It's The 14th

You know what that means. Time to mark another month off the wait for my baby. Check out the cool collage (the secretly hip even though she doesn't think so) Tonguu Momma posted today. She and I are LID sisters. Well, we're actually a day apart. But if the CCAA does this right, they'll refer June 13th and 14th in the same batch. That's our plan anyway. And then our agencies will travel to China at the same time, too. Hey... stranger things have happened. It's not too far out of the realm of possibility. We'll just have to wait and see.

So on to Idol... let's discuss. I'm thinking I like the new judge. She's fiesty. I like that. But I thought it was a little mean for her to make fun of the pink cowboy hat wearing 16 yr old who was her biggest fan. Hopefully now she realizes that everything she does and says is being taped and could potentially be shown to millions of viewers. Cuz although her remarks after the girl left the room weren't intended for her to hear, I'm sure they were once it was televised. So I'm thinking she just lost her biggest fan. LOL!

And what was up with the bikini chick? I don't like her. I hate when women feel they have to dumb themselves down to get noticed. Obviously her talent isn't enough if she felt she needed to let her ass hang out just to get attention. And it wasn't even the bikini that irritated me so much as the disrespectful attitude she had. I thought Kara was gonna come over the desk and put the smackdown on her. Honey... you're not that cute. Seriously. And I bet your mother was proud when you acted like a slut on national television with the whole "I'm gonna make out with you, Ryan, after I get my golden ticket" remark..... and then she did. Low class. I hope the judges make her cry during Hollywood week.

The guy that almost passed out made me laugh. Not for passing out. It was his weird singing. Funny stuff. I like the tattoed girl who sang "Barracuda" but those things in her ears made me cringe every time I looked at her. I really liked the blind guy. I hope he does well. There wasn't any stand out talent though. I didn't think anyway. Hopefully tonight's show will offer up something better.

It's That Time Again

Time to indulge in one of my favorite guilty pleasures. The new season starts tonight at 8pm on F0X. Supposedly there will be some changes with the show.... including a fourth judge. Interesting. I intend to tune in and see how all this plays out. Don't forget to set your DVR's.

Dig Deep, Peeps!

I saw this mentioned on Doris' blog and felt compelled to share it here, too. This story just really stirred something in my heart. I hope it does the same for you.

Kennedy is the daughter of Doris' adoption coordinator. She was born in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China and adopted at the age of 6 mths old. She's the oldest of 3 sisters and 2 brothers. All adopted from China. Kennedy has received a very special invitation to go to China and celebrate with the Yangzhou Children's Social Welfare Institute. The SWI is celebrating 20 years of helping children find their families as well as completing their new children's building.
The week in China will be filled with wonderful activities, including a visit to the CCAA in Beijing, a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Then she'll go to Yangzhou where she'll stay for 4 days. The party in Yangzhou would include a grand welcome ceremony for all of the children who were adopted from Yangzhou, a visit to the orphanage to learn about its development and a trip to the Canal Scenery Belt and Slender West Lake. She'll be able to enjoy the great cuisine of Yangzhou and meet some wonderful people from her hometown. She'll get to play with the waiting children in the orphanage and plant trees with them to represent their everlasting friendship. Kennedy will be an honored guest for the anniversary ceremony.

As a waiting mom, this story just touched my heart. To give Kennedy the experience of learning all these things about her birthplace, her culture and the place that cared for her before she came home to her family would be an unforgettable gift. To be able to show the CCAA and the SWI how their work effected this child's life and helped shape her into the amazing girl that I'm sure she is would be so incredibly satisfying. The whole idea just fills my heart.

Kennedy is fundraising to be able to take this trip. She has to raise $3300. She's off to a good start but she needs more help. All of us with a daughter from China would love for our own daughters to have this type of an opportunity when they're older, so let's make this dream come true for Kennedy. Go over to her blog and read more about her efforts. And while you're there, click on the donate button.

I did...... and realized it won't cost us Yanks as much since the donation is in Canadian dollars. LOL! Just another reason to give a little more. Especially since every dollar she raises over her goal will be donated back to the Yangzhou Children's Social Welfare Institute. Now go on... get over to Kennedy's place.

