Jeopardy Music

I now have the music from Jeopardy playing in my head. All of the time. You know the little ditty that they play while the contestants are writing down their answers to the final round question? Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-do...you get the picture. I feel like Alec Trebak (sorry if I spelled his name wrong) is going to jump out of one of my closets and ask-when will your 171-H come? And my answer certainly wouldn't put me in the category of Ken Jennings (is that the name of the guy that set the record for number of consecutive wins?)I would have to reply-I DON'T KNOW!!! I realize that it has only been two weeks but I want it NOW!! I took the rest of my documents to the Great Seal this morning so everything else is certified. I'm in the process of playing a silly game with myself-do I Fed Ex these documents to the courier and get them authenticated now or do I wait until I have the 171 and get them all authenticated at the same time? I keep trying to figure out which way would work best and coming up with what if scenarios. Like-what if I Fed Ex all of the documents to the courier to have her get everything authenticated and my 171 comes while I am gone? Should I ask my mom to get my 171 certified, have the Fed Ex envelopes and additional check made out so that she could pop them in the mail to get done on an expedited basis so that everything would be waiting for me when I got home? What if I waited until I got the 171 then paid to have everything expedited? Ugghhhh, I can't make a decision.
My poor son is now used to me calling him at home when I am on my way home from work. Every day. For the last week. He now answers the phone, Hi Mom, nope it's not here yet. Poor kid. But I am very fortunate he has such a good heart. He never used to get the mail but since L has been gone and he knows we are waiting on this one last document he took it upon himself to retrieve the mail everyday, hang around the house until I call just to give me an update. You know what the sad part of this is? By the time I am in my car driving home and he actually gets home from school, I am 20 minutes away from home. Is that anxious or what? I can't wait 20 minutes? I have to get a grip...

Come on 171!

I am so impatient. As everyone knows we are only waiting on our 171H to complete our dossier. Our homestudy was sent last Monday to meet up with the rest of our paperwork, it has not even been two weeks yet and I am already crawling out of my skin. I feel so much pressure to get this form ASAP because I leave to go out of town next Tuesday. I will not be back until Saturday night. If the form comes while I am gone, I will not be able to take it to get certified until the following Monday. If I have to certify it that Monday then send it to get authenticated, we may not make it under the wire to be DTC in May. I think I will cry buckets and buckets of tears if that happens. I keep reminding myself that this will happen in the time that it is supposed to happen but it is so hard to be in this holding pattern.
I am back into the cry at everything mode right now as well. L has been out of town for a week and will be gone for another 10 days. I miss him so much it hurts. This is the longest we have been apart since our days in the Marine Corps. I am so used to being able to express my fears and anxieties to him and having him make me feel better that not having him here right now is tough. So come on 171!!

Love and Heartache

I have been thinking alot lately about the people that I have loved and lost. The one year anniversary of my father's death is fast approaching. I miss him so much. He is the one missing piece in our journey. My dad LOVED kids. His grandkids used to love to spend time with him and I am so sad that Koli won't be able to experience the silliness that was so much my dad. He used to do things like make up silly songs with words like -If I had a nickle, I'd buy you a pickle and if I had a dime, I'd buy you a lime which would cause any kid in his vicinity to fall into fits of laughter. He would have been such a supporter of us and I really miss his presence.

My mother in law would have been right there with us as well. It might have taken her a while to get used to the idea but I have no doubt that she would not have already been planning on her and my father in law traveling with us to China so that she could meet her newest grand daughter.

I have also been thinking about M alot. With W, his twin, getting ready to graduate from high school, I can't help but reflect on all of the what might have beens had M lived. I remember feeling as if someone had physically ripped open my chest and pulled my heart out of its resting place when M died. The feeling of imbalance and overwhelming sadness that enveloped me for months and in some ways, years after M died which was only softened by the knowledge that I will see him again in Heaven where we will be together for eternity.

