A weekend spent with friends

We shared an amazing weekend with wonderful friends. When we made the decision to adopt from China, I started looking online for information about Chinese adoption. I found some yahoo support groups that were just for Chinese adoption. I started to meet people online that actually lived in my area and who were in the same stage of the adoption process as us. One of these families was the Olson family. Kim and I became fast friends as were waited for our daughters. We shared hopes and dreams. We started to attend waiting family meeting together. We made friends with other Mom's who were waiting. We registered for our baby showers together. By the time we got the referrals of our daughters we had 5 families in our "group". The Olson family got there referral the month before us. I was so excited for Kim and Gunner and couldn't wait to see little Hannah MingMei's face. She was a beauty. We celebrated with the Olsons and celebrated again when we got our referral of Katie Min Min. We followed each other trips to China and had first playdates together when we got home with our daughters. At the end of 2006 The Olson family moved to Virginia. We were sad because we would miss them but we knew we would remain friends. We shared so much together. Our adoption group as grown to over 10 families and we are lucky enough to get together often. Kim stays in touch with us via our own groups yahoo group. But we don't get to see her very often. I was so excited to plan a weekend get together with Kim and Hannah. Kim and Hannah arrived on Friday afternoon. We went to Sesame Place for a few hours. We met up with some of the families in our group. Then Friday night Mimi watched the girls and we had a much needed girls night out with Kim. Saturday we hit the church carnival to "hop" on some rides as Hannah would say. The girls had a BLAST! Then back to our house for a cookout so our group could come over and spend some time with Kim and Hannah. It was Kim's Birthday so we celebrated with some yummy deserts and we sang to Kim and surprised her and the girls with some magic candles. Since it was so close to Cinco de Mayo we had a "Fiesta" theme. I challenged some of the older kids to a hula contest.....Could they hula while wearing a Mexican Hat and shake maracas? Hannah Whitty and Brady were able to do it!!! I tried but was not as good as the 7 year olds. Sunday morning we said our goodbyes. I would love to make this our "First Annual" Kim and Hannah weekend(Gunner is more then welcome too)!

Sesame Place and St Joe's Carnival