Article 5 dropped off!

Moving right along!

Article 5 PICK-UP will be January 5, 2012!
THEN hoping we get TRAVEL APPROVAL before Chinese New Year which is January 23rd and everything shuts down for the week.

As it gets closer I am more and more excited to bring this little girl home,
AND I'm reminded how hard it will be to leave 2 little ones and 2 big ones behind and be GONE for 2 WEEKS. Zack is already talking about how much he'll miss me. :(
So thankful my sister will be loving on him for several days, and my mom is willing to come for the last week. (and thankful my dad is willing to let her!)

More later on how  thankful I am to all the people who ordered fudge, pillows, etc and who are willing to donate to Lifesong on our behalf to make this adoption a reality!

NVC Baby!

Check.
Another milestone behind us! Hoorah!
The National Visa Center (NVC) cabled (emailed) the approval to us, then we emailed it to our agency (madisonadoption.com who we totally love!). Then Madison emailed it to China where their rep will drop it (along with some other paperwork) off at the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China. It will take a full 2 weeks at the Embassy, then......
China can give us our long awaited TRAVEL APPROVAL!
Still hoping for early February travel! (or leaving at the end of January would be fine by me!)

I800 Approval

We finally got our I800 approval in the mail yesterday! I was expecting this step to take only 2 weeks (per our agency) but it took 4 weeks! Hopefully the next steps will go faster than usual! I have no idea how the holidays in the US and China will affect this process!
Here's what's next:
1) Need  NVC (National Visa Center) to send our file to the US Embassy in Guangzhou (usually 1 week)
2) The US Embassy issues our Article 5 (always 2 weeks)
3) China gives us Travel Approval (1-3 weeks)
4) We pick a Consulate Appointment date and get it confirmed with the Embassy. (usually a couple days)
We buy tickets to China!!

We're getting closer!!

Having a daughter

Having a daughter is different than having sons.
In many ways!
This morning I was hurrying to put on makeup before taking the boys to their homeschool art class.
Katie joined me in the bathroom and wanted to have everything I put on face put on HER face. Now this actually happened with my sons too! But I only let them have lotion on their faces! Which is what I let Katie have at 5 years old.
But as she's asking me: "Why do you put makeup on?"
(Again, my sons asked the same thing.)
"Why do you put the brown lotion on your face? Do you want to be brown?"
Then with the eye pencil and  mascara: "Why do you put black on your eyes? I like you just the way you are!" (How sweet is that?)
But here is where the difference between boys and girls is for me:
My sons will never go on to wear makeup when they get older.
But my daughter WILL.
And it got me thinking? I want HER to be happy with "the way she is". I don't want her to think she needs mounds of makeup to look beautiful.  Or any makeup at all! In fact, I love the way she looks "just the way she is"!
And I want her to be happy with the way God made her!

Hmmm...I welcome your thoughts here! Post a comment!

BRINGING SOPHIE HOME!

WOW!
Just a few short weeks ago, I had an idea.
It was one of those ideas, that you stop and ask yourself, Is this MY idea? Or GOD'S idea?
After praying, I decided to go on with the idea. My kids helped me pick out fleece fabric to make tie pillows. We posted some on FB and I got some orders. I was encouraged to keep going.
Then 2 weeks ago on a Thursday I attended a friend's Open House that she had for her adoption fundraising. I left having another conversation with God:
Should I have an Open House? I need to do it before Christmas, before Thanksgiving even.
That's only 2 weeks away. Can I pull this off?


So I called a friend and posted the idea for help on FB and got an OVERWHEMING, ENCOURAGING response! Thanks, friends!


One night a friend and I sewed snowmen, the next night a big group come over and made pillows, snowmen, and fudge! Another day a  friend came with chocolate turkeys and chocolate covered peanuts (yum, a new family favorite).


Fast forward to Open House night: It was amazing to welcome so many friends to my house and watch you donate to Sophie's adoption fund and take snowmen, pillows, fudge, chocolate turkeys, all sorts of things home.

I am so excited to tell you that last night we raised enough to purchase our Visas to go to China! And pay for the courier service we had to use and the FedEx charges too!

Every little bit helps! It all adds up to HELP BRING SOPHIE HOME!

A great big THANK YOU to all who HELPED!