While thinking about M, I started thinking about the kind of sacrifice Koli's birth parents were forced to make. I cannot imagine having to make the choice that her birth parents had to make. I think about how I felt when M died and it hurts me to the core to think that her birth parents are experiencing that same kind of pain. All of the hopes and dreams they must have had while carrying her, then having to make the life altering choice to leave her somewhere where they knew she would be found. Having their hopes and dreams then change from what their family would be like to hoping and dreaming (I'm sure) that she be found and placed with a family that would love her. Forever. The love and heartache that they must be experiencing is mind numbing.I pray that they are given peace somehow in knowing that her forever family will love and protect her. She will hopefully one day accept Christ and join us in Heaven as part of the real forever family. While we have her here on earth we will never forget the love, pain and sacrifice her birth parents made and how it was because of them that we were given this most precious gift, our daughter.

One Step Closer!

I met with our social worker today over lunch where we exchanged paper, me giving her a check, her giving me..... OUR HOMESTUDY! She showed me the documentation that she did indeed send our paperwork to the USCIS/BCIS/INS (I've been informed that I keep calling the government agency by the wrong name but nobody can seem to tell me what the real name of the week is) so I will refer to it from now on as the agency that will send us our 171H-the only document that we are waiting on now. I am so excited!
We are one giant step closer. I ended up missing 3 days of work this week due to illness so I didn't take today off to get the other documents certified as I had originally planned. It turned out to be for the best since had I taken the day off, I would have been getting the other documents certified and would have missed the opportunity to pick up my homestudy. So my new plan is to take a day off sometime next week, get all of those documents certified then sent to the Chinese Consulate to get authenticated. Once I receive the 171H I will expedite that one document. It really looks like we are going to be DTC in May! If everything continues like it currently is then November will be when we receive our referral. Today was definately a good day.

Perspective

I received a message on my answering machine this afternoon from our social worker letting me know that the draft she had sent in to our adoption agency had been approved so we now need to set up a time for me to pick up the printed official version from her! Oh happy day!! After I listened to the message twice, I started feeling bad about how much I have vented regarding the lag in getting the homestudy completed. When I really sit down and put this into perspective, we started this process at the beginning of February. It is now the end of April and I will have my homestudy within the next day or two. Still not to shabby for timing, it's that control thing that I talked about in my previous posts. Any time I am not in control of a situation I lose my comfort zone. So, I am now back in love with my social worker. She really is a cool chick and I have learned a ton from her regarding China adoptions. Watching her with her adopted daughter has been wonderful, like giving me a small glimpse of what is to come for our family.
Speaking of love-I love Steven Curtis Chapman. I have been listening to a particular CD of his every day for months because of the song he wrote about adoption. He and his wife have adopted three daughters from China and the words to this song move me.

When Love Takes You In-by Steven Curtis Chapman

I know you've heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You've heard about a place called home
But there doesn't seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

And somewhere while you're sleeping
Someone else is dreaming too
Counting down the days until
They hold you close and say I love you
And like the rain that falls into the sea
In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

And this love will never let you go
There is nothing that could ever cause this love to lose its hold

Chorus

Aaahhh, I love that song. I can't wait until this love we have for her takes Koli in and she really knows that she belongs here.

Is it a homestudy?

I am very scared to post this for fear that I will jinx myself. I received an email from my social worker today telling me that our homestudy should be in the hands of the USCIS today!!!! I'm a little scared to believe it since we just went through the whole*you will have your home study tonight but not really fiasco* but if this is true-holy cow!!!! So I have tears in my eyes, fear in my heart (that it maybe didn't really go out like she said)and overwhelming joy at the prospect that we may be so close to the end of the great paper chase and edging ever closer to the big "wait". I can take the "wait" I think better than this cycle that we are in. At least with the "wait" I can pretty much know that it will be 6 months at the earliest before we know who Koli really is.
Who Koli really is....what a statement. I already know her in my heart. She is my daughter. What joy that gives me to write s-h-e i-s m-y D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R!!!! I may not know what she physically looks like yet but I feel that on the deepest level our hearts are already connected.

