Some things change, some stay the same...

AND SHE WILL ALWAYS CARRY ON
SOMETHING IS LOST
BUT SOMETHING IS FOUND
THEY WILL KEEP ON SPEAKING HER NAME
SOME THINGS CHANGE
SOME STAY THE SAME

The lyric above is from a Pretenders song called "Hymn to Her". I don't really know what it means, but sometimes I find myself humming this song in periods of transition. I've found myself humming this song recently and so I'm posting it here just as a "remembery".

Let's see, news of progress!! Our Travel authorization came in on Tuesday the 22nd. It would have been here the 21st except that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Day. It would have been very auspicious if it were the 21st, because that's Min's birthday! So, we're going to be traveling in 3 weeks. We don't have our consulate appointment yet, we'll get that tomorrow. After we get that, then we can start getting our tickets and getting some firm plans nailed down.

This weekend we put up the shelves in the girls' room. We got the bed set up and 2 smaller dressers will replace the one big one. I still need to sort out the clothes and get Min's things into the drawers so they're ready for her when we come home.

Wednesday, Laina and I drove into Los An Hell Ease to pick up my passport that I dropped of last week. I have a brand new years pass to China!! For no extra charge and no special papers, I got a multiple entry visa for the low low price of just $100. A single entry was exactly the same price, so I just got the multiple entry just for fun. Now, Jorg and I can sit around the table on a Thursday morning and talk about what we're going to do on the weekend. "Oh, let's have brunch at the Four Seasons in Shanghai on Sunday!" "That will be grand! I'll buy the tickets and you grab our passports with the multiple entry visas in them". Yeah, that'll happen.

I got the 2 car seats for our 2 cars and also the new stokke trip-trap chair for Min. Laina's is red and Min's is black. The 2 new car seats are tan and huge. Oscar the cat is sleeping in one of them right now.

Oh and the biggest development happened last week. It has been decided that Laina will stay home with my parents. So the deal about my Mom coming along--not gonna happen. It's OK, though. I'm glad that my parents will be together and Laina will be with them. My Grandma has not been healthy recently and it will be better for everyone if my parents can be home with her, and we'll be able to have Min all to ourselves and she can have us all to herself for while before we come home.

I have a picture of Min that I got last week (thanks to A.) Was it only last week? Maybe it more like a week and a half. I photoshopped it just a little bit because it's fun to do that. So here's what miss Min looked like 2 weeks ago: