A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

I guess this is not as clear of a picture as I hoped, but you can still make out the beauty of these bracelets! A very sweet friend of mine from high school made these for me. I emailed her a while back and asked if she would make part of the gifts for me that we will be taking to China. When we asked our agency how many gifts we needed to take, they told us 10-12 gifts.


These gifts will be given to each of Mariah's nannies, our guide, and our agency's in-country facilitator.


One of the requests I had for these bracelets was for each to have a ladybug somewhere on the bracelet. If you look closely you will see the silver ladybug on each bracelet. That is pretty significant in the China adoption world and I was thrilled to see it!

Here are three more of the bracelets. I did ask for twelve bracelets as I intend to keep one for myself and one for Mariah. The hard part is choosing which two I plan to keep. I have a couple of more weeks before I have to decide.


These beautiful bracelets were made by Marie Hilty. She was a friend of mine in high school. She makes jewelry of all kind and has a business. Thank you, Marie, for quickly making these bracelets and making them unique!


I also thought I'd take a minute and share a little about China and Mariah's provincial city. She is currently residing in Changzhou (pronounced...Chung Joe). As many of you already know, she lives in the orphanage in that city. I cannot wait to take pictures and show you her hometown and her orphanage. The orphanage moved to a brand new location a few years ago and honestly, it is gorgeous! I've seen pictures and other parents have told me how nice the orphanage is now. I believe there are around 300 children living there. She lives with 29 other children ages 0-2yrs.  Her orphanage participates with Half the Sky. This wonderful organization comes in to the orphanage and provides much needed care to these children. They provide physical and occupational therapy and consistent nannies to help facilitate healthy attachments for the children living there.


Changzhou City, Mariah's city, is located about halfway between Shanghai and Nanjing (provincial capital). It is a city that is most known for it's comb factory. Yes, hair combs! We are hoping to take a tour of the comb factory there.  We will also purchase a set of combs as a keepsake for Mariah.

Changzhou is also home to the famous China Dinosaur Park. This park is home to over 50 dinosaur fossils from all over China. It also happens to be an amusement park!  As well as the dinosaur park, Changzhou also boasts one of the tallest Buddist pagodas named Tianning Temple.


Yesterday was just a day of fun here at the Kaminski house. Well, fun for the kids. Jeremy and I worked on getting the pool ready for use while the kids had the garden hose in the front yard. So we snapped a few pictures of the kids playing.






High temps were in the 90's! Very warm and humid.

Then I cannot forget our youngest little guy. The only picture of him playing with the water was not very good. So I'll choose a picture from a few days before. This is typical of what you would see Ben doing on any given day. He is so much fun!


We have decided to stay home this Memorial Day. It is too hard to try to made it back to PA since Jeremy works on Sunday and on Tuesday. That leaves us with less than 24 hours to be with family. A good part of that time would be spent sleeping. It's a little tough to visit with both families and make it back home in time to get everyone to bed at a decent time. We will certainly miss the family reunion with Jeremy's family. I don't remember the last time we were able to be there. Jeremy's schedule is the same every year. We wish it could be different but going home is just not going to work this year since we will be using much of Jeremy's vacation time when we leave for China in just a couple of weeks.

To answer any the question you are probably thinking, we did not receive our date for travel yet. We hope to get that by the end of next week. Then we should know when to book our flights. For the next couple of weeks we will continue to prepare. I realized the other day that our toy room is unacceptable. We have Legos EVERYWHERE! My feet have found many of them as I walk through. Ouch!!! These definitely have to be taken care of before Mariah comes home. 


We received a gift from a sweet couple at church today. The husband picked out a dress for Mariah and the wife chose a beautiful white sweater! This keeps getting more exciting!