Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

In my last blog post , I shared the 6-year wait and recent "reveal" of our Universal Orlando/Disney Cruise trip.  Planning for this trip consumes much of my free time these days, so I figured I'd just go head and blog about it. Ken and I booked this trip late 2015.  After narrowing down trip details, we had to decide when to tell the kids.  We revealed the trip to our older kids on Christmas, but chose to not tell the boys until closer to our travel time.  In the end, Tian, who can hear very well, picked up on our chats and figured out our secret well before the official reveal we did for them earlier this month.  Travis, though, had no idea beyond knowing that we would "one day" go on a Disney Cruise (Mickey boat, as he calls it).  If he would ask about a cruise, we would say, "We'll go when you're 9 or 10." We considered not telling him at all until the day we were set to leave.  In the past, when an exciting day is upcoming, he gets very...

This is a screen shot from the email I sent Ken after seeing Tian's profile on Rainbow Kids the day before his first birthday. (Note the date.) We had booked a Disney cruise for the following spring and had been counting down the weeks and days since Christmas.  The cruise had been the major gift for the kids. (Not easy to give young kids a vapor gift with a promise of reality over a year away. But when you live debt-free, that's what you have to do for big trips!) I had opened an email with Tian's file and the girls were looking at it over my shoulder.  They instantly said, "That's our China Bro!!"  I'll never forget telling the Brownies, ages 9, 7, and 6 at the time, that we could not both cruise and adopt.  We'd have to choose one for now and put off the other until later.  Ken and I didn't want to start the adoption process by taking something away from our bio kids against their will, so we asked their opinions, truly caring for their f...