OPEN HOUSE

SHOP for 

*Tie pillows* $20

*Snowman Ornaments* $6

*Pampered Chef*

*Usborne Books*

*Thirty-one Gifts*

and pre-order your

*Holiday Fudge* $12

*Chocolate Crinkle Cookies*

*Peanut Blossom Cookies*

Sample cookies and fudge,

 hot chocolate, & spiced apple cider.

at our

OPEN HOUSE for SOPHIE

*THIS Thursday*

November 17th

7-9 pm

1302 Tearose Lane, Bloomington

Holiday shopping while helping to bring home an orphan!

LOA!!

Grandma and Papa pulled up just before the FedEx truck. He was handed the precious LOA package!!

Yippee!!
We have our LOA- that is Letter of Approval from China!
That means we should be able to travel in February (maybe leaving in January) to go bring Sophie home!! We still have many small steps to go through to get TA (travel approval) but LOA was the big one, because it could have taken 6 weeks to 4 months and it took 48 days!! THANK YOU, GOD!

We also found out this week that if we switch insurance plans we can take Sophie to Cincinnati Children's Hospital for her surgery, and that is THE BEST place to go for colorectal surgery in the whole United States! PRAISE GOD!

More coming about Holiday Open House on November 17th! Cookies, fudge, tie pillows, and snowmen ornaments for Christmas!

LID!

We got an email today that we have our LID!!
It was September 22! Only 3 days after our dossier arrived in China! YAY!

One of the other families from our agency got their LOA today and their LID was September 16. Could ours be just a week away?? That would be SOO crazy awesome!

Trick or Treat

Zack refused to go Trick or Treating because he didn't want to dress up. He said he would only go as himself!
I told him he couldn't go trick or treating if he didn't dress up.
As usual it was my will against his!
Lucky for me I found this great Perry the platypus shirt! We love you Phineas & Ferb!
He agreed! We have a winner!

Hey, where's Perry?

Here's the Trick or Treating group! 

The Perrys, Mom, Jake (Johnny Knox) and Katie aka Mary Ingalls! (We've been watching Little House on the Prairie!

Waiting up

Ryan decided to catch a ride and come home for the weekend. A certain someone was put to bed at 8:30 but waited up for him until 10:00. She's so happy he's home. Daddy may have an empty lap for a few minutes this weekend while Katie is velcro-ed to Ryan!

Fundraising

So my brain's been swarming with fundraising ideas! Just in time for Christmas shopping! Here are a few of the things we'll be selling to help with the finances to bring Sophie home:

Polar Bear Pillow

Pillows $20
Polar Bears
Pink & Red Hearts
Sports on Royal Blue
Pink & Green Flowers
Pink Ladybugs & Daisies


                   

7x7" pan of Fudge YUM! $12

My wonderful team of friends will be helping me make snowmen ornaments, Chocolate Crinkle cookies, Peanut Blossom cookies and Decorated Christmas Cut-out sugar cookies! 
Pictures coming! Please let me know if you are interested in buying any of the items! I will accept "orders" immediately. Thanks for your support!

Our girl at school

We received some pictures of our little girl at school! She looks SO much bigger than her referral picture! She is almost the exact same height and weight of Katelyn! Twins again! :)
We also learned her favorite colors are pink and red, she has lived with the same foster family for all 6 years and she is happy about being adopted!

Can't wait to get my arms around her! Waiting is SO hard.

Sophie's Care Package

We ordered a care package to be sent to Sophie through Angela at LadyBugsnLove. We chose a doll, a photo album, and a cake. Angela sent us this picture of the doll and a Hello Kitty photo album that contains 10 pictures of her new family! How cool is that!

 We also were able to write Sophie a letter that Angela will translate and send to her. Often when the kid's are sent a cake, the orphanage will take pictures of the child. I hope we'll get some more pictures of her!! That would be awesome! 

Even Better!

I got an update today from my agency. We still don't have LID. (That is the logged in date that is the formal recognition that China received our dossier.)

What we DO have is "in process" which means our case is through translation and is actively being reviewed! YAY!! LOA could be one month away!! This keeps us on track for travel in February/March as travel is usually about 3 months after LOA.

I'll take it! Happy day!

Cross Country

Josh just finished his first year of Cross Country! And finished in style! He set a new personal record (PR) with a time of 17:40 for 3 miles! He was trying to break 18 minutes! He did! Way to go, Josh! We're so proud of you!

Fun Family Fotos!

