Onward and Forward

We received a letter from the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China that our Article 5 was picked up on Friday, July 20th and was delivered to the CCCWA today. Yay! It is the CCCWA who will then issue our Travel Approval. Once we get this approval, we can schedule our visa appointments with the Consulate and make travel plans! This is the last leg of the paperwork chase!

On that note, we had a crazy, but amazing week. We had wonderful visit from Uncle S. and his soon-to-be bride K. filled with lots of partying and visiting. The boys had Sports Camp. There were three birthdays in the family. And the weekend was spent painting Maisey's room. We are still finishing up (pictures will be coming soon), but how fun it is to finally be at this point. We have baby things back in our house! The boys' crib is back! We get to decorate a girl room! Mind you, I didn't go all pink or anything. But a little girly with a little Chinese flavor is definitely in order. I can't wait to have it all set up.

You just don't know

Maisey,

How are you?  I know you can't answer that question, but I ask it often as I think about you.  You don't even know that anything in your life has changed, but wow, has it changed for you.

You don't know that you have two brothers who can't wait to meet you and show you all they know.  You don't know that you have a mother who has not slept since she first saw your picture.  You don't know that there are countless family members who long to dote on you.  You don't know that you have a church full of people that are praying for you (and us.)  You don't know that there is a God who created you, loves you, and longs to be your savior. You don't know that you have a Dad who worries about how good a Dad he'll be for a little girl.  You don't know that your life will never be the same again!

You don't know, but you will soon.

Love you Maisey,
Dad

Progress

Now that we are in the travel phase, the waiting feels like it has more of a purpose. Our Letter Seeking Confirmation has gone to China. We have already heard from the travel specialist from Great Wall and been given another list of tasks to complete. We are waiting for the Consulate to issue us an Article 5. Once we have this, it will be sent to the CCCWA. From there, we will wait for our official Travel Approval. Our travel dates depend on when the TA arrives, and also on the appointments we are given by the Consulate. In the meantime, we are working on getting visas and gathering paperwork. We also need to make an appointment at the UCONN Travel Center to get all of our shots for the trip (ouch!). The boys are having a busy summer, too. We just finished a week of Summer Bible Club at our church and swimming lessons. Steve and Grampa are building the boys a really cool tree-fort-without-a-tree. It was a promise Steve made to the boys last year, and he wanted to do it before life gets really crazy around here. I'm thinking it may end up with some pink and curtains before too long.

The Paperwork Is All In!!!

So hard to imagine after all of this time, but all of our paperwork has been submitted. We received the last document from the NVC this afternoon (after a minor delay), and sent everything off to Great Wall. Let the travel phase begin! Now, it is obviously not as simple as that. We have to first wait for a Travel Approval. But, from here on out, we are planning our trip. I was told that we would be getting a call from a travel agent within a few days of the arrival of our packet at Great Wall (it is supposed to arrive before 3pm tomorrow). I hope to know soon when we can go get Maisey. We're coming to get you soon, sweet girl!

Maisey has a great dad!

So, being that it is Father's Day, I decided to brag on my husband little since I probably don't do that nearly enough. Steve is a great dad. He just is. Not because he does everything perfectly all the time, but because he admits when he doesn't and moves on. Over the past nine years of our parenting journey together, what I love most about my husband is that he is continuously willing to alter his course when necessary. He is not rigid or prideful, but flexible and humble. Parenting has done the best job anything could of teaching us to be humble and dependent on God's grace. Our children constantly show us clearly the areas where we are lacking. As we wade our way through the uncertainty that parenting is, I am so glad to have him by my side. I am thankful that my boys have his example. I am thankful I will have the opportunity to parent another blessing with him. I am just plain thankful for him.

Why Waiting Children?

I have been reading a lot of adoption blogs lately and I notice that there is a lot of discussion around why people are hesitant to adopt waiting children (special needs/older children) so I wanted to share how we came to choose a waiting child. Adoption is a process in every sense of the word. Choosing to adopt is only the beginning of that process. Steve and I have grown so much since we started, and I am excited to see what this will do in our lives as we walk through this wonderful phase. When we first chose to adopt, we chose the "healthy list" for various reasons. First was, since we are not "young parents", we felt that this was our only opportunity to be on that list. We also started this process when Seth was 2, so it is encouraged to maintain birth order. And finally, I had a lot of fears about the waiting child list. I was afraid, for one, of an actual list where I might have to choose my child as if out of a catalog. I know that is not the intent, but it felt that way to me and I had a major fear of this. I also knew that there is a 72 hour window to make a decision and wondered how you can know in that time whether this was "the" child. I always knew that there were plenty of needs that we could handle, but had real fears about the process. Fears that lasted me about 3 1/2 years as we waited endlessly for our child on the "healthy" list and kept ourselves extremely busy raising our boys. Around last summer, Steve and I sat down to have a conversation. We decided that we needed to reflect on where we were in the process, how or if we wanted to proceed, and whether we felt we could navigate into these uncertain waters of "special needs". We prayed and discussed through the summer, and decided to move forward, update our paperwork, and jump in. Updating paperwork is no small task, so it was January before we were ready. On January 1, we prayed together, filled out the waiting child questionnaire, and stepped out. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am that we did. Who could imagine that this amazing little girl would be waiting on that list to be part of our family. All of the fears I had were so foolish, so unfounded. There is a list, but you can choose not to look. In fact, we didn't even have access to it. We did have 72 hours, but it only took moments for our hearts to leap to the easiest "yes" I have ever had to say in my life. Any child can have a "special need" at any time. But the truth is, that label scares people. I know it paralyzed us. But it has been a process and I wouldn't change it. God moved us just in time to bless us with this special little girl and I wouldn't change a moment of what brought us to this point. I now watch the Matched Waiting Child list grow and grow at Great Wall and I am humbled as I watch more and more of these precious children find their forever families. I just saw a video by rainbow kids that does an amazing job of showing what the Waiting Child list is all about.
 Here is the link. --> http://www.rainbowkids.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=774


Oh, and by the way, our approval came from the US for our I-800. Now, just one more to go from China and we can send everything back to get a travel approval. Woohoo!

Lisa

Waiting...

Well, another week has come and gone. We heard from the Department of Homeland Security that our paperwork was received. That is great news. Now, we wait... It would be amazing if our approval came this week, but we shall see. I have spent the past week cleaning out closets. I am trying to clean out all of the past years' clutter. It has been slightly obsessive. Could this be nesting? Hard to tell. The boys and I are busy. We have lots of fun planned for this week. On Friday, we went to a church in New Britain to see the Destiny Africa Choir perform. Those kids were amazing. What a wonderful work is being done by the Kampala Children's Center in Uganda. Those kids are full of energy and full of joy. I would encourage anyone to see them if they have the chance. They are so beautiful.