Thankful Thursday

Thanksgiving is the ultimate Thankful Thursday for bloggers. We have so much to be thankful for this year. As we sit at the T-10 days mark from our flight to get our son, we reflect back on the fact that a mere 5 years ago (on 11/23/05) we were officially logged into the CCAA to officially start our wait for Maddy. Never could we imagine that 5 years later we would be waiting for a 2nd child. We are so glad to follow the plans God has for us. Although we plan our own ways, He directs our steps. Proverb 16:9 says A man's heart plans his way but the Lord directs his steps. His plans are so often much better than anything we could've put together on our own.

I am thankful for health, family, friends, a home to live in, having employment, food on my table & clothes on my back. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

We're headed to China - Travel Dates!

It's been a wild week of prep & planning, but I am happy to say that we have travel dates.

• We leave Sunday 12/5 and will spend a few days sightseeing in Hong Kong. We lose a day to the time change so in essence we will be there 12/7-12/11
• 12/11 we will fly to Wuhan and meet Zeke on either 12/12 or 12/13 (still awaiting confirmation).
• We will be there almost a week before heading to Guangzhou via the 'bullet train' 0n 12/17.
• In Guangzhou we have medical appointment 12/18, Consulate appointment 12/21, Swearing In Ceremony (taking the oath of citizenship) 12/22 & received Zeke's visa 12/23.
• We will fly out of Hong Kong 12/24 & gain a day back arriving on US soil the morning of 12/24.

We have a crew of 4 total in our 'travel group' (Matt, Maddy, Linda (Matt's mom) & I). It's a little sad this time not having other families w/us for the journey. We will hopefully meet up w/other families in Guangzhou.

We have our Travel Approval!

Our agency phoned us this afternoon to let us know our Travel Approval had arrived from China. I feel sorry for their DHL guy as the whole place stops & meets him at the door when he comes.

We should be able to book our tickets in the next couple of days once our consulate appointment (CA) is confirmed. The CA is the last appointment of our trip so we have to secure that first & then move back from there to plan the trip.

Additionally, our agency will now make a request for an update of our son so prayerfully we will get new measurements and maybe a new photo. All the info we have is almost 8 months old.

Stay tuned for more info.......

Wordless Wednesday

Flashback - 3 years ago today

In a sweltering hot room in Nanchang, China we held our daughter for the first time 3 years ago today. We are amazed at how fast the time has flown by and can't believe our baby girl will be 4 in just a few short months! We are blessed at how she has blossomed so much and how excited she is at the prospect of becoming a big sister. Her brother is now part of daily conversation and nightly prayers. Here is a photo of her from this past weekend:

Major Remodel

As we didn't have enough to do adopting a son, we are also in the process of remodeling our basement (mainly to add another bath & bedroom to our 2 bedroom house). Last weekend was spent removing the contents & gutting the whole works back to the cement walls. It was quite an undertaking but we pulled it off thanks to a little help from our friends.


This is the result after the gutting:

After a few days of various contractors on the job, we now have an egress window, plumbing, and framing started. It's just amazing how fast the space is being transformed.

Moving right along in our process

As of 10/1/10 we have moved to the 4th of 5 steps before we can book our tickets to travel for our son. The next 2 steps are obtaining the Article 5 from the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China and getting our Travel Approval from the CCAA in Beijing. We are hoping by late October/early November to have our travel approval & to be able to start planning our trip. We are projecting travel after Thanksgiving.

This is from 8/31/10, this is us at our adoption agency signing the paperwok on the day we got our Letter Of Approval: