LSC is in!!!!!!

Wow, I'm still stunned as I type this entry for our adoption blog!! We received the call from our agency today at 1:30 that our LSC from China is in!! That is the Letter Seeking Confirmation, which basically says that China says they officially match us with Anna and that we can adopt her. We were told just last week that this step could take 5-12 weeks to come in and in just over ONE week we got the call!! I can hardly believe it!! So, all that to say this bumps up EVERYTHING now big time!! In fact Jaime and I had plans for dinner out tonight for date night and instead we will be ordering in so we can work on our adoption stuff.

The lady from the agency said we are looking at a travel time of 3 to 4 months so, in either March or April we will be going to China to get our precious, absolutely adorable daughter Anna!! I seriously can hardly stand it!!!! (can you tell??) Thank you Jesus for this early Christmas gift! First, Thanksgiving Day and now this! Wow!!

Just had to share the latest and I'll keep updating as we know more with every step! Please continue to pray for us as we are getting closer and closer to bringing our daughter home! We appreciate the prayers already being lifted up in our behalf!!

~Melissa and Jaime

Pre-Approved!!!

Ok, if you are like me and watch Saturday Night Live on occasion and you know who the 'Target Lady' character that Kristin Wiig plays is, then that is what comes to mind when I say we have been 'Approved'!! ;-) If you have NO idea what I'm talking about, disregard the first part of this post!

After we sent our Letter of Intent last week they told us we would get our pre-approval in 2 to 4 weeks and it was 1 1/2 weeks (late yesterday) that we received it!! I love it when things happen quicker than what they tell us! The next major step is getting our training done while we wait for our LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation) which is something we will receive from the Chinese government! They said that can take anywhere between 5 to 12 weeks to get that (so we are hoping for the 5 weeks) and once we get that then we are looking at 3 to 5 months to travel to China to get our baby girl!

I emailed our agency today to ask this question...has there ever been a time where someone has received the pre-approval to later be denied to adopt that child and her answer was..."To date that has NEVER happened!!" That was music to our ears, and so pretty much from here on out is just formality stuff to get through until we can bring home our 3rd daughter! We have decided to name our daughter Anna. We wanted to stay with an 'A' name like her older sisters have and the name they have given her was An so we thought that was the perfect name for our perfect daughter!! She is absolutely precious by the way and if you'd like to see pictures of her, please email me and I can send some to you, but for now, we can't post any on our blog, just to be safe! Thanks for understanding!

Just wanted to share the good news with everyone and to ask for continued prayers until we bring 'Anna' home to join our family! Oh, I have another cute story to share about something Abby said...you see, Abby (like her parents) loves sushi and knows it comes from Japan, so when Jaime was showing the girls a map and where we'd fly to get their sister, Abby saw where Japan was and said 'Oh, Japan, can we stop there for lunch??' If only it were that easy! LOL

Thanks again to everyone for your prayers and for being so excited for us, as we are beyond thrilled to be welcoming Anna to our family!! We can't wait for you all to meet her!
Love,
Melissa

Happy Thanksgiving to us!!!

I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving this year! I know for us, we had one that we will NEVER forget, but before I move ahead with what made our day so special I need to back up the story some...(and ya'll know me with details so it's gonna be a long post ;-) !!

I haven't posted in a LONG time (again, just like last time...sorry), but in my last post I stated that we had our home study updated and in that we added that we are willing to take a special needs child from China. Since then, when someone has asked us about the status of our adoption we've been saying that we are still 'waiting' and that we are open to adopting a special needs child because the wait time is much shorter for those kids, so that is more than likely the route we will take! Just another update is that they are placing children with their 'forever families' with log in dates through the end of May 2006 and our log in date is March 5, 2009, so still a LONG, LONG way to go!!

Last month, I was out with some girls from my Sunday School class and one of the girls had just gotten back from China. Her and her husband had visited some family members who are missionaries there and told us stories of the orphanages and some of the sad things she had seen. Well, that next day Jaime and I were talking about that and had said 'We have got to get over there and get our baby girl and bring her home soon'. Well that SAME day, a lady from our adoption agency who works with the special needs department within our agency called us. Our adoption agency has never called us out of the blue in the 2 years we've been on this journey, so needless to say we were surprised. Anyway, she asked if we were still interested in adopting a child with special needs as it was stated in our updated homestudy (the one we updated in April, and again this was October...they never called til today) and we told her that we were. She then told us that once a month a shared list comes out for all the agencies to look through and if that agency picks a child from that list there is a 'lock' put on that child meaning no one has access to it except for the family that the agency chose it for. That family then has 72 hours to make a decision on whether or not they want to proceed to adopt that child. Hopefully that all makes sense...Anyway, the day Stephanie (lady from adoption agency) called that night was when the shared list was coming out and she told us if she found a good match for us, be expecting a call anytime that evening even up until midnight! So, we anxiously awaited for the phone to ring but it never did. She emailed the next day saying that there weren't that many kids as anticipated there would be on the list.

