Hand in Hand Christmas Party

Last Friday night we went to our adoption agency's Christmas party.  They had asked for children of the adoptive families to perform musically, read poetry, etc.  Our kids were thrilled to perform.  The boys all played their Christmas songs on the piano and Sydney played Jingle Bells on the violin.  They were a bit intimidated at the auditorium size, the amount of people watching and the "spotlight" when we first walked in, but in the end they played right through their songs just fine, nerves and all!  Afterwards, we treated them to an ice cream at Mc D's for being brave.

These are the smiles of some relieved kids!

LOA Celebration

I got my cake as promised!  John and Mitchell did a great job.  Last night we celebrated LOA with Mom Mom and Pop Pop.  The arrow is pointing to city of  Kunming where Shan Yu lives. 

LOA!

On Monday, we got LOA!  This is the Letter of Acceptance from China!  Yesterday we went to our adoption agency's office and signed the letter confirming our decision to adopt.

There is an LOA cake coming this weekend!  Mitchell has promised!  We are so thrilled to be one step closer to our little Shan Yu.  We hope to have her English name picked out soon! 

Thanksgiving Surprise!

We woke up today to a Thanksgiving surprise!  We got an email from an adoptive family who visited Shan yu's orphanage yesterday.  They got to see her!  They said she was in an exercise room on a mat playing with toys and that she looked great!!!! She said she was very alert and smiled at them : ) The family wasn't allowed to take a picture of her but she did find her crib and got a picture of it.  She also said the room she was in looked clean and nice and that they're taking good care of her. 

The children in our orphanage usually go to foster care around six months old.  She is six months old now, so she will probably go to live with a foster family until we travel to get her. 

We are so thankful to have any information about her because her orphanage does not give updates.  The neat thing is that I "met" the adoptive Mom on our yahoo group two days before she left for China.  She emailed me from the airport and asked me to send her Shan yu's name in Chinese.  I'm giving God the credit for this little gift.  It sure does make waiting a little easier to get an update...or maybe harder!

Happy Thanksgiving.

We have been pre-approved!

On Monday, we got pre-approval from China to move forward with the adoption of little Shan Yu.  We think she's pretty adorable and we're glad to finally share her picture with you!

We got the call!

We received a call yesterday morning from our agency saying they had found a baby girl on the special needs list that might be a good fit for us.  We were expecting a toddler and we were a little shocked to find out that she is only five months old (very young for a special needs referral)!  We also expected her to have orthopedic issues, since this was our main need, but she has a heart murmur as her special need. We had a doctor review her file and today we wrote our letter of intent!  She is beautiful and we are all feeling very blessed today!  We will share pictures as soon as we are approved.  Thank you for your prayers yesterday!

We are logged in!

We got an email saying our paperwork got logged into China while we were in New Jersey! This means we can start recieving referrals (children who are available for adoption) this month. For this adoption process, there is a shared list of children which comes out once a month. We will be matched with a child from that list. We then look at her medical file and have it reviewed and hopefully we will find our daughter! It should be sometime next week. I will post the date as soon as I find out.

Our trip to New Jersey was so much fun! Our good friends the Anderson's joined us and we caravaned out to my brother and sister in law's, Gary and Judy's, beautiful house and amazing property in New Jersey near where I grew up. We also got to go to a great pumpkin farm, run around New York City, see the famous sites toy stores,  Statue of Liberty and we even got to meet "The Cake Boss" and be on a show in his bakery! While we were there, we also drove to South Jersey to see my Grandpa who is 98 years young!  We also did a quick run out on the beach at the shore.

DTC!!

We found out our dossier is in China and we should be logged in soon!

First Post!

I am so excited to have a blog of my own to share our adoption story!  Thank you to Jen from" The Art of Living" creative blog designs.  She put this blog together for me and since I'm not computer savvy in the least bit, I never could have done it without her!

Our story actually started in June of '09.  John and I heard two very convicting sermons. One challenged us on how we spent our money and the other on making our faith real to our kids.  We didn't always think this way.  Before these sermons, we were just plugging along like most Americans thinking about bigger houses and planning the next vacation.   Both John and I felt a God stirring our hearts and we started praying that God would open our eyes to what ministry He wanted us to get involved with. We realized that God had blessed us so much with four wonderful kids, a great home and job, but we felt we needed to share these blessings more with others.  One night, friends of ours challenged us to consider adoption and pointed out God's heart for the orphan.  When challenged, I told them we couldn't adopt because I home school.

In late August of that summer, we had three boys from the African Children's Choir stay with us for one night.  I had eagerly signed up to have the boys stay because the kids and I had studied Africa in World Geography that spring.  These boys were orphans who had either lost their parents or they could no longer care care for them.  They live at a school that is supported by the choir where they will get educated and become Africa's leaders.  When we put these boys to bed that night, they asked me to read them stories.  Reading to my kids (and children's books) has always been my favorite activity since they were infants. I was sure to choose a few of my very favorite selections and they laughed and enjoyed every minute of it....and so did I.  It was then that they were no different than our kids, except that they were orphans.  They would never have a Mom or Dad. The thought of my own children in that situation was unthinkable!  I had never been around orphans and now they were in my home.  That night I cried as God used those precious boys to show me that this was the ministry He had for us.  He gave me the desire to adopt that I never had before.  The ministry we had been praying for was to help with the "least of these"!  After that, John and I read the book "The Fields of the Fatherless" and could not believe how much scripture there is in the Bible on the "least of these" and caring for the orphan, the widow and the poor.  Our eyes were open to the fact that it is our job as Christians to fulfill this role.  In August, the argument that we couldn't adopt because we home school fell through when a friend introduced me to workboxes, which made our school time much more efficient. :)

We began a very prayerful journey with our kids early last fall. Coincidentally, our precious niece Bella came home from China at that same time.  We've prayed about everything from what agency to use, to what country to adopt from, and of course for God to lead us the child He wants us to raise.  In January, we started our paperwork for a special needs adoption from China for a little girl, 0-2.  Now our paperwork should go to China this week and we are hoping for a referral for a child soon after.

We are so humbled to honored to let God use us in raising another precious child.  We would love it if you would pray along with us as we go down this road.  I don't think it will be easy, but there's already a joy I can't put into words.