Thanks to my friend Pamela at Reflections, Etc.   for these family pics we had taken in August!

 She did Matt and Ryan's senior pictures for us too!

Jake, Ryan, Josh, Shawn, Deb, Zack, Katie, Matt

Attitude! Just a little with this gang!

Next summer we'll get to add Sophie to our family picture! 

Empowered to Connect

Great Parenting Resources! Loved Parenting with Love and Logic when we read it and went to a seminar. Now that we have read The Connected Child by Dr. Karen Purvis, Dr. David Cross and Wendy Sunshine, it's a MUST READ!! It's specifically for adoptive parents, but has GREAT info for all parents. Below is a link to some videos, especially check out the last one which explains I.D.E.A.L. parenting:

Immediate

Direct

Efficient

Action-based

Leveled towards behavior

http://empoweredtoconnect.org/what-every-adoptive-parent-should-know/

Good stuff!

Learning

I love learning.

I learned that the orphanage in Hengfeng is only for infants and since our daughter is 6 she is NOT in the orphanage, but in a foster care situation! She is in a family! I hope and pray that it is a loving family and that she has been in the same foster home the whole 6 years.

I also learned that the doctors at St. Louis Children's Hospital (where our insurance would send us) have done the surgery that Sophie needs many times. :)

Directions.

So apparently I need to re-read the directions.
The directions that say:


"we often are not notified of LID for several weeks afterwards.
 Please do not worry if you are not notified of your LID right away."


Ohhh. I feel stupid.
But much better!
Here's hoping we have LID, but just don't know about it yet!

On the bright side, my good friend Jennifer had some encouraging works for my impatience:

 Someday, Miss Sophie will love to hear you retell of how you longed for her this deeply. She will cherish knowing your heart was that connected to hers already and that You. Wanted. Her. It will help her healing journey.


I pray that this is true. Sophie has a lot of prayer warriors praying for The Great Physician to heal her heart! (And some of them are only 5, 8 and 10 years old!) 


Please help us pray for her heart and to get her home!

Disappointed

I have to admit, I am disappointed.
You see,
I woke up this morning,
KNOWING
that when I went to the computer
I would download my mail today to receive LID.

But.
that
didn't
happen.

Drat.
You should never, never get your hopes set on something with adoption.
And I KNOW that.
Guess I just needed a little reminder.
Got it!
Maybe tomorrow?
BUT I won't expect it!

Scooter Girl!

This girl loves her new scooter!
She has been learning so many new things lately! I am so proud of her!

She can now ride her bike without training wheels. At the end of the summer she started putting her head in the water at the pool and now she is learning how to swim! She is learning how to read and write!

What a blessing this little girl has been to me and our whole family! Thank you, God! We are so blessed!

Happy Birthday, Katie!

I can't believe my baby is 5!
It was a big birthday weekend for her, with a party for her friends on Saturday
 and  family over for lunch today. (Wish all of the family could have been here!)

Hoping for LID...

Was hoping for LID last week and it just didn't come. SO hoping and praying that TOMORROW it will come!

DHL

Been tracking DHL all weekend! During the weekend and often while we were sleeping, our dossier went from Delaware to Philadelphia to Cincinnati to Hong Kong to Shanghai and is now DELIVERED! (It's Monday morning in China while it's still Sunday evening here) Would love to see our LID (logged in date) come through this week! Baby steps!

DTC!

We are DTC!!!!! (Dossier to China) See blog below about all the acronyms!!
WOOOOOOOOOOO! We have waited a LONG time for this! (8 months)

To Delaware

I just returned from shipping our dossier to our agency, Madison Adoption Associates, in Delaware! I hope they are able to send them right on to China this week!! Woo Hoo

DTC LID LOA TA What does it all mean?

Lots of you are asking, "Now that you're matched, what's next?" Here's a peek into all the acronyms that make up the journey of adopting a child from China. (Every country has their own set of papers and "letters".)

From February to today we have been working on the dossier. The dossier consists of paperwork that China will review to approve us as people they will allow to adopt a child from their country. It includes:
birth and marriage certificates
physician reports (about our health)
social worker's home study
police reports
employment letters
Homeland Security's fingerprint approval

Here are all the remaining steps:
DTC (Dossier To China)
LID (Logged In Date: the date China logs our dossier into their system)
LOA (Letter Of Approval) Letter from China approving us to adopt Sophie
NVC (National Visa Center) sends a letter to the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China
Article 5 - US Consulate reviews Sophie's travel visa and gives TA
TA (Travel Approval) buy tickets to China! leave in appox. 2 weeks

Whew!
THEN....
Once we arrive in China we have a pretty busy 2 weeks with Civil Affairs, Consulate appointments, etc before we arrive HOME WITH SOPHIE!!

