We had some great weather for our Christmas pictures. Our in-house photographer (Curran) set everything up for some great shots. I'm glad these kids look like their mother! We had a birthday party for Grace (5) and Hope (3) yesterday, so I put some of them in there as well.
We just started sending this blog out on facebook and via email- we're very excited to have started the process and are actually getting through the steps so much quicker than we were able to when we were in Germany. Overnight mail actually gets places OVERNIGHT when you're in the US! What a concept! It's great.
And everyone we had to call while we were in the looking phase was awake the same time we were. Looking through the lists of waiting children is always the same - regardless of where you are or what time it is, but calling an agency to ask a question or lock a child in is an entirely different story. For Hope's adoption, the list of children came out while I was on a retreat with the older boys - around 10pm! That was a memorable drive home that night!
Getting back into that "phase" of the process, it was great to see from one day to the next that some kids were not still on the list when we'd check back. Sometimes even the kids with the "unknowns" associated with their special need would drop from the list - finding their forever families. Heartbreaking when sometimes they would show up again - there are so many kids on the list that need to be adopted - some almost perfectly healthy, some needing minor surgeries and some that have some more unknowns or even some pretty significant known issues. It seems like there are so many more SN kids on the list than there were before - over 2,000 kids right now! I guess Liam was on his list for more than a couple months when we found him. I guess God was still working on me with some more of my "issues", and now that we've found him, we're comfortable with his specific needs. We had some research to do and found that, yes, we could handle his special needs and now we know that he was meant to be ours all along! God just had to grow me a little more. He's got a VSD (heart) and some other issues that can be repaired with some specialized surgery that isn't available in China.
Here is another little picture of Liam - I can't yet figure out how to get it into the header with the other one. I'm going to have to break down and 'read the map' or ask directions pretty soon. Now that we're getting through the process (home study complete, I-800 application filed, matched with baby) I have some things to blog about -rather than saying "we stood in line for 2 hours to get a form signed". More to follow - maybe I'll write about our trip to the pediatrician...
We just started sending this blog out on facebook and via email- we're very excited to have started the process and are actually getting through the steps so much quicker than we were able to when we were in Germany. Overnight mail actually gets places OVERNIGHT when you're in the US! What a concept! It's great.
And everyone we had to call while we were in the looking phase was awake the same time we were. Looking through the lists of waiting children is always the same - regardless of where you are or what time it is, but calling an agency to ask a question or lock a child in is an entirely different story. For Hope's adoption, the list of children came out while I was on a retreat with the older boys - around 10pm! That was a memorable drive home that night!
Getting back into that "phase" of the process, it was great to see from one day to the next that some kids were not still on the list when we'd check back. Sometimes even the kids with the "unknowns" associated with their special need would drop from the list - finding their forever families. Heartbreaking when sometimes they would show up again - there are so many kids on the list that need to be adopted - some almost perfectly healthy, some needing minor surgeries and some that have some more unknowns or even some pretty significant known issues. It seems like there are so many more SN kids on the list than there were before - over 2,000 kids right now! I guess Liam was on his list for more than a couple months when we found him. I guess God was still working on me with some more of my "issues", and now that we've found him, we're comfortable with his specific needs. We had some research to do and found that, yes, we could handle his special needs and now we know that he was meant to be ours all along! God just had to grow me a little more. He's got a VSD (heart) and some other issues that can be repaired with some specialized surgery that isn't available in China.
Here is another little picture of Liam - I can't yet figure out how to get it into the header with the other one. I'm going to have to break down and 'read the map' or ask directions pretty soon. Now that we're getting through the process (home study complete, I-800 application filed, matched with baby) I have some things to blog about -rather than saying "we stood in line for 2 hours to get a form signed". More to follow - maybe I'll write about our trip to the pediatrician...
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