Mother's Day and a Birthday!

(This post was written a week ago, but we were having problems with blogspot.)

So I (Chrissy) have been meaning to post more than a week now...but you know how that goes. I was treated like a queen on Mother's Day and wanted to share a picture. Flip and Josh had this waiting for me when I got up (after getting to sleep in). Flowers, homemade waffles, a very sweet card and one excited little boy who wasn't quite sure why he was so excited. I am one very blessed woman!

Almost a week after Mother's day, on May 14th, our little girl had her first birthday. We were very sad that we weren't able to there with her to celebrate. We wanted her to know we were thinking of her, so we bought a couple of cupcakes and wished her a happy birthday from here. We are looking forward to being able to celebrate with her once she is home.

We are also pleased to tell you that our home study was approved by our adoption agency and our application to US Immigration was received on Tuesday. We are praying that it processes through in God's timing so we can be one step closer to bringing out little girl home! Now we are waiting for our fingerprint appointment and then approval. You can definitely be praying for us as we try to be patient and wait.

We have also decided to take Josh with us to China. We are going to be applying for a passport for Josh in the next few weeks. We would really appreciate your prayers for us as we begin thinking about logistics of traveling with two toddlers and packing for them too. It is going to be an adventure for sure!!

In other family news, we are very thankful that Flip has been so busy are work. He is definitely busy enough for two people, so that means lots of hours for him. He has also been traveling quite a bit the last few weeks and it doesn't look like that is going to change anytime soon. I am hoping Josh and I will be able to travel with him on some of these trips.

Josh has gone from uncertain walking to running! He still falls down quite a bit, but there is no stopping him. He loves to walk, run and climb! He can now climb up on the couch and frequently tries to jump off of it. His vocabulary has also taken off in the last week or so. He loves to master new words and then not say them again for a while - I think he will be one of those kids who speaks in full sentences when he is ready to talk.

I am doing well, learning to balance running the household with only one nap a day. I am learning tricks that I think will help make thing easier when baby girl comes home. I really enjoy being a stay at home mom and feel that I learn something new about parenting and myself everyday. I have also been busy watching over my Dad that last few months has he has been dealing with a variety of illnesses. He ha been in the hospital here for the last few weeks. We definitely appreciate your prayers as he continues to heal up. We are thankful Josh is getting to see his Grandaddy so much - they really enjoy each other.

Be on the lookout for another update soon! 

We're Expecting!

What?!?  Yes, that's right......




We are expecting...




but we are not pregnant... 




We are very excited and pleased to announce after lots of prayer, that we are adopting from China.  What?!?  Did you say China?  Yep, you read that right.  We are very thankful that we have been pre-approved to adopt a 11 month old little girl from China. We couldn't be happier to be enlarging our family through adoption. God placed it on our heart that we should adopt even before we were married.  So we are quite pleased to be following through with that desire at this time with this child. 

So you might be wondering why we decided to adopt from China.  Well, that is a great question and the answer is we didn't originally start the process with China.  We had begun the process with another agency and were hoping to adopt from Ethiopia.  Just before we were prepared to submit our dossier (think our life story compressed to 50 pages or less), we felt like God told us to wait.  So we waited and kept praying.  About a week later the Ethiopian government announced some very strict changes to the adoption program that made the wait time uncertain.  We didn't know what to do.  They couldn't tell us if the wait time would be 18 months, or 5 years, or anywhere in between.  We continued to wait and pray for about a month, until we felt like God told us to start looking at adopting a child with special needs from China.  So we started praying about that and talking to friends who are adopting from China as well right now.  Lets just say that one thing led to another and we found ourselves looking at the file of a 10 month old little girl in China.  After lots of prayer and consulting with our pediatrician, we felt like she was our girl.  So we emailed our new adoption agency back and said we wanted to make her ours.  We are still hoping to eventually adopt from Ethiopia (or another African country) in the future, God willing.

That all happened just over two weeks ago.  On Friday, we received the official word that we had been pre-approved to adopt her.  So now the paper chase has begun!  We will be working to quickly move through the required paperwork and red tape to bring our little girl home.  As we said, we are super excited!!

We would appreciate your prayers for us as we begin this hopefully fast paced journey to bring our little girl home. If you would like to be added to know more specific ways to pray for us or would like to help in some way, please leave a comment and we will get back to you. We are going to attempt to update this blog more regularly with both adoption and family news.  If we slack off, feel free to leave us a gentle reminder in the comment section.  

A new blog and a new adventure...we suggest you stay tuned, its going to be a wild ride!

Our daughter at 9 months of age