At this point we think travel may happen in February/March, 2012. As you can see it's a guess with all these steps that have to happen and not all of them happen in a standard 2 weeks! For example, LOA can take 6 weeks to 4 months.

Thanks for joining us for the ride. Please pray with us to be willing to accept God's timing, whatever it is. And pray for our daughter's heart to be open to us and to bond and attach quickly with her new family.

Thank you, God!

God has done a miracle with our paperwork! ALL our papers were processed by the Chinese Consulate yesterday! HURRAY! I should get them all back via FedEx today and will copy them and send them to Madison Adoption Associates and they will send them to China!!

Waiting...

for my courier to contact me via email to tell me what documents need to be resent to the Consulate. (and also be authenticated by Secretary of State). I already have a new marriage license ready to go! (They forgot to stamp the date it was printed on it.)

I am so ready to be DONE with this part of paperwork and to be DTC!
Refresh...refresh...refresh....

Sophia Faith

Here is our girl!  LOVE that smile!

Cen Li Zhen is 6 years old. Her birthday is 5/23/05.

She 2 years younger than Zack and 1 year, 4 months older than Katie. 

 Her name will be Sophia Faith Li Zhen!

PA!

We have PA! That means pre-approval from China to adopt Sophie and it means I can post a picture! (When my tech support gets home from work!)

It's so hard to focus on anything (including teaching school) when you are so excited!!

To the Chinese Consulate

Friday the youngest 3 homeschooled kids and I hopped in the van for "car school" and drove to Springfield. They authenticated ALL our documents at the Secretary of State's office! YAY!

The last 2 days I have been back and forth about what method to use (courier or myself) to take these dossier documents to the Chinese Consulate and which method to use (same day, one week) It was a difference of almost $300. We decided that I could drive the docs to the couriers home today so she could take them on Tuesday and we'd save time and money that way and get our documents back a week from Tuesday. She looked them over and was concerned with a couple of them getting through. For some reason our marriage certificate had no "date" on it. They have to be less than 6 months old. I got it on 4/4/2011, same day I got my birth certificate, which was dated. Go figure! Praying for grace there. Otherwise we'll have to order and new marriage certificate and re-do the Consulate!

I am so excited to be DTC! We have had so many "paper-pregnancy complications"!

We said....YES!

It's been a whirlwind of a couple of days. I got up at 4am on Tuesday to drive some friends to the airport to go to Taiwan to pick up their adorable 10 month old daughter! I returned home to "Possible Referral" in my inbox! I opened it up to see a little Chinese cutie smiling at me!

We searched the internet to try to understand her medical condition. It wasn't one of the ones that we listed on our home study! That afternoon we went to our son's cross country meet and I told an acquaintance about her and her special need, and she said, "My neighbors' daughter had that surgery." What are the chances of that? God is amazing!

And get this, I KNOW the mom of the daughter who has the same medical condition! I called her up and she invited me over to learn more. Wow, God. Someone who has lived this and could give me an idea about what it's REALLY like. Not just a textbook, or an internet page. Real life.

I sent her picture and info to our older boys at college. The younger ones at home had already said yes to this little girl :)
I got a one word response from one of the boys via email: Yes.
The other one said, "she looks like an E-----" (our family name)!

So, there is a leap of faith here, we thought we'd be adopting someone who needed a cleft repair, or maybe had some fingers missing. But God has put this little one in our lives and we are so excited. She will need surgery for some digestive tract problems. And we are praying that the surgery will  "cure" her condition. And if not, we will be there to help her deal with whatever we are given. We trust that the Lord will be with us just as He has shown Himself this week!

There is more about our paperwork chase...but that will have to be for another post. I have to go get everything ready to be authenticated tomorrow! :)

Best guess for travel: we were told 4-6 months once we are LID (when our dossier gets to China-which will hopefully happen in about 3 weeks). So really 5-7 months from now. Then add a month or 2, it is adoption, and we've done this before. It never happens when you wish it would! It's always later!

