Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Happy Christmas Eve everyone!!! We hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season. We have been trying to soak up all the Christmas events we can with decorating our house, seeing the lights around town, a holiday show and of course lots and lots of peppermint mochas!!

We did lose someone very important to us this month and we know that Grandad is in heaven watching over us now. We will always remember his sweet smile, kind heart and the many memories we were able to have with him. The cabin that he and my grandma owned and the times I spent there are the center point of many many childhood memories for me and he will always have a special place in my heart.

We have come a long way since this post last year and even though we haven't been matched yet, we have accomplished a lot this year and grown stronger both personally and as a couple. We have had so many lessons in patience that I think we have finally gotten the message. We will be matched when it is our time and we will be overjoyed, but it's not something we can rush. No amount of tears or frustration will change that, trust me I have already tried!

We can't say it enough, thank you everyone for your support. We can't wait to celebrate with you when we are matched! We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

November shared list

Well folks, the November shared list came out last night and once again our kiddo wasn't on it.

Last month I fell apart and completely lost faith. I am not proud of how I acted.
So this time I'm making the decision to hold it together. We are sad, but we can't lose sight that this will happen. It's not our month and that's ok.

On the upside, the holiday season is my FAVORITE time of year and I'm looking forward to enjoying it with friends and family.

 I know I say this a lot, but we really appreciate you guys sticking it out this past year with us. I know that it's hard to know what to say, especially for those who have never had experience with adoption. We really appreciate your thoughts, prayers and support and that's probably part of the reason we were able to feel at peace this month.






I hope many kids found their forever homes this month and we can't wait until it's our kid's turn!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Oh Hi!

Hi there! Remember us?
It appears that we have been a little lazy in the posting department and my wonderful sister in law (Hi Christina!!) informed me that she was tired of looking at my last post, so I promised I would give an update.

First off, no baby news yet. We are waiting for the shared list to come out for November, most likely it will come out the week of Thanksgiving. We are trying not to get our hopes up too high, but we are praying that this will be our month. It looks like if we get matched this month we are looking at spring time travel, which is not what we had anticipated when we started this process, but really not much is how we thought it would be so I'm not sure why we are surprised! I am really working on my attitude and trying to remember that God has a plan, so hopefully there will be no more "woe is me" posts. Hopefully.

In other news we have spent the last month spending time with friends and family, going to CSU football games and taking a trip to Louisville, KY. I was lucky enough to tag along on a work trip Brian took and we made the most of our short time there. We visited 6 distilleries, 2 wineries, the Louisville Slugger factory and Churchill Downs and met up with a good friend and her adorable son (Hi Erin!). It is a BEAUTIFUL area to visit in the fall and I highly recommend it to everyone! I'm not much of a bourbon drinker (that's putting it lightly) but I still had a great time visiting the distilleries and watching Brian drink.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from our trip. I promise to inform you ASAP after the list comes out this month! Thanks for your prayers and sticking with us through this low part of the adoption roller coaster!

Funk

I wish I were talking about this kind of funk

But sadly I am not (although I'm pretty sure I would look awesome with an afro).

As you may have guessed from the silence, we were not matched off of the October shared list. Brian is handling this much better than I am. I have found myself in a funk of just plain being sad.

I'm sad that we haven't been matched. I'm sad that there are orphans that need homes and  families with love and space to spare and everyone is just waiting. I'm sad that the monthly shared lists from China have been smaller than usual with no explanation as to why. I'm sad that I have to walk past our empty baby room for yet another month with no idea of who it will belong to or when he or she will be living there.

So you will have to excuse this downer of a post and (if you have seen me in person) my attitude of late because I just can't fake it right now. I know I will recover and I know we will both be stronger for it, but I'm not there yet.

In the meantime, I offer this picture of a baby elephant as a warm fuzzy trade off for reading my depressing post.

Three Things Thursday

Thing #1: Quick update to let you all know that there is no update yet (aren't you glad you checked the blog today?). The October shared list hasn't come out yet, but with only two weeks left in October, it has to come out soon! We would appreciate any prayers/good thoughts you could send our way that this is our month!

Thing #2: I felt like I was a little harsh on Jen Arnold and Bill Klein aka the Little Couple (I'm just shocked I haven't heard from them yet, but am expecting a call any day now to set up a lunch date) in this post. I was frustrated by how fast and easy they made it seem like everything was moving for their adoptions (especially when ours was very slow and tedious at the time). However this past set of episodes since they brought home their son and have worked towards bringing home their daughter have been truly honest and heartfelt. I'm thrilled they are finally in India picking up their daughter and can't wait to see their new episodes as a family of four.

Thing #3: We have planned another getaway for this month. We thought we might as well get in as many quick trips as we can before we have a kid in tow and things get more complicated! We'll post pictures when we get back, but here is your clue as to where we are going!

The truth

Blog friends, we haven't been completely honest with you. Thus the radio silence for the last few weeks. It has been for good reason, but we promised to share the good and bad of our adoption adventure and we both feel that its time for this part of our story to be shared.

When we posted this, it wasn't 100% true. We were matched off of the shared list that came out in September, but we were matched with a child that was much older than what we had been approved for. We have been approved for a child up to 18 months and we have prayed and talked about this age quite a bit over the last 10 months and really felt like that was our comfort zone for many reasons. It was apparent that this child was not meant to be ours. Our coordinator apologized for the mix up and said she would make sure that the person doing the matching reviewed our choices before the next list came out. We were sad, but ok with it because it was just so obvious that this kiddo wasn't ours.