Doing Better

So we're a week into the new year. I decided I'm not making any real resolutions this go 'round. Lord knows I failed miserably at last year's. Johnny was right. I never should've announced them to the world. Maybe that was what set me up for failure.

It's a little sad to look back on my blog post from this time last year. I was on fire with my enthusiasm and motivation. But somewhere along 2008.... it fizzled out. Again. And I'm still in the same place. Needing to lose the same weight and with a million house projects to do. Okay maybe not a million. But even though I accomplished some of the projects around the house, there's so much more I would've like to have completed.

Maybe I should make a big new year's resolution announcement to gain weight and procrastinate. I mean, I did the exact opposite of my plans last year. So maybe it's just reverse psychology. I'll say I'm going to gain as much weight as I can, lay on my arse and watch TV and not do a damn thing around the house...but instead the opposite will happen. Isn't that the way new year's resolutions work? LOL!

In reality, I'm only resolving to do one thing this year and it can be summed up in one simple word. Better. I plan to do better. That's my key phrase. I'm not going to say "I'll lose X amount of weight" or "I'll work out 5 times a week" or "I'll stop being late for work" or "I'll get this project done or that project done". Nope. No specifics. No set goals. Just do better.

Ahhh... I feel better already.

Christmas Re-cap

In classic procrastinator style, my Christmas post is coming a few days after the new year. Better late than never... that's my motto. So here goes.

I saw some of you posted about your Fish*r Price manger sets. I looked around online but those things are hard to come by. In my searching, I stumbled across this instead and quickly whipped out the credit card. If you push on Santa's head while he's sitting in his sleigh, it plays Christmas songs. I love it! I'll put this away with the Christmas decor and only get it out once a year. It'll be Mia's own little holiday decoration. Once she's home, how long do you think it'll take before I remove the batteries? LOL! Oh and because I'm a little anal about these kind of things... I took it upon myself to paint Rudolph's nose red with craft paint. Seriously.... I did. I mean, how can you have one reindeer depicted clearly in the lead of the sleigh and have it NOT be Rudolph? Everybody knows his nose his supposed to be red!As is my holiday tradition with the T's, we had our annual "penguin pajama pics in front of the Christmas tree" photo shoot. This year we added Baby Tess. I got lucky and found a pair of semi-matching pj's for her. Next year we'll have to get new pj's, I think. The kids are growing out of these red ones we used last year.Yes, Carla, for the sake of full disclosure, I swiped your pic. LOL! Cuz in spite of the 50,000 that we took with my camera.... most had issues. Either someone was looking the wrong way, had eyes closed, a stupid look on their face or it was blurry. It's gotten really difficult to make 5 kids sit still, look at the camera and smile. All At The Same Time. Nearly impossible actually. Especially when one is only 4 mths old. So this is the best we could come up with.Here's a few pics of the family at my house on Christmas day opening presents. I love how the kids are all focused on this one present. We make everybody open one at a time, youngest to oldest. It's a test of their patience. Future sister-in-law, Kristy, got an OSU Buck*eyes purse. Don't be hatin', Robin and Tracy! LOL!Big Travis got money. His favorite thing. Here he's photo documenting it with a self portrait.The pirate ship was a big hit. Even I wanted to play with it.Santa brought the boys a new Wii. So Grandma bought them stuff to go with it.Tatum got this pizza cutting thing. And Teagan got the other food cutting toy which was such a big hit with him at Maddy's birthday party.Tess just hanging out with her daddy. She could've cared less about the presents. Maybe next year.The kids were excited about the engagement announcement. But I think only because they can now call Braeden their cousin ... "officially" and "legally". LOL! They kept saying "So he's reeeee-ally our cousin now?". These two are only about 7 mths apart in age. They're in love with each other.So that's about it for Christmas 2008. I wonder what changes will come by Christmas next year. And no... I don't think I'll have my kid home. (Although one can dream.) But I'll sure be getting a lot closer by then. :)

The Real Deal

I've sufficiently recovered from my new year's eve hangover now and I wasn't going to get any more involved in this drama since the blog in question has now been deleted. But it's late and I can't sleep. And I feel like there's a point to be made here.

