Tomorrow...

Tomorrow begins a new year.
Tomorrow begins the year our big girl turns 13.  We have a teenager…or nearly one.  She will become a teenager while we're gone.  I think she'll do it well, though.  She's kind and generous of heart.  She's a pretty great big sister.  She seems to know well who and whose she is.
Tomorrow we leave on an adventure.  We begin the last leg of our journey to meet Emmy.  We'd love your prayers as we journey…

• for safety in travel in the air and on the ground
• for smooth sailing at home for our big three and my parents as they tackle the schedule and life with two big dogs
• for Emmy's heart and for ours -- that they will recognize each other and that the recognition will make the transition a little bit easier for her
• for peace in her heart in the moments when we don't respond right, smell right, feel right, act right…

We look forward to sharing this journey with you.

Love,

Mandy and Steve

The Duck and Advent...

It's Christmas right now for Miss Emmy.  Merry Christmas, sweet girl!

I had a very strange but kind of beautiful dream last night.  I was watching two of our kids play sports (Noah was in a soccer game and Grace was trying her hand at softball) and suddenly noticed a small, egg-shaped rock laying next to me.  I picked the rock up turned it over and tossed it to the ground.  When the rock fell, it cracked on one side and inside I saw a tiny, full grown, beautiful duck in the egg sack.  Her eyes were closed when I first looked at her but, as I continued to look at her and feel awful about cracking her egg, they opened to reveal very soulful, kind and beautiful blue eyes.  She pushed through the egg sack with her beak and emerged.  I felt awful about her emerging from the egg sack because she looked so content in there.  Before me sat a very tiny, very lovely, very white duck.  I asked her why she was in the egg since she was obviously fully-grown.  She responded, "I enjoy a quiet, peaceful life in my egg."  At that moment, I was filled with a huge amount of peace and woke up wishing that I could sleep longer and spend some more time with that duck.  Strange dream.  Not sure what it was about.  Sure enjoyed the peacefulness, though.

We leave in one week and one day to head to China and meet our girl.  It's a bit of a frenzied time; packing for China, checking and rechecking our paperwork, preparing for Christmas and celebrations…  Sometimes I wish I could climb in the egg with the duck and hole up in the peace.  But I remember some wise person at college saying that peace is something that is deep within us during the frenzy.  It doesn't go away but sometimes we catch glimpses of its beauty.  Like yesterday when we were eating spaghetti at the counter and I was struck by how blessed I am with these wonderful people to go through life with.  Or last week when I picked my kiddos up from a chorale concert and burst into tears because we are so blessed to have the amazing chorale staff and wonderful chorale families in our kids' lives.  Or when I find bags and boxes of clothes and toys for Emmy on our porch.  Or when our good friends throw showers for Emmy and I watch my children's faces as they realize how very loved and anticipated they were, too.  Or when the kids and Steve (attempt to) sleep under the tree on Christmas Eve Eve.  Or when we go to the premiere of the movie that we had the privilege to film this summer and it's a beautiful movie and I feel like I brought my little loaves and fishes and God turned them in to a feast.  Or when I think back over the last six months of cleaning the gym as I do it for the last time and realize what a divine appointment it has been and how very much I've gained from it.  I look around at the amazing people that we are surrounded by and realize the immense blessing it is to be in their lives and to have them in ours.  I realize that I may be combining peace and gratitude here but maybe they are a team.  Can you have peace without gratitude?  Wouldn't you constantly be wanting something more and miss out on the beauty that God has placed right in front of you? 

Advent is a waiting time.  A time when Mary was pregnant with Jesus…big pregnant, uncomfortable pregnant.  The world waits in anticipation for this tiny baby savior.  And then he arrives in the beautiful messiness that is birth.  We originally thought that Emmy would be home before Christmas and, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when that wasn't going to happen.  But now, having gone through advent with Emmy in China and us here, I think maybe I get the timing…at least a little bit.  For three years I have been praying, among other things, for God to prepare our new little one's heart for us as He prepares our hearts for her.  And Christmas is fun for us because these traditions (frenzied as they are) are our traditions.  They have become a part of who we are as a family and who we are as individuals.  But for Emmy they, like everything else here, are foreign and scary and new.  And when we go in a week and a day and Christmas decorations are safely packed in their boxes and life has returned to normal, well...as normal as our family does it, there will be less to adjust to.  So this year maybe Emmy is the beautiful little duck being prepared for life in a family, in our family.  And next year, advent will be her advent, too.  She will be part of the decorating the house, putting up the tree, singing carols, sleeping under the tree, going to concerts, opening presents, going to Christmas eve services (and maybe even being a lamb in them) and the traditions will become a part of her as she will have become a part of us…as she is a part of us.

Merry Christmas to Emmy and to all of you.  Blessings for peace in your heart as you celebrate with the ones you love. 

Mandy  

First Post Ever! Here goes...

Hi everybody this is Eli and here goes my first time blogging! I am very excited and very new to this. Hopefully you know that we will soon be getting a new kid, miss Emy Jun ! She is from China and in less than a month, Mom and Dad will be travelling to get her on January the third. I should probably tell you a bit more about myself.

