Tuesday, November 27, 2012

6 years!!!

We have officially been waiting for our Little One for 6 years now, yup, that's 72 months- a very long "pregnancy".  Today marks our 6 year LID anniversary as our dossier was registered in Beijing on November 27, 2006.
That sounds like forever ago but also seems like it hasn't been that long either; as life has gone on and not waited for us a bit.  We are 6 years older, still working the same jobs, but for me in a different  location.  We  sold our house and built a new one.  We have done a lot to free ourselves financially and with God's grace we've been successful in doing so.  We've lost a few family members and gained a great niece.  We lost our precious Meeka dog also during this time.  We've taken a few vacations, beach, mountains, trail riding, hiking and a little boating.  Our priorities have shifted a lot and we're more boring frugal and focused.  We've done lots of thinking and dreaming about our family to be.  Still worshiping our Lord at the same church but with many new people and some wonderful older saints. Still healthy praise be to God.  We've learned a lot more about China, its culture and a lot more do's and don'ts of parenting.  As we are finishing up our home study for the umpteenth time, it's nice to know this is the final set of paperwork that will used to "make" our family.  So China, let's see what the next 12 months has to offer!

Friday, November 2, 2012

October Re-cap

I know, it's already November but I just wanna give you a quick review. . .  I was supposed to have foot surgery but it was cancelled.  I got sick with allergy/sinus/ asthma crud the next week and was pretty much sick for the remainder of the month.  I spent two weeks sleeping on the couch, 2 days off work (should've been more), a round of antibiotics and I still have a dry hacky cough.
The weather has turned cooler and we've had some wonderful mild temp days and we've already had a 3-4 inch snowfall as well as some 80 degree days.  We've attended a farm festival and our church had a fall festival/day of celebration.  We've seen enormous growth in our church just since summer (Praise God) and a super great Youth Group with an awesome bunch of faithful leaders. We had 18 baptized on one Sunday!   We've begun Christmas play practice. Spent time with family and have tried to be obedient to what God has us do for others.
Adoption related news, yeah, I'm getting there.  We've seen some interesting things happen in the past few weeks.  We have met with our social worker twice this month, once for a safety audit and then for interviews.  This is the 4th time we've had to do a new home study as OH requires them to be done every two years, not to mention the in between updates we had to do for USCIS.  We've officially been waiting 71 months so you do the math.  This time it's a little more exciting as we are working with a new home study agency as we had to transfer because ours went out of business- don't worry, this isn't gonna delay anything and nothing bad is gonna happen, everything is proceeding as it should and if anything, a little better.  You see, I say we're excited because everything we do now brings us one step closer and God willing this will be the last time we have to update all this stuff.  So it's not like last year or the years before when we had to do all this but knew we'd have to repeat it in 2 years, 4 years, etc.   This will (fingers crossed) be our final update.  Now of course we will have a lot of paperwork prior to travel and post-placement paperwork once we return home- but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!! As part of our home study we had to spend an entire day completing Hague training and it was very interesting and very helpful; we learned a lot and it brought a lot of issues to the forefront that we hadn't examined real close- great training.  More about that at a later time.
And now, for the most exciting news . . . the CCCWA referred families through October 8th , 2006 so all families with an LID up to 10-8-06 have been matched with their babies!!!  This means they are finally in the month right before us!!! We are logged in November 27, 2006!!!! That means exactly 50 jellybeans are left in our jar and we are countin' them down.  (See jar from earlier post)  So it'll be exciting to how the rest of the year moves along.  Happy November everyone!