USCIS Fingerprints

Last Friday we got our fingerprint appointment from USCIS. The appointment day was for the day we are supposed to leave to take Ryan to school. So we decided to try to "walk in" without an appointment to Naperville and "wait" until they could fit us in.

Today was the big day! We made the boys get up and be ready to leave by 6am. (Matt and Ryan both have to be fingerprinted too since they are over 17) We arrived right at 8 am when they opened and we were told by the receptionist that we'd have to wait for the immigration officer to talk to us, but that he wasn't in yet. There were about 15-20 people ahead of us and more coming in behind us. It wasn't looking good. When the officer got in he came over to talk to us and told us it wouldn't be possible to be printed today because they had 100 people scheduled and only 3 workers. I politely asked if it was ok if we just sat and waited, even for several hours to see if there was time for us to be printed. He said we could wait but we had to understand that we might not get seen all day.

So we sat and read and watched "UP" on the tv. We continued to pray as the time ticked away, 9:00, 10:00, people going, new people coming. At 10:30 I looked around and for the first time there were only 5 people waiting instead of 15-20 like there had been all morning.

At about 10:40 the receptionist called our name and then stamped our papers! We were all going to be printed TODAY! The worker who printed Shawn said, "I thought it was supposed to be packed all day. I'm surprised to see it so slow right now." THANKS GOD!

We were out by 11am and on our way to treat our 2 oldest to Portillos for lunch!

Please pray that my prints were good enough quality. They were much better today since it isn't winter, but every other time I've had them done they have rejected and have to be re-done! I am so hoping that I don't have to go back there again!

Another (Successful) Garage Sale!

Woo hoo! We made it through the heat and the stuff is gone and the garage is back to being a garage again! (Complete with parked vehicles, bikes, mower, etc!) I don't think I've ever sweat so much in all my life, ok, at least not in a lot of years! But it was worth it! We made $1600!! Praising God!

THANKS to all who helped, by donation of stuff, time and purchasing! :)

HEAT WARNING!

It's a little hot to be outside! 96 degrees with a heat index of 110 or something.

Not a day I would plan to have a  garage sale! I couldn't believe how many people still came out garage sale-ing! So thankful for them, and those who donated "stuff", and those who stayed around to help me keep my sanity this time! (Verneal, Irene and Kaitlin) Kaitlin and I even waded in our "baby pool" to try to cool off!

God provided a packed garage and the customers who were willing to pay to take it away! Praise God!
Now to make it through tomorrow and Saturday!

Another Garage Sale!

Every year after school is out I get time to do some major cleaning project! This summer it's been decluttering and reorganizing the basement. I've found LOTS of stuff to get rid of, so....another garage sale is in order! It will be July 21-23. If anyone has "stuff" to get rid of we'll gratefully take it!!

YIPPEE!!!

I got a call from Sara at Madison in Rochester yesterday. We usually email so I was worried that she called because it was bad news.

It was GOOD NEWS! We FINALLY have our homestudy approved! On to the next step, sending off our I800a (which is ready and waiting) with our homestudy to Immigration Services. Praying to get fingerprinted before Ryan goes off to school!

Then to get this dossier to China! So excited!

Thinking about school!

Summer is always a busy and fun time of year, but this summer is different than usual.

Yesterday I went with Matt to register for classes at Heartland Community College! What a great campus! He will take some gen eds there before transferring to Lincoln Christian University. I am so excited for this new journey for him. He is gonna do great!

A few hours later, Ryan and I drove to ISU (Iowa State) and are now at his orientation/registration. ISU wasn't his first choice, but it's gonna be a great fit for him. I am impressed! A great school and beautiful campus. (This is my first visit)  I think he will do really well here and it seems like he will make the transition pretty smoothly!

Josh is all set and so excited to start his freshman year at NCHS. This will be his first year in public school after being homeschooled for 9 years!

In less than 9 weeks I will have 3 boys at 3 new schools!

Words of Affirmation

God's never spoken to me with an audible voice, but I am so thankful He speaks! I was reading my Bible tonight  to prepare to teach the 4-5 year old Sunday school class. Inside my Bible I found a paper I had written on January 20, 2011. Back in January we were making "the decision" to adopt. One of my 18 year old sons was sitting in the kitchen doing homework. I had asked him, "What do you think about all this? What do you think we should do?" He responded, "What does your heart say to do?" Another son, age 7, was eating a bowl of cereal for a snack and started singing, "Go for it. Go for it. Go for it!" Later that night he was singing Chris Tomlin's "Our God is Greater" with the lyrics:



Our God is greater, our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other
Our God is Healer, awesome in power
Our God, Our God… 

And if Our God is for us, then who could ever stop us
And if our God is with us, then what can stand against? 
And if Our God is for us, then who could ever stop us
And if our God is with us, then what can stand against? 
What can stand against?

Then, I was reading the "Teacher Connection" in my 4/5 year old Sunday school book. It's a little devotion section/mini Bible study for teachers to help you prepare for the lesson, which was about Jesus healing Bartimaeus. 

At the end of the devotion it said: "Genuine, Christ-like help involves hearing the cry of beggars, seeing persons with great value in God's eyes, and acting to meet a person's needs. Jesus healed people. Jesus helped people. Jesus loved people. Whom do you know that needs to hear these truths." 

Of course, I thought of a little girl from China, who needs a home. 

Who needs to hear that Jesus LOVES HER.

Who needs to hear that she is special and loved and wanted and belongs to a family.

A crazy family of 8 who wants to be a family of 9!

I can't wait to meet her, to show her Jesus' love and to introduce her to the Savior! 

Thank you, God, for speaking!

Abundant Blessings!

God blessed us with

generous donors + tons of stuff + helpful workers + no rain + tons of shoppers =

HUGE SUCCESSFUL GARAGE SALE!

We were praying for enough to pay for the next step in our adoption

and we got it!!

AND MORE!!

THANK YOU, GOD!

GARAGE SALE

My heart is FULL! And so is my garage!

Today's the big day! My garage is PACKED!
And the generous neighbor's garage is about 1/4 full....so far! More from this garage is going to that garage in the next couple of hours....then to bring the remaining clothes out of the basement where Jake and Zack and I were sorting them....and some other stuff.
SELL, SELL, SELL

The forecast for tomorrow looks GREAT! Sunny &  67 degrees.
Today looks great right now, but scattered storms after 1pm (The sale starts at 12!) Thank you God for my sweet neighbor allowing me to have my garage sale annex!

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED ITEMS! This wouldn't be possible without YOU!

Homestudy

We submitted all our papers (so far) to our social worker and she is busy writing our homestudy now! It feels so good to have that part done!

Now I need to find out what other paperwork we can be doing for our dossier while we wait for her to write the homestudy. I'm sure there's something!

College Decisions

I have prayed Psalm 25:4-5 for these 2 boys for their college plans for about a year now:
"Show me the right path, O Lord;
point out the road for me to follow.
Lead me by your truth and teach me,
for you are the God who saves me.
All day long I put my hope in you."

Big college decisions at our house this week...

Matt is all set to go to the community college this fall and transfer Fall '12 to major in Worship Ministries. We are so excited for him!

Ryan (and Shawn and I) were bummed (understatement) that he wasn't accepted to his first choice college...now  we're spending lots of emotional energy, time, and prayer to figure out where he should go....he actually has lots of choices: college 1, college 2, military, get a job, the community college....He just doesn't like some of the options! :)

Paperwork

At the beginning of an adoption you do what is called a homestudy where you fill out an autobiography questionnaire so that a social worker can learn about you, your spouse, you current family and your family of origin (your parents/siblings).  Your social worker interviews you and if you're lucky like us you really like your social worker and it's more like getting to know a friend than some awkward thing where a stranger comes into your home and asks you personal questions and gets a tour of your house....Then you collect LOTS of papers (birth certificates, physicals, the first fingerprinting, employment verification, etc) and sign lots of papers...You have to be sure everything is just right...so when I didn't know I needed an HIV test and had my physical signed by the doctor and notarized (did I mention many of these papers have to be signed in front of a public notary) BEFORE I had the HIV test....now the notary signature is dated 2-9-11 and the HIV test is dated 3-8-11...hmmm...that could be a problem....SO email to ask for a new physical form....now to take it to the doctor and explain why I want him to sign again and could his notary please notarize again.....ahhh, the joys of adoption paperwork! That is just one little bit of what I've been doing in the last 6 weeks!!

Writing a Blog

I love reading adoption blogs. I love learning about how God is working in other people's lives. I don't consider myself much of a writer, but I want to document the journey of the adoption of a little girl we plan to adopt from China!