Little Affirmations

Brad and I were talking a few nights ago about how we are so madly in love with our little girl all the way across the world! It's crazy that we had only seen 2 pictures and a short 1-minute long video of her. We think God heard our hearts desires without us even having to voice them- because the next day we received an email from our case worker with a new video of our sweet girl- not just a 1 minute clip- but double that- a 2 minute one! These things matter a lot to adoptive parents!! My heart about stopped beating while I literally pulled my car over and watched with anticipation...and fell more in love with our sweet Ella!! I quickly emailed the video to Brad and he did the very same thing. 

Little moments like this just feel like a confirmation or a little pat on the back for us as continue to push towards getting Ella home. We are thankful for these sweet moments that give us a glimpse into our sweet girl in China.

Care Package Sent!

One of the awesome things we get to do now that Ella is almost ours is send care packages! Our agency has someone in China who puts together care packages and gets them to your child. We immediately took the chance to bless our sweet girl and her nannies. We also got to include a picture book with our family photos...so she is seeing our faces for the first time and hopefully becoming familiar with us! Pray that she starts forming attachments to us even now.  We also have a birthday party cake, snacks, pictures/video planned to be delivered on her birthday in July. 

Here is a picture of what we sent her this go round- 

Introducing Ella....

Last Thursday, May 12, we were shocked when we received our first phone call and referral. As it turns out, God was more than ready to hurry up and introduce us to our 4th little love. We are so thankful for that and His timing- we thought we would be waiting for a very long time. We have a lot of amazing details of how God worked that entire day, through the weekend to lead us to accept this sweet girls file. That is a whole other post when I have more time to sit and write! We sent our Letter of Intent on Monday, May 23 and we received Prior Approval from China on Wednesday, May 18th! And just like that- she's ours!!

 But for now, without any further a do...meet our Ella.

She is 3 years old and all smiles!!! We are so completely in love with her. You can probably tell why by those beautiful eyes and precious smile. We are so thankful for her and we have only known about her for 1 week today! We have watched the same video we received in her file over a million times...soaking in each and every feature of our sweet girl- and she is absolutely more than we could have ever dreamed up! We are hoping optimistically for an August or September travel date.

Dear Ella Katherine,
From the moment we laid eyes on you we knew you were ours. So many beautiful instances of God drawing you to our family. You are absolutely gorgeous- we cannot wait to be the reason behind that big smile. You are in our every thought, almost every conversation, and all our dreams. Your sisters keep your picture by their beds at night and pray for you...they no longer call you "our China baby" but now "our Ella". God whispered that name to me as I lay awake last week pondering our life with you- and we think it suits you perfectly. We love you so much and cannot wait to get to China. We would be gone yesterday if we could. You are such a special part of our family- already apart of our hearts.

Love,
Mommy

Girls Passports ✔️

Done! Third time is a charm- and the paperwork for the girls' passports has been sent in! We waited a loooooonnng time to get this accomplished today- but we weren't leaving until it was done!! 

One more step to check off our list! Very exciting news and announcement coming soon...we had an amazing weekend this past week and we can't wait to share our announcement with the world soon. Stay tuned!! 

These goobers were nothing but silly and giddy telling everyone they came in contact with that they would be traveling to China to get their new sister soon. 

Matching Process and the long wait ahead

A little bit of information on how this whole matching process happens. Again- we are learning as we go! 

First eye opening fact: Majority of orphans in China will never have a file written up on them. Orphanages write up files on children at their convenience and in no particular order.

There are 2 ways or types of children to consider adopting from China (CCCWA):

1) LID- Logged In Dossier File -  Children whose files require that a family have their dossier completed and Logged In with CCCWA before they can be matched.  Usually these are very young children with more minor or correctable medical needs and girls up to age 9 with minor to moderate medical needs.  More girls are designated as “LID Files” than boys. *This is what we are doing.

2) Special Focus Files- are children that can be matched with families at any time during the adoption process, even before starting paperwork if their agency has determined they are eligible.  These children have more moderate to severe special needs and are usually older.

Agency Designated/Specific File – CCCWA allows agencies to hold Special Focus files for 90 days to advocate for those children.  In exchange for their efforts they are the only agency that can match those children during that time period.  LID Files can only be held for 3 weeks and only when an agency has a partnership with the child’s orphanage. Our agency has partnerships with 8+ Chinese orphanages and receives these LID files.

When we completed our paperwork we went through a list of 100 or more special needs and prayerfully considered what our family would be comfortable accepting. We could check yes, no, or willing to consider. We had a lot of willing to considers! So now our agency has families that are logged in and waiting for matches...and they go through their lists and match based off of what we have requested and what files they are presented with...in the order of when families got logged into the system.

Our agency will call us when they receive a file that they feel would be a successful match for us and make the referral via phone call. We will get to review a short snippet of the child- and either accept or decline. Once we accept we will get a more in depth file and then wait for our Letter of Acceptance or LOA from CCCWA stating that we can adopt the particular child we matched with. 

While the whole matching process is going on our dossier is being translated, reviewed, and then matched. We will receive notification of when our dossier makes it through each of those levels. Right now it is in translation.

Our agency says that a conservative wait time for our child is between 3-6 months. And so we wait. And we pray. And trust God's timing. Getting all of our ducks in a row is tedious and it often feels like we are controlling everything- but we know that God's got His hand on each and every portion of this adoption and we want to gain this blessing of a child no sooner or later than He has planned for us. 

I hope this helps explain what the matching process looks like a bit more!

Yard Sale

Our Yard Sale was a huge success! I am so overwhelmed and grateful for all of the friends and families that donated towards our sale, and ultimately had a hand in bringing our baby home! We collected things in our garage for months from anyone who had items they were getting rid of. The week before the sale I started organizing it, sorting it, attempting to price things. I also decided to jump the gun and try my hand at online/Facebook yard sale groups- and had a huge success! A lot of the larger items I posted and sold the week before the actual sale. It was a lot of running around and arranging meetings with buyers- but it brought in a lot more cash than I believe we could have made on the items on yard sale morning. 

On the night before the sale, Brad and I set up everything beforehand so we wouldn't have to wake up even earlier than our 5:15 alarm. I was so thankful we did this, and that it didn't rain! We live on a steep incline/mountain so we were not to worried about anyone taking items. My parents and great friend Jame came and we started preparing for shoppers. And they quickly arrived...6:20 we had our first customers....and the people continued to show up at a steady pace all through the morning until around noon! It was neat to talk with people who knew nothing about adoption, or those who had adopted themselves! We met a lot of neat people and enjoyed sharing our story with many. We couldn't have done it without our family and friends!! We were so thankful when the day was done, the leftover junk was loaded and donated, and we could sit down and rest our feet. The grand total for our yard sale was $1,800! I was very thankful and we felt overwhelmed by God's provision. Yard sales are a lot of work- but making close to $2000 for essentially a few days of hard work- was worth it!

LID!!!

We were officially logged in with the CCCWA May 9th! I got a call from my social worker that morning and we were able to talk through a little bit and celebrate together. I knew LID was soon after being DTC, but the excitement of seeing a Birmingham number show up on caller id was just what I needed to make my Monday perfect!

We received a long email from our social worker explaining the next steps...but mostly waiting is what we will be doing for the next period of the adoption. We are waiting to match with a child, and also waiting for China to send us the Letter of Acceptance once we have matched. Then-the next ball will start rolling.