Our Daughter Lina

As promised, here’s the abridged Lina Day 2007 video.

Lina Day Video (VHS quality: try this one first)
Lina Day Video (smaller: online “tube” quality)

Both are 6:29 in length (don’t worry, that’s minutes and seconds), which is 33 minutes shorter than the “parents” version on DVD.

Update: Here’s a Mac-compatible version (may require download).

Enjoy!

It’s Lina Day, the anniversary of the day we met Lina and our official adoption day. I’m not sure how, but it’s both hard to believe that it’s already been two years since our precious Lina joined our family and at the same time hard to believe she hasn’t been here for years and years.

To celebrate, we went to our favorite local Chinese restaurant, Snappy Dragon. As always, the food was excellent (Sesame Beef, Kung-Pao Chicken, and hand-pulled Chow Mein noodles for those keeping score). We missed Lina’s Auntie Kerry, who also loves the Snappy D). Lina was in fine form and said (and waved) goodbye to the other patrons on the way out. She’s definitely the most outgoing member of our family.

We gave Lina a little jade bracelet that Stephanie had bought at the FCC Chinese New Year celebration. It fit perfect and she loves it (Mama has one we got in China, so it’s extra fun).

Before dinner we watched the Lina Day 2007 video I put together from photos and video snippets taken over the last year. It’s just amazing to see how much our baby big girl has grown. The video is 39 minutes and 200MB on disk. That’s fine for the proud parents, but a bit long for everyone else (including Lina, who got a little impatient even though she loves pictures of herself). So I’m making a shorter, smaller version that I’ll post here soon. In the meantime, here are some pictures from November 2005, 2006, and 2007…

Just a couple days after the original Lina Day

Last year

Lina Day at Snappy D!

Finally, our thoughts are with Lina’s Grandpa, who’s a bit under the weather, and Auntie Kerry, who had a herniated disk repaired today (early report is that it went well). We love you and hope you both get back up to 100% soon.

Today Lina got her big girl bed. She’s excited but a bit tentative, Mama’s weepy, and Papa made sure everything was put together properly.

It’s still in the 80’s this week. Gorgeous. Lord knows where the googoo hat is these days, but… we still have froggie.