We are hoping that the worst of Hurricane Sandy is behind us.  Last night, it was raining hard and very windy but we had a good time together as a family.  R and Jenny watched TV in bed -- lots of the weather channel plus some Sex and The City reruns (probably not age appropriate but they had fun!).  R also did a bunch of work from the home computer and I mostly stayed on the lower level doing work and watching too much weather channel on TV (what one of our friends called "weather porn").  We also ordered takeout Chinese food and that was fun.

We were worried that we'd lose power last night but so far, so good.  Now R is on the computer upstairs and Jenny is in the bathtub singing to herself and playing with her bath toys.  It's still raining a little bit but much less than yesterday.  Earlier today, R immediately took the appropriate step that you would expect after a large storm: she called the Four Seasons spa to see if they had any massage appointment availability! (she still has the gift certificate that Jenny and I got her for her B-day).  No massage appointments but she did get a facial appointment.  So funny.  I'm going to try to take it easy today, do some work, and perhaps make a run to the grocery store.  I am supposed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Friday for a work trip so I'll probably check the flights to make sure it's still on schedule.  More later.

Being silly with Mac photo booth

Yesterday, were were going a bit stir crazy in the house during Hurricane Sandy so Jenny and I decided to have some fun playing with the Mac photo booth application.  It's a goofy tool that lets you take photos of yourself like one of those old fashioned photo booths.  Here are some examples of our handiwork.

Spoke with Greg C this morning when we were in the Houston airport waiting to fly back to DC.  We were talking about how tough the wait will be this next month.  He reminded me of the Tom Petty song "The Waiting is the Hardest Part."  I happen to have that song on my playlist so I listened to it once we got on the airplane.  It really is a good song.  I found two other great songs on my playlist that are good waiting songs:  the Journey song "Don't Stop Believin'" and the song by Eminem "Lose Yourself."  Reminds me of when we were waiting for Jenny's adoption and I spent a lot of time listening to Bruce Springsteen (to the point that R banned me from playing Bruce when she was around!).  Ok - signing off now.  Our plane is getting ready to land in Atlanta to change planes so we can head back to DC.

Just spoke with Jane C to let her know how the dinner went tonight in Houston.  So great to have all of our friends' support.  R is so tired she's already fast asleep so I couldn't resist looking through some old Jenny videos on my Mac while I unwind.  In Jane's honor, I found another really funny Alex and Jenny interview -- this one when we were all together at Rohoboth beach.  Here it is:

Good dinner tonight in Houston.  After a long day of travel and anticipation, we're both wiped out but feeling glad to be here and hopeful.  Will have more on this later but just wanted to check in and say we are glad we had such a nice dinner.

Ok - one final video post and then I am officially ready to post videos to Blogger and will try to resist posting other older videos.  This one is of Jenny riding a horse.  It's an old one but one of my favorites.  Since Jenny is sometimes scared of big dogs, I was surprised that she wasn't the slightest bit scared of the big horse.  She was all decked out in her Hello Kitty studded jean jacket.  She looks like a little cowgirl pro as she rides the horse!

I'm in San Antonio, TX for the Opportunity Finance Network conference (this is the national membership association for Community Development Financial Institutions).  It is fun to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a number of years.  I will be flying to Houston later today to meet R.  Meanwhile, I'm still enjoying looking at old videos that I found when I was remembering how to post video to the blog.  Here's another favorite Jenny video - this one of her dancing with her pants on her head.  She got all sugared up at a birthday party and was totally hyper.  Very funny.

Dancing the grand finale

As I was trying to remember how to post video to the Blogger site, I got caught up looking at some old videos I took of Jenny.   These were sitting on my camera and some are so funny.  This one is a video I took of Jenny over a year ago.  It cracks me up every time.  She's doing some type of dance routine that she calls the "grand finale."

R and J baby names

Here is my first attempt to post video to the Blog.  Believe it or not, we figured out how to post video to the previous blog when we were in China 5 years ago (and that was made especially difficult because the Blogger site was blocked in China).  A lot has happened in the tech space in 5 years but I still find it a challenge to remember all of the steps to post video.  Had to take video from the camera and upload to the Mac; then use the Mac's IMovie application to post the video to YouTube; then link Blogger to YouTube.  There's probably an easier way that I'll figure out at some point but for now this seems to work.

This is a video of Rachel and Jenny discussing Chinese middle names.  I really like this one.

In San Antonio for OFN Conference.   Still trying to figure out how to use Blogger on the Mac.  Here's a photo I took of R and Jenny a few mornings ago when I was testing out our new camera.  Trying to remember how to post a photo to Blogger.  Here goes.

Starting a Second Blog

It has been so long since we posted a Blog entry on our earlier blog (see the link to that blog here: Our Journey To Adoption) that I completely forgot how to do it.  So here's a first try at doing a post.  We decided to do a brand new blog rather than continue with the previous blog.  Looking forward to getting back into blogging.  It seems like Facebook and Twitter have become the new tools but in some ways I like Blogging better.  First, it's more long form.  Second, it doesn't spam everyone every time you want to say something.  And finally, it's a better stand-alone record of a series of events that can be extracted later into a book.  We made a hard copy book of our earlier blog.  Depending on how this one turns out, we might consider doing that again.  So let the games begin.