So, now to November...well the day the list was to come out for this month was this past Monday and again we waited but no call. We were fine with that and just accepted the fact that even with adopting a special needs child it may take awhile too.

Ok, so now to Thanksgiving Day...Jaime was on shift and I was at home and it was late, around 11:30 and Jaime calls and says he had a missed call and a voicemail but before he checked it, he checked his email and there was one from Stephanie with the subject; LITTLE GIRL LOCKED! She had found a girl and she was locked for only us to look at! Jaime then listened to his message and it was Stephanie, saying the same thing as her email. She sent us her medical records and even a few pictures of the little girl! All we can tell you is she is 16 months old and her 'special need' is that she has a cleft lip and palate.

After much prayer, discussing it, and having a doctor look over her medical records we have decided to proceed forward and adopt this precious little girl! If this is God's Will and everything goes according to plan this little girl will be our 3rd daughter!!!! We are beyond thrilled and wanted to share it with all of you! There still is so much to do so with that, they say the time frame we are looking at from now until we travel to China is 5 to 8 months so we should have her just before her 2nd birthday, which is July 25th! We told the girls today and they are so excited to be getting their little sister! It was just precious and so sweet with Abby, our oldest, that when we showed them her picture and they saw her cleft lip Abby said 'I'd love her with or without that lip'...ahhh, just made me want to cry!!

Please continue to pray for us during this journey as now there is an end in sight!! I will DEFINITELY be updating the blog much more often until we bring our baby girl home!!
Thank you!!
~Melissa

It's updating time...

Ok, wow, sorry as it's been a REALLY, REALLY long time for an update. I had no idea I hadn't updated our blog since August 2009, but that is the last time I did! Anyway, as the title says it's updating time; time to update the blog and time for us to update our paperwork. Every 15 months or so while we are still waiting we have to update some of our information like our homestudy so we met with Tiffany, our social worker, this past weekend. This week I went in to have another physical so that will be updated as well and have bloodwork done too, and Jaime goes in for that tomorrow! I'm pretty confident that all will go well, as we have been blessed with good health! We will also have to update our fingerprinting as well, and a few other things.

China has placed children with their 'forever families' through April 17th of 2006, and our log in date was last year, March 5, 2009. We have 'officially' been waiting just over a year and have many, many more to wait! Just to keep you in the loop, last year alone families with log in dates of the month of March 2006 were placed with their children. So, in one entire year, they went through just one month! So, even though we are three years from our log in date, it will take a lot longer than that to get to us...make sense?? A question from many of you is...'What if the wait is just too long, will you drop out and not adopt?' And our answer to that is ABSOLUTELY NOT!! We are the parents of 3 girls... period!! So, what's next?? When we started this process over 1 1/2 years ago we knew the wait could be as long as 3 to 4 years and we were prepared for that. We've only been waiting one year so we plan on waiting another year or so, and if the wait looks like it could be another 7 to 8 years (or something crazy like that), then our next option is to look into the special needs program with our agency. We've already submitted our application for that program but we would then just actively pursue a special needs daughter if and when the time is right and we feel like God is calling us to do that. We are still waiting but that is our next option if and when the wait becomes too long! Hope that makes sense and answers your question regarding if we'd ever pull out of the adoption.

A cute story about our youngest, Avery...you see she was only 2 when we started this journey and now that she is almost 4, she is really starting to understand what is going on. She prays for her 'little sister' from China almost every night and refers to herself as a big sister. One night when I was letting Abby stay up longer than Avery and we were going to play a game, Avery asked 'Mommy, when we get my little sister from China, and I'm a big sister, then can I stay up later than her and play a game?'....so cute! Our girls are so excited and can not wait either, just like us, to meet their little sister!

Thanks to everyone who continues to pray for us through this journey and I can not wait until the day comes for us to bring our daughter home from China!! What a day that will be!!!
Love,
Melissa