It's a Two-fer

Some days I can't bring myself to post anything just because there has been no activity to report. Other days (like today) I feel like I have so much to say that I could post twice. So that's what I am doing. I sent an email to my social worker to see what the status of our home study was. She responded by telling me that she has not been able to open up the rough draft that I had emailed her last week. I know that she successfully opened it last week because I was on the phone when she did it. So the wait continues...
My family is getting me so excited. I love to talk to my older sister about Koli. She seems so genuinely interested and happy for us that I wish I could wear my cell phone permanently attached to my ear and talk to her continuously. She really is one of our biggest cheerleaders and it makes me so happy! She lives halfway across the country from me but you can bet that I will move heaven and earth to get her home to meet Koli once we return from China. L keeps telling me that if he is unable to make the trip (depending on the time of travel vs. his work schedule) he wants me to take my sister. She is very crafty (in the true sense of the word craft, like making craft-like items-not in the icky sense of the word like sneaky crafty) and I have no idea how she creates all of the really cool things that she does for her children. For a time she lived close to us and I can remember being so envious of her children for having such a fun mom.
My mom and I were on the phone today and I approached her about the idea of having her travel with me and Koli when I have to go out of town for my job. She was very supportive and enthusiastic about the idea which made me so excited. I don't get enough time with my mommy (my own fault) and the thought of being able to experience new things with both her and Koli just puts a smile on my face. How fun to be able to look forward to making my travel for my job not just a job but an adventure! I think my heart would be ripped out if I had to leave Koli with L (not that he wouldn't do a great job) but the boys were old enough to understand what I was doing when I first started going out of town on business and I never want to do anything to make Koli doubt her level of security and well being from her mommy and daddy before she can understand it all. Besides, I'll help her rack up her own set of frequent flyer miles (and my mom) which will enable us to travel to see W more often wherever he lands for his permanent duty station.

Camouflage and Ballet Slippers

We are still waiting for the ever elusive final home study to be completed. L&I decided to go ahead and get all of the other paperwork certified and authenticated while we are waiting and we will have the home study and USCIS approval expedited (read pay loads more money to get done quickly)once it finally arrives. If we do this if there are any errors or anything that needs clarification in the rest of our dossier we can get those corrected without holding up the process by waiting to send the whole thing together. Besides, this makes me feel like I am still moving forward which makes L happy because he does not like it when his half crazed wife with glassy eyes stares at him at 3:00 am wanting to know how a home study could be so complicated as to hold up the process as long as it has. So, I will be taking Friday off from work, driving to the Great Seal then sending the documents via courier to the Chinese Consulate next week.
L is leaving soon for a two week trip which involves hunting large scary bears. We decided to take a trip to Cabela's yesterday to pick up any last minute items he needed. In my mind, last minute items fell into the -great I can spend time with my husband, get a free breakfast and lunch out of the day and be home in time to cook dinner-no way, no sirree. Not on the same page as my husband at all, heck probably not even reading from the same book. We had to SET THE ALARM to be sure that we were awake by 6:00 am on the road by 7:00 am then proceeded to spend the entire day in that store-we did not leave there until 5:00 pm. If the amount of money that we spent on "last minute items" really was for things he thought of at the last minute then I am probably very glad that I have no idea how much he spent really getting ready for this trip.
Anyway-while wandering the store for hours we began talking about Koli. I started telling him about how excited I was that we would be able to buy a pink Barbie Jeep(this topic came up on one of the lists I visit so I was pretty geeked) for her to ride around in instead of the big blue Monster Truck that the boys had when they were small. He looked at me as if I had grown a third eye and calmly began telling me that there would be no pink Jeep, that they now make gas powered mini-4 wheelers (in camo color of course). Which started a whole huge conversation about how we were going to decorate her room-in my minds eye I can envision ballerinas and princesses and beautiful tones of pinks and purples and greens, while having this conversation we are wandering through the home furnishing section of the store when all of a sudden L stops, his eyes begin to bulge and he can hardly speak, so he points. My eyes follow his pointy finger to see what has him so dog gone excited. His finger is pointing towards a very small child size recliner and couch-in camo!! His words start tumbling out very quickly something like this "I'mexcitedIcan'tbelievetheymakethisstuffsosmallshecanhavetheseinherroomitwillbesocool" What?! I have parented three boys into men, had to look the other way when they wanted to decorate their rooms in posters of pin-up girls, placed permanent room deodorizers in half of my house, pretended to love listening to the heavy metal bands that I cannot for the life of me understand the lyrics to and now L thinks that Koli should have her very own camo colored 4 wheeler and camo colored furniture? I have no idea how I am going to incorporate camo and ballerina slippers into a decor that works but boy am I glad that I'm going to get the opportunity to try.

