What a beautiful day

Laughter and smiles. Ice cream and cotton candy. Paper kites, festive dragon, vendors with fancy Chinese clothes and delicate jewels. Special books, unique dances, and the requisite raffle drawings. Chinese born and now all American beauties, from 1 year to 18 years old. Parents nodding to one another with an understanding that only they have. Finally my family isn't stared at or judged. We are all the same here. It was the wonderful FCC-NY (Families with Children from China) Cultural Day at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. Oh what a beautiful day I had. Last year I attended while in the midst of our paperchase. This year, I was a certified "Waiting Family" member. I volunteered in the Arts and Crafts area and made Festive Dragons for about 2 hours. I of course, walked into the Festival running late (navigator's aren't always right) and very emotional. Seeing all the families overwhelmed me at first, and I burst out in tears. After gaining my compsure I made my way to my area, and got started making those Dragons. Working beside me was the beautiful 13 year old Olivia. It's funny, I always focus on my daughter as a toddler, never as the young lady she will become. Olivia was spectacular. Smart, sweet, polite and just gorgeous. She reminded me of my All-American nieces and my All-Australian Step-Daughter. Just a young lady looking to enjoy her day, and hang out with her friends. I also met up with my friend Marcia, her daughter Catarina (4 years old) and her nephew. Catarina is a pistol and as always I enjoyed hanging with her. Marcia is due to be LID anyday now for Catarina's Mei Mei. Anyway, we had fun. We yenta'ed (for those who don't know that means talked about everyone) bought books-will get back to that in a second and just enjoyed watching the kids and feeling very blessed to be there. One of the books I bought was called China Ghosts by Jeff Gammage. Jeff was there signing books and after talking to him I picked up the book and saw that he lives in the town I grew up in. In fact he knows a friend of my mother's who has an adopted daughter. This friend was actually the first person that gave me advice on the journey I was embarking on. Small world.
The book looks very interesting and if u go to Jeff's website above, he posts a video that is quite interesting as well. Another small world story was that after talking to another family at the event for about 1 minute, we realized that were both adopting from the same agency, and once again, I had been communicating with them on our Agency's message board. That red thread gets you every time! So to sum up this rather lengthy post, it was a great time! It's a wonderful community that we are now apart of! And by the way, all the parents I talked to were very sympathetic about the wait! So, who knows when, but I can't wait to take Lia-Rose there!