I currently go to a middle school and am in fifth grade. I am ten and play the violin. I am in book three and am invited to the all county orchestra/band. Maybe you know that Beethoven's birthday is only three days away!

Happy holidays to all and I will be back soon!

Grace Here!

Hey everybody, 
This is my first time blogging, so here we go. Lots of things have been going on since you last heard from my mom. One of those things is that I can type faster now so it won't take me five hours to write a decent paragraph about Team P's new exciting life. But that was a bad example. Here's a better one; we are adding a new member to our family! 

Her name is Lu Xin, but we have named her Emmy Jun, after my great grandmas, Emy and June, who are DA BOMB! Anyway, as you can tell, I'm super excited. We have her room all finished and it is very pink, as a three year old's room should be. My girl cousin,(FINALLY!) is very excited as well, about having a twin cousin. Yes, Abby and Emmy have the EXACT same birthday, May 12th, and they are both three. CRAZY RIGHT! Mom and Dad are very excited as well and planning to leave sometime early January. 


I am in middle school now, thriving in Ronald Mc Donald Hall, with a locker three sizes too big. The person below my locker is taller than me and could probably reach my sweatshirt on my top shelf, but I think I annoy her by constantly dropping my colored pencils, or my pens of various colors, or my pencil, or, for Pete's sake, MY PENCIL BOX on her head, so I just don't ask her to. Apparently I only bomb her with writing utensils. 

Noah is homeschooling with Mom and another kid that she used to tutor but now gets paid $100 a week to teach him everyday. I've been there while they are doing school, and it is a very nice learning environment, other than the fact that half of the time that I come around a corner, Taylor is standing there with a purple foam ball, ready to chuck at my head. But, of course, it's not aimed for me, it's for Noah. What they do in school seems difficult to me. Noah is excelling in Math and Spanish. I love listening to Noah do his Spanish lesson because he has to listen to this story that consists of two little kids that remind me of Hoops and Yoyo, (two cartoon characters that usually show up on cards) talk about mice in holes or weeding the garden. They have the most annoying voices that,  well, sound like Hoops and Yoyo! If you have never heard of these curses on humankind, I highly suggest you do not go to the card section of Safeway and listen to a card that has a blue and a green(mouse? Creature?) on it. You will probably want to dump it in the sewer for the REAL mice to eat. (I am sorry to whoever created those characters, but you really need to make some new characters with more normal voices.) 

Eli is doing great at Wheat Ridge 5-8, in an 8th grade math class and a 7th grade science class. I would tell you more, but I'm sure Eli would rather write about what's been going on with him on his own blog than me. 

I will leave you for another time now! 
Bye!

Grace

A New Adventure!

To our sweet Emmy,
It seems crazy that we will finally meet you.  You are the girl of a million prayers; you are the girl who is firmly planted in our hearts though we've never held you in our arms, heard your giggle or watched you run.  And we can't wait to do all of those things, Miss Emmy.
Often I picture you in China.  It is difficult to imagine your daily life right now.  I see you playing with the kids at the orphanage, talking to the nannies, taking a nap.  I wonder if you look at the photo album we sent and try to picture us, too.  How different our lives are right now.  And soon, they will merge and I'm sure there will be sorrow and fear in that for you and I wish I could spare you from that.  We won't smell right.  We won't look right.  We won't sound right.  I'm afraid there will be moments that will seem scary.  We will do our best to make them not as scary but everything will be new and new is sometimes a bit frightening.  As your big brother Eli would say, it's a question of opportunity/cost.  And he says that the long term joy of being a Pouliot outweighs the discomfort of becoming one.  And I guess he's the only one that would know.
You have two great big brothers and one great big sister that are waiting for you.  They've prayed for you every day for three years.  They pray for you while you sleep.  They pray for your safety.  They pray for you to have fun.  They can't wait to meet you.  Grace spent hours organizing, cleaning and sorting toys until they were just right for giving to you.  She will play with you for hours and dance with you and sing songs.  And she loves you so much that she's willing to have us miss her 13th birthday to bring you home.  Eli has been practicing pushing you in a stroller and teaching you all about the world.  He plans to have you ready for Algebra by kindergarten and has been teaching himself phrases in Chinese to make it easier.  And Noah is a great snuggler and he will carry you around (and maybe throw you up in the air!) and make you giggle because he is absolutely hilarious.  You have just about the best big siblings in the world, I bet.  I can't wait for you to meet them.  You're going to love them and they already love you.
You also have the best daddy ever.  He is funny and loving and strong and smart and just wonderful.  He will tell you how smart you are and how beautiful you are.  He will play "tea set" with you and teach you to ride a bike and dance with you in the kitchen.  And you have wonderful grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.  You even have a "twin cousin" who is exactly your age and is willing to share even her most prized possessions with you because you are special and so loved already.  And you have so many friends.  Too many to count.  And they pray for you, too.  And they already love you and can't wait to meet you.  They've already had one kid shower for you and there is another one on Sunday.  They will shower you with love your whole life.  And you have me, too.  And I love you so much, sweet girl.
See you very soon,
Mommy