Someone Let Me Off This Crazy Ride!

Remember in my last post when I described my life as a roller coaster? Well, I was not kidding. Our social worker made it a point to call me yesterday just to let me know that she was finishing up our homestudy and that I could expect the rough draft later that evening. Loaded with anticipation I stayed up LATE waiting for its arrival. Finally I had to make the decision-stick tooth picks in my eyelids to keep them from closing or go to bed. I chose the less painful of the two options and then checked my email this morning. Still no homestudy. So I emailed our social worker who then left me a voice mail at my office telling me that she should not have told me that she would have it done yesterday, that she has had some scheduling conflicts come up and she does not know when she will have it done. @@#%&*!!. Why make it a point to call me to let me know that the report would be done only to pull the carpet out from under me? I think I'm back on the roller coaster and I want off...

One Step Closer

We had our final meeting with our social worker last night. She had me pretty freaked out the night before we met, she couldn't find one of the reference letters and thought she was going to have to send it out to have it completed again. I was about beside myself all night long thinking about that possibility. Fortunately the next morning I received an email from her letting me know that she had found it. She called me once the morning of our meeting to ask me a question then called again a couple of hours before we met to continue asking me questions. She was typing our homestudy as we were on the phone. Unfortunately she did not complete it in time to bring to dinner for us to approve so I am once again waiting for her to finish it. Once we receive the rough draft we have to look it over and if there are any discrepancies we have to let her know (please pray that everything is complete and correct when she sends it to us) Once we have reviewed it and approved it she will send the final copy to the USCIS and to our adoption agency. I am really hoping that she can get our rough draft done this week. If she does, there is still a possibility we could be DTC in May!
This is such a roller coaster ride. Half the time I feel like I am at the top of the roller coaster hill, looking down at everything feeling absolutely on top of the world. The other half is spent in sheer terror-you know the kind-where you are rushing down a coaster hill, through a loop, entering darkness and feeling like you are going to throw up. That is my life right now. I need some more time on top of the coaster hills.

Princess Breakfasts & China

We just returned this afternoon from 10 days in Florida. We love to camp at the Disney campground and this year, with friends in tow, we tackled the campground again. This camping at Disney thing has turned into quite the tradition, we have been doing it for the past 8 years. Last year I found myself thinking about the fact that I would only have two years left of enjoying the boys in these surroundings where they are so happy and carefree. This year was completely different. I had never attended the Princess breakfast before (for some reason I could never get L and the boys to agree to go) but this year two of the families that camped with us had little girls so I made reservations for all of the moms and daughters (I took D's girlfriend). I was awestruck. The whole experience was wonderful. As I was eating my food, watching the interaction between mothers and daughters and princesses, it suddenly occurred to me that by this same time next year I will have Koli. I will have her to experience all of the magic and wonder of new experiences with. In a few years I will dress her up in the princess costume of her choice, invite her Daddy to dine with us, and watch the sparkle in her eyes as Princesses she will have only known from books and movies suddenly come alive.

