July 13, 2010

Gao Shao Reunion Part II

I have finally finished the slide show & it was so hard not to fight back the tears. We had such a wonderful time & no words can express the time spent together & watching these precious girls play together. Your heart takes over while watching them & you have got to wonder what their little lives would of been like if God had not touched each family through the journey of adoption.

Let me rewind & explain why it ended up in Indiana instead of Michigan. OK, 2 years ago Chad & I said we would plan the next reunion & we had all thought we would skip every other year since every one's schedules are so busy!! We had plenty of time to search for enough rooms in Michigan & we found the perfect spot in Saugatuck. Close to the beach, big pool, quaint little shops, food was planned & payment was made!!! We were all suppose to arrive on July 8 & leaving on July 11! WELL we got a call on June 28th from the resort stating that the resort has gone under & they are trying to find a place big enough to place 20 of us. I started to PANIC & decided not to contact the other families until we found somewhere for them to lay their heads at night. WELL that was not working out as easy as I hoped. I called Deb in a complete PANIC & she was on the search with me. Nothing was working out so as of Wed. night June 30th getting ready to head out to see "Eclipse" we decided to host the reunion here at our house, YIKES I went into complete craziness & my mind was rushing (honestly cannot tell you much about the movie except how GOOD Jacob looked)!!! We had a week to get our place looking like a resort & planning some FUN activities here for the kids. LOTS of friends & family pulled together & worked A LOT of long hours to get projects done, make the place look nice, helped make food & find space for everyone to lay their head after a long day!!! Thanks so much to all of you, can not thank you enough!!! SO, everyone arrived on Thursday July 8th & once you see the slide show you will be able to tell that this is what God had planned all along!!! All my anxiety & fears went out the door & it looks like we may have started a tradition with families hosting at their house or close by!!!

We made SOOOO many memories & my dear friend Kindra took some pictures of the girls in matching dresses that Carla so graciously bought for the girls . My sister brought the horses for the kids to ride & when you have always been raised around horses you take it for granted that they are such a novelty to others that aren't as fortunate to be around them or ride them. All the girls said that was their favorite thing all weekend was to ride the horses. We had spa day with manicures & pedicures, Thanks Nancy & Khrista! My other sister made beautiful beach towels with the kids name on it & then the little girls had "Gao Shao Sister" 2010 on them (which no one got a picture of that so if someone can take a pic & send it to me. I would appreciate it)! We had lots of FUN ranger rides in the woods & we ate a TON of fattening food!!!

OK, now I hope you enjoy the pictures of our special weekend. Such memories we all made & looking forward to next year in Maryland @ "The Malamis's" Thanks Carla & Dan can't wait!

You may want to push the arrow to make the slide show go faster if not you may be sitting at your computer all day because there are so many pictures! ENJOY!

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4 comments:

Chris and Anne-Marie said...

Amazing. Trying not to sob too loud in the office :) You all looked like such a great big happy family!!

Bill (cycleguy) said...

Love the pictures and the stories Terry. Sorry I missed out on this for so long. You know my prayers are with you and Chad (and of course Dahlen and Annalie) on this continued journey. Going to link you on my blog and watch for a post!

Bill (cycleguy) said...

Terri: I don't know how to contact you by email so just asking you to check out my blog after 2:00 today (Monday). billgrandi.com Hope you like it.

LedaP said...

PS. It was 66 days for our family from LID to LOA. Yours should be coming soon!