Lily's Birthday, Sydney's Birthday and Dan Comes

Life’s been changing a lot lately and I want to fill you all in on the details.

So this week Heather’s brother Dan arrived in Xian! He’s going to be living with us for the next year and we’re so excited to have him join our family. For those of you keeping track at home, that means in one week we’ve added one child and one adult. Our house is filling up! We’re glad to have you with us Dan!

Also, in the whirlwind of last week’s craziness I didn’t get to post about Sydney’s 5^th birthday that we celebrated. We had a wonderful time with friends and family at our house opening presents, eating some good food and finishing off the night with some cake. We’re so proud of the amazing girl our Sydney is and is becoming.

I want to finish this off by sharing a part of Lily’s story. When we were first bringing her to our home I asked her foster mom when Lily’s birthday was. She told me that it was the day they found her at the train station (since she had been abandoned there was no way of knowing when she was born) and that day was May 4^th. I was shocked, considering it was my birthday. As I sat there thinking about this a translator continued talking with her mom and discovered that the day they found her was actually May 10^th (the mistake comes because the foster mom speaks a dialect of Chinese where the numbers 4 and 10 sound exactly alike). Our friend who works with placing orphans in foster homes told me that the orphanage would end up selecting a day to be her birthday. This would be her official birthday and used on documents, ect. So the other day we had to have Lily’s blood tested and my friend called to see if the orphanage had selected an official birthday for her. I heard him say “Ok, so it’s November 26^th”, which made my jaw drop since that’s Heather’s birthday (I should also mention we never told them our birthdays or had anything to do with their decision). It was so cool to have them select that day! Heather was shocked when I told her. So in a week Lily’s birthday went from being mine, to actually being Heather’s.

Thanks for reading our blog, I hope you have a great day!

The petersons