I needed this vacation so much more than I even realized. It was wonderful interacting with the boys and L (and D's girlfriend) without the usual time constraints on our family that we are held to at home. My family made it a point of visiting Epcot where we spent an unusual amount of time in the China pavillion. It was almost like without speaking the desire, we all wanted to explore this pavillion, speak to the workers, eat the food, do everything we could to feel a little closer to the country where our daughter and sister will be coming from. No one wanted to leave, we bought souvenirs from the store then laughed at ourselves at the fact that we were buying things made in China when we would actually be traveling to China early next year. It was a great experience and I am so thankful to have witnessed the interest that all 3 boys displayed in learning everything they could about their sister's homeland.
The time away did alot to help with my frustration levels as well. I am back now and this Friday we will meet with our social worker, it seems much more tolerable now than it did three weeks ago when I first found out about the delay. From now until Friday I am just going to keep reliving my vacation-going to my "happy place" in my head and reminding myself that this time next year, we will have our own sweet princess.

Roadblocks

We were scheduled to have our last visit with our social worker last night. She was going to bring the rough draft of our home study for us to look over and approve and would have had the final draft ready to go within two weeks. Early yesterday afternoon she called and asked to reschedule-for APRIL 15TH!!!@#$%! So now we will not see the rough draft until April 15th and will have to wait a few more weeks for her to finish the final draft. Waaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

We got fingerprinted this morning so we really are only waiting on this one last piece. I am so frustrated. I was so confident that we could be DTC in April, then resigned myself to May and now could have our DTC date pushed back until June. I feel like I could jump out of my skin right now. L keeps telling me that we knew there would be hurdles but darn it, my legs are short and I don't feel like I can cross over this hurdle right now. Time has taken on a whole new meaning for me since we started this process.

Ugghhh, I told you I hate not being able to control things.

What Did You Say?

I love my extended family. They are one great bunch of individuals. When I told them all that we were adopting, a few had their mouths open unintentionally, more began to speak enthusiastically, and a couple even cried (good tears, not holy cow are you absolutely out of your minds get the straight jacket kind of tears). The few that were shocked were classy enough not to say anything negative. I have two aunts that were present when I made the announcement. Boy do I love those ladies. Both were so loving and excited. I was engulfed in a room full of love.

After announcing to my family of our intentions and getting a really positive response I thought that I could tackle the world and everyone would be just as enthusiastic. I was so wrong. To anyone that is reading this (and you may or may not know who you are) let me educate you a little bit. We decided to adopt Koli (that's right, Koli-short for Kolaina-and I do not care whether or not you like the name, if I wanted to get your opinion I would have called you on the phone and invited you over to my house to have a let's name the H's daughter party, notice the lack of invitation?) our daughter, from China because that is where the Lord is leading us. No, I have no desire to have another biological child so that she would really be ours-Koli really will be ours. No, I do not care to "borrow" your daughter to see what I am getting myself into. Yes I am sure that we are supposed to do this even "at our age". No I have not lost my mind-okay maybe I have but I assure you that if I have lost it, it happened somewhere over the Atlantic years ago, but that's a whole different story.
(Sorry, I have the italic's thing stuck right now so the rest of this will be written like this unless I can figure out how to turn it off!)

To all of our family and friends that have been supportive-thank you, thank you, thank you. Your encouragement and support is what keeps us going some days. You all make the disappointment we feel at those that try to steal our joy bearable.

And as I was saying-I love my extended family-the classiest bunch of people I know. :)

I Love You/You Love Me...

I was thinking today of all of the birthday parties and celebrations we have to look forward to with Koli. This got me reminiscing about those types of events that we shared with the boys. One year my mother in law arranged to have Barney appear at D & W's joint birthday party. My boys were never into that crazy purple dinosaur and I tried to convince my mother in law that having Barney appear at a birthday party for a bunch of 7 & 8 year old boys was probably not such a great idea. She thought I was crazy, that everyone loved Barney. I still pity the poor soul that was in the Barney costume that day. Upon the announcement that Barney was in the building, W stopped in the middle of unwrapping a present, got this mischevious look in his eye that I knew meant nothing good was going to happen, let out a war cry that the finest indian chief would have been proud of and immediately ran to Barney, knocked him down and began pummeling him. The whole party erupted into utter chaos after that. L spent a good portion of the next 10 minutes pulling little boys off of the poor dinosaur.
I think about having birthday parties for a little girl and just can't imagine a group of ponytailed lil' sprites beating up on Barney.

