Two China Dolls and a Prince!

This blog chronicles the story of 2 of our adoptions, both older children when they came home. It begins in 2008 and will continue in the hopes we can be of encouragement and information to anyone thinking of older child adoption.



Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Homestudy visit!

Today was our home visit for the homestudy. This was a good excuse for me to purge the house of "excess". We got rid of a large truckload...going to have a garage sale to raise funds. Home visit went great, social worker said she would approve us for healthy or special needs, 15 and under, boy. That should cover it! Very happy to have that first one out of the way, next week we should have the visits done, so I'm hoping to get the dossier ready to certify and authenticate by the time the homestudy is done.

On another subject, I chose to run for our school board back in January. When the adoption came up, I thought about withdrawing but I like to start what I finish. Tonight, we had a town forum where we introduced ourselves and answered questions. I was so nervous I thought I was going to hurl! But it went well and I got a lot of good feedback, so we'll see what happens next Tuesday! There are six candidates for 2 positions, unheard of in our little town!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Picture of Lucky




Here he is! Isn't he a nice-looking young man??!!


PA, PA, PA

I have been so busy I keep forgetting to post! But I have tremendous news! After finding Lucky's file and getting it transferred back to WACAP, we of course submitted LOI. To our amazement, we got a call from our agency on March 15th, less than 24 hours after we submitted our LOI, to tell us we got PA! God is truly in control of this journey and we are humbled by his Grace to open the door to China once again! Please pray that I can get the paperwork done fast and that the homestudy goes quickly! The Sanders are leaving next week to pick up Dusty and I'm sending a letter with them for Lucky. We are trying to think of names to suggest to him and let him pick which one he wants; of course, the only thing we ask is that it be a "J" name!
I wanted to lift up my older children in praise tonight.....we have to trust that God will provide the finances for this adoption; He has already provided much needed help in the form of financial aid through our agency and an orphanage donation waiver, but that will still leave around $15,000 (by my estimates) to come up with. Not a small amount in only 5 months! Jessica and James offered their help by choosing to withdraw from a school trip in 2013 they were signed up for and we were putting money towards. They wanted us to use that money to help with the adoption costs instead. We're hoping we can take a family trip instead to celebrate Jessica's graduation in 2013.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

2012- New Journeys

Hi! I haven't posted for such a long time! Been busy running the kids around to everything under the sun! I've revived our blog because once again, God has opened the door to China quite unexpectedly. I have always felt there was one child missing from our family, another boy to complement our wonderful son James, who has always desired a brother as well. We have begun the Amazing Race to our new (hopefully) son, a 13-year old who will age out in August of THIS year. Can't say much more or post his picture until PA, I think. About 5 total months to do what we did in 20 months the first time and 13 months the second time; hmmmm, seems to be a pattern developing here.
Our kids are very excited and can't wait....this will be so fast it will be no time at all. We'll have to think of some good fundraisers as God in his infinite sense of humor, allowed us to move mountains to submit LOI (will post on that tomorrow), but neglected to provide the funds quite yet!
Stay tuned.....
Debbie