A little over one month ago, we made a big decision regarding our adoption journey.
For the previous few months, we’ve been talking about and praying about if we were going to continue with our Ethiopian adoption.
For now, I’ll give you the “short version” of the story :) There was much, much detail in how this story and this part of our adoption journey has unfolded.
We had been growing more and more weary in the process. We first began almost 3 years ago. We were on the waitlist for almost 2 years. There was still very little movement in the program, so we realized that we were looking at quite some time before we were likely to receive a referral and then a minimum of probably 6 months before we would bring our child home after the referral.
We had been working toward and waiting for an Ethiopian adoption to be complete for so long, but just really felt like we needed to start checking into other options for adding to our family through adoption.
After lots of research, lots of praying and talking it through, we felt strongly that we needed to close the door on our Ethiopian adoption and begin the paperwork to adopt through the China Special Needs program.
That’s right! We’re adopting from China!!!!!
Even after we made the decision to switch and had begun our paperwork, we were feeling the mixed emotions of great excitement and anticipation about it as well as some bit of sadness as we grieved the loss of the Ethiopian adoption that was not meant to be for us. As we have immersed ourselves into the switch, the completion of our paperwork and learning all we can about the process and also about China we are nothing but excited. We know beyond a doubt that we have done the right thing for our family.
In the Ethiopian adoption, we were basically in line waiting for children to become available for adoption. In China, the healthy child program has a very long waiting list and it takes approximately 4-5 years to complete an adoption. With the China Special Needs/Waiting Child program, there are so many kids that are already legally available for adoption. Their paperwork is done. They are just waiting for families to say Yes to them! As the name implies, each of the children that are in this program have varying degrees of special needs or are older healthy children. Many of the children have very mild/correctible special needs. We are still requesting to adopt a 0-18 month old girl. (We are able to chose which types of special needs we are open to and those which we are not.) Also, we are still working with the same agency! We just had our file moved from the Ethiopia program to the Asia program. Everyone there (in both programs) has been extremely supportive and helpful to us in making the transition.
In fact, our agency can even possibly match us to a child before we even have our dossier complete. They are only able to refer children to us from certain orphanages with which they have partnerships. If there is a child that meets our preferences available, we could be matched very soon!
Yes, we have had to start our paperwork all over again. That’s the icky part! I’ve been living in what I affectionately refer to as “paperwork purgatory” again! Ugh!!!
BUT…. we already have all of our dossier documents complete!! No, it wasn’t easy! We just buckled down and got everything done! We have even had our home study update already! A few weeks ago, in fact! It happened really fast. We were just so thankful that she was able to get to us that soon! Just another confirmation that we are on the right track! We are just waiting on our home study revision to be complete and then we will send off for our CIS approval. After CIS approval is received, we will send our completed dossier to China and we will officially receive a “log in date”.
If we have not already officially been matched to a child at this point, once we have our log in date, we will be able to be eligible to be matched to a child off of the “shared list”. This is the list of all of the children across China that are available for adoption through the Special Needs program.
At the time that we initially started our paperwork, we were given an “estimate” of the worst case being that we would be matched to our child within 6 months. Of course, we could be matched much sooner that that or it could take longer depending on the children that are available at any given time.
So there you go! There’s our big update! We are excited to be able to share our news with the world.We’ve kept it a secret from the “internet world” for over a month now and that was kind of hard to do! :)
Bottom line: we are still fulfilling our dream and calling to adopt. There will still be one less orphan without a home. We are still so thankful for the opportunity to add a child to our family through international adoption.
Thank you all for praying for us and for our little girl. We can’t wait to be united with her and FINALLY bring her home!!
Stay tuned… we are partnering in a fundraiser with our sweet friends The Bennington’s. We are selling t-shirts to benefit our adoptions! I will share picture of the shirts soon! They are awesome!!! I know you will want one :) or both :)
Dance recital day is one of our very favorite days of the year!! We are so proud of our little dancer and love that she loves it so much. We are so thankful for Elite Dance Studios! They are THE BEST!!!