The Social Worker Cometh

We had our first homestudy in our home last Friday (the first two were at different locations). I suffered from insomnia on Thursday night, probably from stress. I was stressed about everything-was my house clean enough, what should I serve for lunch, etc. I was so obsessed I went out and bought the little safety plugs you plug into the outlets that are not in use. That caused L and the boys to have a terrific laugh at my expense. They kept thanking me for keeping all of them from certain death by being tempted to put something, like a fork into the sockets that were not safety plugged up to that point. I know, I know, I'm becoming a crazed woman. So anyway, the social worker was here all day, she adopted her daughter from China 9 years ago so we got to watch her video which was quite interesting. I 'fessed up and told her that we had put our house up for sale and would be moving to our house on the water. Not such a great thing to say as I soon found out. She was adamant that I would have to be able to prove to her that we would be able to keep Koli safe from the water. I tried to get her to go take a look at the house while she was up here (she lives an hour away and we have to pay mileage) but she wanted nothing to do with my one stop shopping approach. So, she will have to schedule a visit to our new home once we are all moved in and safety features are firmly put in place. At least it will not hold up our process, we can send in an addendum to the home study after it is logged in to China. So after our day of emotional exhaustion (okay so the emotional exhaustion was only on my part) L didn't even break a sweat-he kept telling me that this was meant to be and the Lord was in control of this visit so I needed to stop worrying. One thing that we did find out which was pretty cool is that our social worker is a Christian. So all things worked together for good. One more visit with the social worker and our fingerprint appointment then it is time for me to relinquish all control. Relinquishing control is not something I do well,oh the lessons I am learning through this process.

Reality Sets In

So I was so very excited thinking I could pull all of these things together in time to be DTC by the end of April...
Enter reality. I have gathered all of the documents I need to gather, have our 3rd of 4 homestudy visits scheduled for tomorrow, have our 4th homestudy appt scheduled for March 25th where we will go over the rough draft of the homestudy, have our fingerprint appointment on March 26th but then I have to relinquish all control and put myself completely at the mercy of other people. Once we approve the homestudy report our social worker said that she will do everything she can to get our completed report back to us by the middle of April. We can't get our 171 government approval until the social worker sends the homestudy in to the approval agency so we are now looking at not being DTC until May. I'm so bummed. I used to laugh at the people in the adoption chat rooms that said that they would become emotional for no apparent reason just like when you are pregnant. Well, the last laugh is on me. I am an emotional wreck. I know that Koli is in China, and I am praying that she is at least getting her basic needs met. But I want to go get her now! I can't wait to hold that sweet baby in my arms and when I think that we have just really started this process it is enough to make me crazy. I am going to beg and plead with our social worker tomorrow to get her to try to finish our homestudy earlier in April but I'm not sure how successful I will be. I can't even bribe her with cookies since she is on a diet-how do I know this? I already broached the subject with her. So my lil' ole controlling self will have to learn to knit or something. I have thought of beginning a 100 wishes quilt but I know that I will need my mom's help to get that completed (the quilt is made by asking people to pick out a piece of fabric that is meaningful to them-either because it is something that they own,like a piece of an apron or a shirt, or a new piece of fabric that represents something that the person loves. Then they would write their wish on the piece of fabric and send it to me. I would combine all of the fabric wishes into a quilt and it would be Koli's 100 wishes quilt. That actually might be just the ticket to keep me occupied. We will see.

