronunciation and sentence structure with her speech language pathologist.  I think she's speaking more clearly and can see that others are understanding her speech much better too. 

Grace also had a great week at school.  The kids earn tickets for reaching their expectations.  When they earn 10 tickets they receive a little plastic bear paw and their name is included in the Friday morning announcements.  Grace earned her 9th bear paw for the year!  She only earned 6 in the whole Kindgergarten year.  She is such a responsible and dilligent little girl and so proud of herself to get these little awards!

Research China

China families, have you heard about this service? 


http://www.research-china.org/


I first heard of Brian Stuy from a fellow adoptive family while traveling to China in August 2009.  I finally contacted him Sunday.  Last night I received his response.  He is able to provide us with not only a picture of Lila's finding ad, he has an extra copy of the actual newspaper!  I got goosebumps when I read that last night.  We were given a very poor quality, blurry, grainy, photocopy with our adoption information so this is really an exciting find.   This will be the youngest picture we will have of Lila, possibly the first picture ever taken of her.  I will post the actual picture as soon as we receive it! 

No Cook Candy aka POOP!

Several friends have posted on FB this morning that they need ideas to keep the kids entertained during the blizzard.  I found this recipe on a blog a couple years ago.  While they were making it her little girl decided it looked like poop.  Thank you Kathleen! 


No Cook Candy


1/2 cup peanut butter

4 cups of powdered sugar

1 cup of cocoa

4 tbs milk

1 pinch salt

Mix everything together....MIX A LOT....you may need to add another tbs or so of milk. Take a small amount of the candy and roll in your palms to make balls.....then eat your fresh homemade POOP.

PS This was fun.  We made it earlier today, were silly & gross with it, laughed a lot!  This afternoon I was sick of it.  It doesn't taste very good, was really dry and really hard to make into balls.  I added another 1/2 cup of pb and a lot more milk.  It made a wonderful chocolate peanut butter frosting.  I made yellow cupcakes and will be spreading it on them soon!  I might chop some peanuts for topping too.  Enjoy!

Snowy Sunday

We are having a cozy Sunday afternoon at home. We did a gluey, cutting, glitter craft.   There are cookies in the EasyBake oven and  I just got done reading an update on http://www.beyondthehorizon-miller.blogspot.com/  They are currently in Guangzhou soon to be heading back to Michigan with their daughter.  She is 6 months older than Lila from the same small orphange in Bishan.  Sha Sha and Shi Shi (now Lila) were together with the same nanny and 1 other girl their age at the orphanage.  We hope to get them together and kep in touch by email & blog!  We are so happy that little Jenna has found a happy & loving home.  Lila was sitting on my lap this morning in church and I was so happy that she is in a home that will teach her about God and that Jenna now has that opportunity too. 

Oh yeah, I can't forget!  I put this on Facebook but have to share here too!  We were driving over to Gerry's parents yesterday and the WEENIE MOBILE got on the freeway behind us.  It passed us and I was able to get a pretty good picture as we exited...

It has been much too long!

Another picture slideshow by Smilebox I haven't posted for ages so here are some pictures to let you know what we have been up to.  I hope everyone is doing well & I promise to post more often!