Lots of exclamation points!!!!!

46 days after our application was received, in a wonderful surprise, we received our i800a approval in the mail today! Yippeee!!!!!!!!

All of our documents are ready and we are hoping to send out our dossier to our agency on Monday!!!

So excited!

One step closer to our little girl!!

 

Bumps

Bumps. There have been many of them along this journey so far. Adoption paperwork is not hard. We have done hard in this life and this is not it...not even close. The paperwork is time consuming however and on occasion, makes my brain hurt. :)  I think our experience as a family so far has helped us to adapt quickly when these bumps come along. We know the roller coaster rides that life can offer all too well. Is it frustrating sometimes? Yes!! But after maybe an initial minor freak out, we always come back to the base of this entire journey and that is our faith and the hope that was placed in our hearts.  There is a greater plan at work. When we hold our baby girl we'll understand why our initial plans had to evolve, why this document took a little longer here or there than we expected.  We will understand that despite the bumps along the way, the road is still leading us to to our sweet girl. It's an incredible journey of love that I am so grateful we are making.  

on our way

A blog...Hmm. Not sure how this will work. It only took me over an hour to figure out how to post a background. :) The intention of this blog is to chronicle our journey to adopt our baby girl. We want her to know she was loved, wished for, dreamed of long before we even saw her sweet face. We are parents to four beautiful children. Our daughter, Maeve is almost 13! (yikes!) our son Owen will be 10 in the Spring and our son, Aidan is 7.  Our son Liam was diagnosed in 2008 with an inoperable malignant brainstem tumor (DIPG). He lived so bravely for nearly 14 months before he was healed in Heaven.  He was an incredible boy with beautiful and courageous spririt. We miss him more than word can adequately express. He lives in our hearts and we carry him with us every day. He is and always will at the very heart of our family. You can read Liam's story and learn more about DIPG and ways to help in the fight at www.caringbridge.org/visit/liamreilly
A year after Liam's passing Ryan and I began to feel like we were being called to expand our family. I felt very strongly that God was asking me to do this through adoption. Given the journey of our family we took almost another full year to prayerfully consider  adoption and educate ourselves. When we finally made the decision to pursue the dream that was placed in our hearts we felt such content and renewed hope. This was the journey we were supposed to be making. In May of 2011 we formally submitted our application to our agency and began our journey to our little girl. There have been bumps in the road but more than anything we just feel blessed by this process. We are in the process of compiling our paperwork for our Dossier to China. Next week we have our fingerprinting appointment with USCIS. We hope to go into further detail about our journey thus far and share our experiences as we go. We can't wait to see our little girl's face and learn who she is. She is so very loved and already a part of  her Mommy, Daddy, sister and brothers' heart.