A Special Visit

Today we welcomed the soon-to-be family of one of Shaling's orphanage mates, Heng Xin (also known as Star). In these videos, Star is the one in the purple shirt (and Shaling is in the white shirt). I think you'll see that the girls seem pretty close with each other.

Shaling 2 from Amy Reynolds on Vimeo.

Shaling 1 from Amy Reynolds on Vimeo.

Shaling 7 from Amy Reynolds on Vimeo.

Star will be going to live with the Stowells in Tennessee (Chattanooga). Over the last 5 or so months, I've become friends with Tim via some social groups on Yahoo that focus on adoptive families. He and his wife Ellen adopted Tian from China about 2 1/2 years ago. She'll be 11 on December 2nd. Coincidentally, Star will be 10, also on December 2nd. Tim and Ellen adopted a son, Yu-Hsuan, from Taiwan in late February/early March of this year. He is 8-years-old (will be 9 in January).

It turns out that Tim's parents live here in Springfield (and he has a brother in the Springfield/New Berlin area as well). He came up with the kids for a few days, giving Ellen a few days "off", as she home schools the children. He and the kids came over and spent the whole afternoon with us. We went to lunch at New Buffet City (where we also met up with our Chinese teacher, James Wang), went rock climbing at The Silo in Rochester, then just hung out at the house for awhile. We truly enjoyed this visit and hope to get together again after we've both added our girls. Here are some pictures of Tian, Yu-Hsuan & Preston on our couch: