We have our daughter!

Baby Ethan

In case you haven't heard, we adopted baby Ethan in June 2008! We always wanted three children, but had planned to adopt from China first. However, with that avenue taking so long, we decided to try to adopt another child before heading to China. We opened ourselves up to International, Domestic and Foster Care adoptions, but it was our parental placement agency in VA Beach who came through for us! Along came Ethan, who was born on June 10! We feel so very lucky! He is a healthy, happy baby, who has turned our lives around! Please visit our home site for more info and updates on him! I just finished writing up his adoption story on that site.

We are still proceeding with our China adoption, but it is taking so long that I haven't done a good job of keeping up with this blog. It became hard to keep coming back to this blog, knowing the wait for our little girl was just getting longer and longer. Once we get closer, I will resume more updates. Right now, China has matched families who were LID through February 15, 2006. We are July 14, 2006, so still are a ways off. As it is, Ethan has to be a year old before we can be matched with a child in China. At about that time, we will be transferring to Hawaii and hence will no longer have a valid home study. Once we get into a house in HI, we will have to redo our home study and update our application with U.S. Immigration before we can bring our daughter home from China. Therefore, it will be fall 2009 at the very earliest before we receive our referral from China. We are not in a hurry anymore, and are just enjoying life in the present! We have been living for the future for so long now, that it's strange to not be doing that- but oh so nice! Our daughter will come when God decides it's time. Honestly, we don't really know what the future holds for us with China, since so much is up in the air. However, we are still proceeding down this path, as we have been emotionally attached to our little daughter from China for too many years now to simply give up because of a move across the country. God has a plan, right? We just have to trust in it. He's given us two beautiful children already- two miracles- and we know that He has a long term plan for our family. We just aren't sure what it is. :)

Grand 'Ol Flag

Multicultural Night

Multicultural Night

WE OUR OUT OF REVIEW!!!

"The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before July 31, 2006."

(We are July 14, 2006. This means China accepted us!!)

WOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

Of course, we're still probably 2 years away from getting our little girl :(

WE ARE IN REVIEW!!!

Woohoooooo! It's about time! We are officially in review! That means that this month, the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs is reviewing our paperwork to make sure everything is complete to their liking. If we don't hear anything through the end of August, that should mean we passed. Any extra prayers you can send our way would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Dossier Status...

As of May 14th, our dossier is still pending review... :(

New Recommended Book!

Saving Levi: Left to Die . . . Destined to Live

This book starts out very sad, but it has a happy ending and shows God's miracles and many ways he works in our lives. It's a short book and you won't want to put it down until you're done! I highly recommend it!

China Update

Our dossier is still "Pending Review".

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 31, 2006.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before October 26, 2005.

The wait is currently more than 17 months and expected to lengthen. The CCAA is taking steps to decrease this time frame, but when we will actually see these results is unknown.