The theme this year was “Broadway & Beyond”. LOVE!!!!!
Gracie’s class did a character jazz routine to “Join the Circus” from Barnum the Musical.
She was one of the lions.
I love this picture!
This picture was from my favorite part of her dance. Watch the video for why. She was so animated and projected her voice so loudly. It was so cute. For my little “wanna be future stage girl”, this was a good start :)
Here’s the video. She was one of the younger kids in the class and I think she did just great. Aside from the fact that she kept tugging on her costume… First of all, I told her not to worry about her belly hanging out, but she was so I told her several times to make sure that her skirt was pulled up before she went on stage and then she wouldn’t be bothered by her belly hanging out. I guess she forgot that part :) Oh well—aside from that, she did great. Oh, and missing her curtain call at the end-- But she figured out how to get backstage one way or another!
Daddy Daughter Dance!!! “Cool Rockin’ Daddy”
My husband was the cutest one :)
I was SOOO proud of Jason! He got out there with a smile and did a great job. Of course, Sissy did great too. They were so cute out there!
Beautiful girl with all of her flowers after the show!
Look at all of the fans that came to the big show!! Meme & Papa, Nanny and Poppy and the kids and Ma Ma Dennie and Aunt Adele were here visiting and were able to join us as well!
We had such a fun day! We all went out to eat at Jose’s afterwards and enjoyed it very much. Can’t wait until next year’s dance recital! Gracie is going to take more classes next year, so she’ll have lots of numbers and costume changes next year. She’s already excited about it!!
Rhett got his yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do a couple of months ago. Here’s some pics of my handsome man sporting his new belt.
In class the day of the test, he also received a mark on his belt for always working hard and trying his best in the class. So proud of him!!
We went on vacation to Kansas City over Memorial Weekend. We were celebrating the end of the school year and 13 WONDERFUL years of marriage! We knew Daddy was getting ready to get so busy at work that he wouldn’t be able to take off to do anything fun, so we decided to go ahead and go over the long holiday weekend.
We were there for 4 nights and we had so much fun, we wanted to stay 4 more!
We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge. We loved it and can’t wait to go back! We spent quite a bit of time at the water park each day, and we did some other fun stuff too.
One day, we planned to go to the new Legoland and Sealife aquarium. When we got there, we learned that there was a 2 1/2 hour wait to even get tickets and get in the door. NO THANKS! We had a very limited time for a vacation, and we weren’t going to waste it by standing in line. So, we went back inside the mall and checked out a dinosaur exhibit.
Before heading back to the resort, we ate lunch at Fritz’s. It was our first time to eat there and we loved it! We plan to go back next time we’re in town!
We placed our order by calling in to the kitchen from the black phone at the table. A few minutes later, a train carried our box of food to our table and dropped it on our tray.
Back at the resort, here’s Gracie coloring a t-shirt.
Here she is wearing her t-shirt and showing off her new stuffed friend.
Maybe the highlight of our trip, was the Sporting KC game. You all know that we are a soccer family, and we enjoy going to professional sports games, but this was our first time to a professional soccer game. As we enjoyed the day, we wondered what had taken us so long and couldn’t wait to get tickets to our next game!
KC WON!!!
After the game, we walked to the T-Rex Cafe. A trip to KC just isn’t complete without a meal there!
No, we don’t make a habit of letting our kids act like wild beasts at restaurants, but we made a bit of an exception for this picture :) We had a private table behind the volcano, so no one saw this outburst :)
Livestrong Sporting Park is a beautiful facility.
We enjoyed time in the indoor water park as well as in the outside pool.
Flying high!
We almost made a spontaneous decision to go to the soccer game a couple days later and stay another night. But, alas, we thought better of it and came home after 4 days as scheduled.
We had such a wonderful time!
