Merry CHRISTmas

Merry CHRISTmas family and friends!

Sorry that this post is a bit late, isn't is amazing how quickly each day goes by!

We have absolutely been enjoying each and every minute of this wonderful Christmas season!

We love watching movies and cuddling with our precious boys, 

reading wonderful Christmas stories, spending time with friends and family, 

playing Christmas music, baking and decorating cookies, 

driving around looking at all the beautiful lights, 

and taking time to relax a little more and enjoy all the wonders of this season!

We spent Christmas morning at our home, relaxing with the boys, opening presents, 

enjoying homemade cinnamon rolls, and playing.

Then it was off to Grandpa Cox's house to spend time with him, 

Aunt Maureen (Steve's sister), her daughter Madeline and Laurie (Steve's brother Dan's wife).

 (Grandpa with 5 of his 9 grandkids - Hayden, Camden, Grandpa, Madeline, Jordan & Brendan)

 Maureen & Madeline

Annette (me) & Laurie


We can't wait until next year when our precious Kaden will be with us to celebrate!!
What an exciting time that will be!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Luke 2:1-19
Phillipians 2:1-11

Kaden Claus

We received a precious photo of our sweet little man the other day

 and wanted to share it with all of you! 

Isn't Kaden just the cutest little Santa?!

Some sweet families got together and were able to donate a Christmas/New Year's party for the children at our son's orphanage. Thank you to all those precious families who contributed!!

It was so sweet to see the joy on all the kids faces as they celebrated!

Merry Christmas Kaden!

Next year you will be in our arms forever!!

We love you and can't wait to hold you!

Toothless

Jordan lost his first tooth this past Wednesday and boy was he excited!!!

Isn't he just absolutely adorable!!

A Slight Delay

Well, unfortunately things didn't go as planned yesterday. Our home study agency called me early Wednesday afternoon to inform us that they had not received our DOJ fingerprint clearances because the facility that did our scans did not put the correct ATI number on our form when completing our paperwork. After going back to the facility to have them redo our prints, they refused to admit that they did anything wrong, and it became clear that it was going to be a huge hassle.

So, tomorrow afternoon we will be going to a different facility, one that we should have gone to in the first place, to start all over with our fingerprinting process.

Please pray that our prints are processed extremely fast and that our agency receives clearance by Monday or Tuesday of next week so that we can get our i800a application turned into immigration before Christmas!

And the Winners are...

Winner of the iPod Nano Watch is

Linda Hayase

Winners of the scarves donated by Sue Christy are

Dawn Chimenti

Andrew Shalat

Brian & Lisa Parnell

Winner of a Solomon Bead necklace of your choosing donated by Stacy Richards is

Greg Hardgrave

Winner of a custom made "doggy blanket" donated by Lika Hefferan is

Terri Baker

Congratulations to all the winners!!

Thank you to everyone who was able to join in on our raffle! 

We are blown away by all the support, financially and through prayer, that has been showered on our family!! Thank you!!

With all of the donations we received for the raffle you helped us to raise $895 towards bringing our precious son home! Thank you!!

It is amazing and humbling to see how God is providing 

for our adoption!! 

Our Home Study is Done!!

We are so excited to be one step closer to our sweet boy!!

When our notarized copies are ready tomorrow afternoon, we will head over to our agency to pick them up. Then, it's off to FedEx to send our i800a to immigration!

Please pray that processing goes quickly and that there are not any delays with Christmas and New Years right around the corner. 

Happy Birthday Brendan!

Where have the years gone?

Today, our oldest son, Brendan turns 13! We now have a teenager in the house!!

He was born on December 13th, 1997 after 22 hours of labor. Things weren't going too well, and when Brendan's vital signs started to dip, they took me into the O.R. for a C-section. He came out a beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed boy, and hasn't stopped - being a beautiful boy, that is (he also hasn't stopped growing [5'8" so far], eating or talking about insects, dinosaurs, general science or video games!).

It seems like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital, all 6 pounds, 14 ounces of him!

Over the years, he has grown into a young man who loves his parents, loves his brothers, and most importantly, loves his Lord.

When I think about this milestone, I am reminded again of how blessed we are! We couldn't have asked for four more wonderful young men, and we continue to wait patiently (sort of) for our dear 5th son to join us!

Happy Birthday, our dear prince* !!

Love,
Mom & Dad

*The name Brendan means "prince".

Only 5 Days Left to Enter the Raffle!

There are only 5 days left for your chance to win an iPod Nano watch!!

So far, we have raised $760 towards our $3,000 goal!

Help us reach our goal by purchasing tickets for $10 each.

Our Archer

A few weeks ago, our oldest son, Brendan, was in his first archery tournament. His friend Samantha, that lives across the street from us, has been asking him for about a year to join archery. So, this year he decided to give it a try and he absolutely loves it!! Their teacher is a wonderful lady named Janet Dykman, who has won several gold and silver medals in the Pan American games and competed 3 different times in the Olympics. Even though it was raining a little, really windy and cold the day of the tournament they had a great time and did really well!

Christmas Frenzy

Stacy at My Cup Overfloweth is hosting a wonderful fundraising opportunity for families that are in the process of adopting. It's a great place to help families raise the funds that they need to bring their little treasures home and purchase some fun Christmas gifts at the same time!

For those of you new to our blog, we're a brand-new adopting family, and we've recently committed to adopting a sweet boy from China, Kaden, and welcoming him into our family here in Southern California. We're heavily into the paperwork, classes, home study, etc., etc., etc. to get our son home to us as soon as we possibly can.

Here's another opportunity to help us out in raising the funds to bring our Kaden home! We're selling posters designed by my husband, Steve. He's a graphic designer and teaches design at a local community college, so this kind of thing is what he does by choice and profession. Steve has designed the poster based on the passage James 1:27 "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

The posters are available in 3 sizes, and are priced accordingly. They are printed on acid-free archival paper, and will be signed and dated by Steve on the back of each poster.

Here are the sizes and prices:

12" x 16" - $30

16" x 20" - $40

23" x 31" - $50

These sizes should work for standard frame sizes. For example, IKEA sells frames in the RIBBA series that will work for each of these. 

The posters are unframed, and will be mailed to you in a sturdy mailing tube to ensure that it arrives safely.

To purchase one of these posters, send us an email at ourfivetreasures@yahoo.com and we will get in touch with you to work out payment details and shipping information.

Thank you so much!

It's Raffle Time!!

Again, thanks to everyone who helped to make our boutique this past weekend a success!

Our next fundraiser to help us bring home Kaden is a RAFFLE!

We've got some really good stuff for this - we hope you like it as much as we do!

The main prize for the raffle will be a combination item. First, it will be an Apple iPod Nano (8 GB model) in the winner's choice of colors! This is a music player, a video player, and more. It's got a touchscreen display, and is about the size of a Triscuit cracker!! Now, to go along with this, we will be including a brand-new product that isn't even available until the end of December it's so new (the winner will get the iPod before Christmas, with the companion product delivered as soon as it's available). The brand-new product is a custom-designed watchband that the iPod snaps into to become a wristwatch! This in not a toy, but a serious bit of industrial design. If you know someone who loves gadgets, this will be a beyond-cool gift!

iPod Nano as a watch.

It just snaps in!

There will be 3 Second prizes! Each of the 3 second place winners will receive a handmade scarf donated by our friend Sue Christy. They are great colors, and incredibly soft - perfect for the cooler weather on the way.

Third prize will be a necklace of your choosing from Soloman Beads - thanks to Stacy Richards! These are beautiful, and you can find out more about them from Stacy's blog.

The final prize will be a custom-made "doggy blanket" for you or your kiddo. Rolled up, it's a doggy stuffed animal, unrolled it's a comfy blanket!

Raffle tickets are $10 each.

You can purchase tickets through midnight, December 14th by mailing a check to:

Steven Cox

c/o Orange Coast College

2701 Fairview Rd.

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Also, so that no one entering gets left out, please contact us by email at ourfivetreasures@yahoo.com (by midnight, Dec. 14th) to let us know to enter you in the raffle.

The drawing will be Wednesday, December 15th.

Get your tickets now - you won't want to miss out on the chance to win one of these great prizes.

Also, please let anyone/everyone know about this raffle! Pass the link on to all your Facebook friends, Blog followers, random people on the street, whoever!  We want to sell as many tickets as we possibly can, because . . .

. . . all the proceeds go towards bringing our little Kaden home!

Thank you for all your support!!

Thanks to ALL Who Participated in the Boutique!

Our boutique this past weekend was great fun! Even though the weather was unlike what we are used to here in Sunny Southern California - cold, rainy & blustery, we had a good flow of people all day. Thank you to all of our vendors who participated, to all our friends who stopped by, and to Stacy and her family for opening up their home!!

We are so thankful for and blessed by all the love and support from you!

For those who were not able to make it but were hoping to stop by, we are already making plans to have another boutique in the Spring.

Christmas Boutique

Announcing our very first fundraising event - 

"Abounding In Love" Boutique

My dear friend, Stacy, is hosting a boutique at her home to help us raise some of the funds that we need to bring Kaden home! The boutique will be

Saturday, November 20th from 10am - 3pm

We already have over 15 vendors lined up!! What a wonderful opportunity to get some early Christmas shopping done all in one location!

If you live in the area and would like more information on this event, please feel free to email me.

Another Precious Treasure!

There's been tons of excitement lately in our home! 


Why all the excitement? 

We are adopting a precious 4 year old boy from China! 

Back in March, my good friend Stacy over at My Cup Overfloweth, asked me if we would pray about adopting a young boy from the same orphanage that her family was in the process of adopting from. After several months of praying, we really felt like God was calling us to bring Kaden home to join our family! 


So, on Friday, October 29th we called our adoption agency and told them YES! Right away they sent us paperwork to begin the process to bring our precious son home, and by late that evening we emailed our first round of paperwork back to them. By early Wednesday morning, just 4 1/2 days later, we received our pre-approval from China! 


We are working on our home study paperwork and will hopefully begin our dossier paperwork later this week. Our prayer is that we will be able to travel by sometime in June, or sooner, to bring our precious treasure home. Our family would greatly appreciate your prayers through our exciting journey!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello!

My husband and I are working on getting this looking good, and we're almost there! Hopefully, a full post tomorrow.

Thank you all for your support with us through this amazing journey.

Bye!