Patience is a virtue

Yesterday I received a phone call from the woman who will be doing our homestudy. I had been in email contact with her a couple of times before she was our "official" case worker so she is familiar with the start date of our paperchase process (we started February 2nd). She is absolutely amazed at the "lightning speed" way that we have moved through this process. I think that we have been blessed by living in a small community. We were able to walk in and get L's birth certificate, our marriage license and criminal clearance letters for me, L, W & D in less than a week. Our physician was able to get our bloodwork and physicals completed in 5 days and our tax return just happened to be finished on the same day that we were heading into the neighboring town where our accountant is located. So we have mailed our I-600A and are now waiting for the fingerprint invitation and have scheduled our homestudy visits through March. Our social worker thinks that she will be able to have our completed homestudy to us by the middle of April. In the middle of my enthusiasm upon hearing this good news I gushed-Great! We could be DTC by the end of April then couldn't we? My social worker immediately felt the need to find the biggest pin she had in her arsenal and pop my big ole happiness balloon by telling me that there was no way we could be DTC by April and will be lucky if we squeeze in by the end of May. I am choosing to continue to travel down my rosy path and still think we could be DTC by April. Kolaina is waiting for us. I can feel it in the deepest part of my soul. Our daughter has been born and is waiting for her Mommy and Daddy to come pick her up. The thought of not even being able to start the countdown process until the end of May makes my eyes well up with tears. Nope, we are going to be DTC in April, I have to remind myself over and over-patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue....

And so it begins...

When I first started investigating the possibility of adopting, I kind of figured that there would be some paperwork involved. Let me just say - Holy Cow!! I have made good progress in my opinion. So far I have applied for and been accepted by our adoption agency of choice, contacted the social worker to begin our homestudy, written my autobiography (L has not started his, promises to do it tomorrow) received my certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage license, applied for my passport (L already had his), gotten our notarized criminal clearance letters from our County Sheriff's Dept., will send in our I-600A application on Tuesday since mail won't go tomorrow, and L & I have gotten our blood drawn and have physical appts scheduled for Thursday. Hopefully we will be able to meet with our social worker for round 1 of 4 visits this upcoming week.

I really, really, really want to be DTC by May so I am hoping that the social worker can fit us in for our visits fairly quickly as well as hoping for a quick invitation to get fingerprinted.

If we are DTC by May, we could have Koli home for Christmas! What would be perfect would be if we could have her home for Thanksgiving but that is probably pushing it. With W heading off for boot camp in the fall, he will probably be graduating sometime in December. I am petrified that we will get our travel dates and that they will conflict with W's graduation! So I am pushing as hard and as fast as possible to get this stuff done to get a quick DTC date.

All of us would love to be able to allow W to meet his baby sister for the first time at his military graduation.

This is almost surreal, letting one of my babies go while trying my hardest to bring a new baby into this zany family.

How did we get here?

My husband L and I are in our early forties, have three boy/men already and were just about empty nesters. Our boy/men are J-20, W-18 and D-17. J lives on his own, W is a senior and will be heading to Marine Corps boot camp this fall and D is a junior.

We were sort of looking forward to spending time together once D was safely tucked away at college, being able to travel and having no forced agenda in our lives.

About 9 months ago I awoke from a sound sleep with heart palpitations and the knowledge implanted firmly in my brain that I was supposed to travel to China to pick up my daughter. Thinking that maybe I should not have eaten that last piece of sausage/pepperoni pizza because it gave me a wierd dream, I went back to sleep. The next morning the feeling was still there. I tried talking myself out of this feeling for 3 months, praying for the Lord to take this crazy desire out of my heart. Having pretty intense discussions with the big Guy with me asking questions of Him like-Who in their right mind adopts a baby when their existing children are almost grown? and Don't you realize how old we are? So I prayed, and I prayed and I prayed. The desire did not go away and only became stronger. After 3 months of this type of discussion with Him, I approached my husband. He thought I was having a mid-life crisis or had hit menopause early and also said that I was completely crazy. I agreed with him on the crazy part but explained my feelings and how I had spent alot of time in prayer over this. He agreed to pray as well. So for the next few months he would ask me every once in a while if the desire was gone-I would answer him honestly that no it was not. After about the 3rd month of this he asked me once more if the desire was gone, I told him no and he said "I have been praying for the Lord to take the desire out of your heart and instead he has put it in mine". So that's how we got here. Two middle aged parents of 3 boys beginning the journey of their lifetime to bring their daughter, the one that the Lord has intended for them all along, home.