Taiwan friends

Yesterday we had the pleasure of spending the day in Chattanooga with some other families that have adopted from Taiwan and live in the general area!  There were 13 or so Taiwan dumplings and plenty of siblings to add to the fun.

Now you all know we have our local FCC group that is mainly made up of Chinese adoptees.   I love the Asian culture that we bring the kids through the group and the ties that they have to other Chinese and Asian adoptees. And its amazing to hang out with fellow adoptive families that have been down the same road and crossed the same great ocean to create their families.

So to meet some others that have been not only across those waters but to Taipei, Taiwan was really cool!  Ya see, we adoptive folk like to compare our stories.  You know...how the flights were and how long they took, what hotels we stayed in, where we shopped and sites we visited, what the oddest/yummiest/most authentic meals we ate were.  So it was super cool to, for the first time, share and compare our Taiwan journey.  But truly, most importantly is that Sammy now has a connection with children from his birth country, just like Simone!

And boy were they all just darling!

Both Sammy and Simone quickly made friends and all of the kids just had the greatest time playing with each other and running all around.

  The park this was held at was amazing - Coolidge Park in Chattanooga.  It was just lovely and had a lot of great spaces for play.  So once lunch and indoor play was over we headed to the carousel - which all of the kids just loved.

And then outside for some more running and playing!  You'd have thought these kids had been playing together all their lives they all just had so much fun together!  And yep, the adults all had a really great time getting to know each other too!

This one ^ cracks me up...look at Sammy Wie's tongue. He's such a goof!

After the gathering we took the kids to the Chattanooga Choo Choo.  Since Sammy is soooo into trains right now we knew he'd love a quick visit there.

Which he did!  "Big big trains" he kept saying with glee!  

One of our new friends had the same idea and the three kids had such fun running around together, checking out the trains.

We took the slowest an interesting trolley ride around the grounds.

And the kids on board got to ring the trolley bell!  What fun....

And one last stop for a ride on a very little train.

One of  the Mom's from the group took this great photo below.  Too bad Simone wasn't in it, it came out so nice...could've been my new profile photo for the blog!  But I had to post it because I actually almost look good it's such a nice one of my guys!

So we had a fun filled day with some great new pals we hope to get to see more often!  I'm so glad to have such connections for Sammy and look forward to keeping in touch!
J