Some of you may have noticed some stuff floating around about a "fake blogger". Here's the real deal. I started following this particular blog. But the more I read, the more I realized that something just didn't seem right. I'm a detective by profession, after all. It's in my nature to be observant and intuitive. And suspicious when I get that kind of vibe. So I started digging around. Then I alerted some of my homegirls in order to get their opinions about what they thought. And they started digging. The more digging that was done, the more dishonesty we uncovered.

And it was really ridiculous things to be dishonest about. This person pulled images off the web and incorporated stories of her life around them. Now don't get me wrong. We ALL "borrow" web images sometimes to make a point or illustrate a story. But to "borrow" an image and say, for example, that it's your nursery, your front door, your parent's house, what you ate for Thanksgiving, the bruise you got on your leg, the pumpkins your family carved, the Christmas tree your cousin decorated for you, etc, etc. etc when the pics belong to other people or other websites is just .... I don't know.... a little strange, to say the least. And wrong.

This bothered me because other people were following this blog and buying into all of it when it was all so obviously untrue. People were "praying" for this blogger and offering her support. And it just upset me that they were being made fools of. I don't like to be lied to. Do you?

So some comments started being made on her blog basically calling her out on the dishonesty. So she turned off the anon comment option. And then set it to moderate all the comments when the accusations again came but this time with names attached. Then she put her blog "under construction" and re-worked it. She changed the template, profile pic and removed all of her archives. I was fine with that.

But then she posted that someone had threatened her through an e-mail even going so far as to quote her address to her. And that just pissed me off because it was a blatant lie. She said "it was scary stuff" and claimed it was the reason for removing her archives. But then she continued her blog with the same URL, same blog name, same profile name and even replaced her "fake" profile pic with one that appeared to be her AND her children. Now does that make sense to any one of you? Cuz it didn't to me. If someone directly threatened me AND knew where I lived.... I think I'd be shutting down my blog. That she thought any of us were stupid enough to believe this story was beyond me. It was a complete insult to the intelligence of anyone reading her blog.

At that point, I think many of us that were "on to her" felt like she had gone too far. Heather took it upon herself to start a blog basically "outing" this blogger. The basic point being that she was dishonest and that people needed to be aware of it so as to protect themselves from falling victim to it. There are many, many examples on this new blog proving that point. You can also go to G0ogle Reader and add www.carefulwisher.blogspot.com into your subscription. It'll show all of the archives even though she's now deleted the entire thing in an attempt to destroy the evidence so to speak. So judge for yourself.

Melissa...
yes this whole thing is "ridiculous" but no it's not "too much like high school". It was kind of ironic that you said "I never knew there was a Blog Police Squad who takes it upon themselves to rid the Blog World of evil!" since that IS what I do for a living. But I didn't call you evil. Those are your words.

I know that you feel like this is a witch hunt and I'm truly sorry for that. But it's not. It's just a group of caring people trying to protect other caring people. I can't speak for others... but I'm not out to personally hurt you in any way. This isn't some unwarranted personal attack on you. We don't even know "you". Although, I know you ARE being hurt by it. Again, I'm sorry for that.

I do, however, take deep offense to someone who so completely represents themselves as something they're not. I just couldn't, in good conscience, let you continue to deceive people within this blogging community that I like and respect. You've been so dishonest on your blog that I'm not even sure if you are "Melissa". At this point, it's hard to believe anything you say.

I'm not sure what the point of all of it was. Especially since you say you "would never do anything to intentionally hurt anyone". I hope you understand now that is exactly what you've done. In the China adoption community, we tend to get emotionally invested in each other's stories.... more so than most internet connections. So betrayal definitely damages that bond.

I hope you're able to come to terms with all of this and learn from your mistakes. Integrity is everything. Especially in this "blogging" forum where we don't have the luxury of knowing each other in real life and judging mannerisms, body language, etc. All we have is our word.

And, Melissa, if you truly are on the road to an adoption from China, I hope you're able to look inside yourself and fix whatever it is that seems to be broken. Whatever it is that makes you need to invent a different life instead of sharing your real one. For your children's sake if nothing else. Again... it's hard to read a person's tone in the written word... but know that none of what I've directed to you is meant to be mean or hurtful. I just simply believe in honesty. I care about people. And I feel an obligation to stand up for what's right. I do,sincerely and genuinely, wish you the best on your journey.