A TIMELINE OF EVENTS!

April 2006
Our dream is slowly becoming a reality and today we went to our adoption agency, Americans Adopting Orphans and we accepted into their adoption program in China. Adam and I have been praying about this adoption for almost two years now and waiting for the right time. We both know this is the time to move forward. We are so excited about this new journey in our lives and know that bringing this wonderful baby into our home, will be such a blessing. Although we do not know her, or what she looks like, we can feel her in our hearts. She may just be a twinkle in her mother's eye as we will likely not be able to travel to China for at least a year, but we know she was meant to be in our family and we already love little Sophia Mei so much. We bought a globe and map and posted it on the wall to tell the kids where our new baby will be and where we will be traveling to get her and bring her home! What an awesome blessing!

May 12, 2006
We get to begin our homestudy! We get to meet Char, who has been assigned to follow us though this awesome process of adoption. She tells us that she wants to meet the kids and although we are nervous of this meeting, it went so great. Char was helpful and genuine. She was informative and let us know about the reality of adoption and having Chinese culture be a big part of our lives. We look forward to experiencing this rich culture even before we meet Sophia. Every step we take in this process feels like one more step closer to holding our little blessing in our arms. We spent so much time cleaning and although Char did walk through the entire house (the kids were thrilled to show off their rooms and the new baby's room too). Char even made a comment that our family was almost "too" perfect, which made us laugh as we do not feel even close to perfect. She told us that she was going to work endlessly to get our homestudy complete and that we would have one more visit on May 28th. We anticipate partnering with Char and learning from her as we prepare for such an awesome change in our lives!

May 28, 2006

We stink! We just got back from camping and have a messy car, dirty kids and chaos eveywhere. I guess today Char will see the real family in our worst :) Char came over this evening to complete our homestudy and we looked at the drafts she had already done on us. It seems so odd to see your life in a nutshell written in a professional document. We laughed and talked. We have found Char to be almost like a family friend. She is casual and easy to talk to. We don't feel like we have to put up a front for her. We ended up requesting a healthy infant girl under the age of twelve months. Even though we know the wait will be long, we know that God's time is totally perfect and we can rest in that knowledge. It is so unreal to think that it was just a month ago or so that we were at Americans Adopting Orphans asking numerous questions about adoption, and now we are here, right in the middle of the process.

June 5, 2006
Wow- we are just the model parents! Today was CRAZY. We were to drive to American's Adopting Orphans this morning and be there at 10:00am to pick up our finalized homestudy so that we could drive to Yakima first thing tomorrow morning to file our I600A and get fingerprinted. Much to our dismay, Adam took the car into get the emissions test and right after passing the test, the car would not start. We have NEVER had that problem. To make matters even more exciting, we have been using a rental mini van, as our van decided to need adaptions to it's CPU. The dealer told us to drive only 100 miles a day. To drive to American's Adotping Orphans would go over our 100 mile maximum, so we had to call Ford and beg them to give us more miles. Thankfully Ford was wondeful and told us to use the miles that we needed. Unthankfully, our car needed $1000.00 in repairs!!!! Oh well! So we drive to AAO and realize that our middle child, Tyler has no shoes on and has not worn shoes at all. So we enter our adoption agency, trying to be composed and get our paperwork to adopt our new baby, while we have our shoeless child skipping around. Thankfully the staff of AAO are so great with kids and totally empathized with us. The great thing is, we got our Homestudy and mailed out all of our documents to be authenticated at the state level today. It did feel strange to take all of our cherished documents and ship them off. It is the first time they have left our files and now we need to rely on Fed Ex! Time is tickin'.

June 6, 2006
We drive to Yakima to file our I600A form and get fingerprinted. The trip is about 140 miles each way which was nice and quiet. We stopped and had coffee and got back on the road. I got a little car sick as I was reading continuously and was excited all the same. The Homeland Office was great. They were courteous and kind. They were also really efficient and we were out of there in less than one hour without an appointment. One thing that really helped us was being there pretty much right when they opened at 8:30 in the morning. Before getting fingerprinted I went to use the restroom and as I was washing my hands, I began to shed a tear. It is such an awesome privilege to be able to have a child, no matter what way that child is brought into your home. I had the same sense of anticipation as I did when I was pregnant and at my first doctors visits. Little Sophia is a miracle. She is miles away, and very possibly not even born yet, but she is already imbetted into our hearts. God has been so good to us and is endlessly faithful. Little Sophia is going to certainly have so many people who love her and will become such a huge part of her life. As I stand in the mirror, wet hands and all I marvel at the thought that we are again, one step closer to Sophia Mei. As we walked to the car hand in hand, Adam told me how excited he was that this was becoming more real. Pinch me if I am dreaming!

June 7, 2006
OMIGOSH! We got back all of our forms from the state and they have already been authenticated. It was less than a 48 hour turn around. I quickly went to the local Fed Ex office, called my agency at least five times to be reassured that I was getting everything properly placed for the Chinese Consulate in California. Finally, I mailed it off. Now we just wait. We are also waiting for one more state level form from Florida, and hope to see it come back next week. This process is the chase, the wait and endless amounts of patience needed to complete every step in a correct manner.