Orphanage Care Package

It is in the mail... (we mailed on Monday, the 18th). Yes, the USPS has a care package to deliver to China on our behalf. Let me start this with the shock factor. It cost $ 40.00 for a 10 day delivery. Not Express mail; regular Priority Mail. Occasionally we have mentioned the cost of some adoption fees. This care package is optional and the weight of it determines the cost.

When I originally began writing this post, we were still in the "WAIT". I was making our lists of things to do and we still had a healthy dose of cautious optimism; that we were going to receive our referral in July 2008. Our wait ended on August 12, 2008, after our formal decision to adopt more than 39 months ago!

Once we received our referral, the care package contents was assembled; items for our daughter and her orphanage. We received the directions and address to her orphanage in the Travel Package from our Agency on August 15, 2008.

We printed labels for each item in Chinese so that as they read and point to each photo in the box it will have the Chinese label that says "Mother" on my pictures, Father (Daddy) on DH's plus our DD and DS. In addition we will send pictures of my Mom with the Chinese word for maternal Grandmother, as she will be at our home when we arrive back from China. I chose not to send a photo of Salty Dog and the cats, M&M and GC. Our red cat, OJ, stays hid so often I don't think I could get a picture of him even if we wanted to include him!

Items that went in the care package (the size of a large shoe box) included a small photo album, candy, perfume and lipstick for the Nannies, outfits for the children, a blanket that we have slept with, clothes for Lizzy, two disposable cameras and a teddy bear. How much can we cram in this box? We weren't very good at taking the final pictures of the box "finished", so here are a few showing the progress!

The blanket we ordered especially for this care box is pink and brown.
We slept with it so that our daughter will "know" us before we even see her. Hopefully Salty Dog's odor won't mask ours!! I found this blog called "High On Craft" and checked out her Etsy shop. A homemade baby quilt/blanket is the perfect size. Thank you for the beautiful quilt!
Here's a recent care package example over at The Big Wait for Jenny.
To see what we are doing, check out this blog with many examples of care packages.

Another "To Do" task has been crossed off our list! Yeah! Can't wait to see if we get the cameras back! Smile Alyzabeth!