And then 11 PM the next night the phone rang. It was our coordinator, telling us that she had another match for us. Another family with our agency had been matched off of the shared list and they had declined the match.  Our agency had then thought of us and wanted us to review the file. There was a catch though. The other family had used all but 8 hours of the 72 hour hold on the file. Our agency thought they could just transfer his file to us, but we had to make our decision in that 8 hours. As you might imagine, it was a shock and we were wide awake at that point (which is saying a lot for me, once I'm asleep it usually takes a lot to wake me up!). We spent the rest of that crazy night reading the medical file, looking at the pictures of an adorable little boy and asking ourselves "is this our baby?".  Long story short, we said yes and with that "yes" we had a match and a son. We had waited almost a year for this moment and it had finally come.

Four happy days went by. We were dying to tell everyone, but our best efforts to get those we wanted to tell first together were unsuccessful for various reasons and as it turns out we were glad we weren't able to tell them.

That fourth night we received a phone call from our coordinator. We knew it was bad news just from the tone of her voice. As it turns out, there was a clerical error when this boy's file was being transferred from the first family to us. Somehow when his file was unlocked, it was never officially "re-locked" for us and his file was already gone and locked by another agency for another family.

Bottom line: He wasn't ours and there was nothing that could be done.

As you can imagine, we went through many emotions. At one point I wondered if this was a sign that we weren't supposed to do this, weren't supposed to be parents. It even brings back tears to my eyes to type that sentence. It was too difficult, confusing and painful to talk about with anyone. So, we ran away.

We took an amazing trip to New Orleans and Alabama. This trip had already been planned, but as it turned out it couldn't have come at a better time. We needed to take a breath and we just couldn't do that in Colorado (it's actually hard to do that in New Orleans too, hello humidity!).

So that brings us to today. Today we are ok. We have weathered storms together before and we always come out stronger for it. We are moving forward and trying to have closure and peace in the fact that this was not our child and it is a great thing that there are more adoptive families than available children right now.

Thanks for reading this beast of a post. We are trying to look forward to the next shared list, which will most likely be released in the next few weeks. As you can imagine, we might be a little hesitant to share the news right away when we actually do get matched, but we promise we will share as soon as we feel like it is really happening. We started this blog to share the ups and downs and after this experience we know we are due for an up and can't wait to write about it!

Not yet

A new shared list came out last night and unfortunately our child wasn't on it.
We knew that it was very unlikely to be matched off the first list we were eligible for, but that didn't stop us from getting our hopes up. I think we are realizing that this step may take longer than we had originally thought and our hopes to travel by the end of this year/early next year are probably a bit too optimistic.

Thanks for sticking with us folks, we will hopefully have good news of a match in the somewhat near future!

Somewhat wordless Wednesday

Nothing new on the adoption front (currently waiting for the next shared list to come out).

We had a much needed relaxing Labor day weekend in the mountains.Loved the cool weather and gorgeous scenery. There's just something about being in the mountains that makes my soul happy and gives me peace. It's easy to lose perspective in all the paperwork and busyness that come with adoption. It was nice to take a time out and just be still. 

Hope to update again soon with good news! 

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A little impatience, a lot of progress

Which stands for Dossier to China! 

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you that our adoption process has had a few minor set backs (not that we would ever be bitter or impatient, we are much too zen for that).
However, we are beyond thrilled to be able to report that our dossier (aka our life on paper) is officially winging its way to China (don't mess this up FedEx or you will have one angry almost mama on your hands!). 

I have no idea what the FedEx Panda team is,
but it sure seems like an adorable way for our paperwork to get to China!

Once our paperwork is safely in the care of the Chinese government, we will be eligible to be matched. As we talked about in this post, we are eligible to be matched with a kiddo (or 2, but 99.9999% sure it will only be 1) of either gender, under 18 months old and our baby could have any of the special needs that we have decided that we are comfortable with.

During this time there may be some slow blogging as we will most likely not reveal that we have reviewed a match until after we have decided if that match is our child. We are doing this largely to make sure that we are making the right decision for us and not getting everyone's hopes up, but also because the Chinese government and our agency frown upon advertising a match until we have a few pieces of paper in hand that say our child is officially ours.
China releases a new list of kiddos eligible for adoption once a month, but we have been told that a referral could come at any time. At that point we will have 48 hours to say yes or no. One of the reasons we liked our agency is that they told us up front that their primary focus during matching is on the kids, not us. They want to make sure that kids get good homes and if we don't feel like we can best deal with the needs of a given child there is no shame in being honest and saying so. We don't anticipate saying no to a match as our agency knows us very well by now, but it could happen, once again a reason why we will probably wait to announce a match.

All this to say, thanks for sticking with us so far. I know it has been a long haul since this announcement back in December, but thanks everyone for your support and encouraging words. Hopefully very soon we will have more exciting news!

DTC

Any guesses on what the letters DTC mean in the China adoption world?

I'll leave you in suspense until Monday, but yes this means there is good news!

So have your documents been sent to China yet?

Thanks for asking! 

It could be worse....

We haven't had the greatest adoption paperwork week. We had some setbacks that aren't worth going into detail about, but were ridiculous and hopefully they are taken care of. Still no idea when our documents will FINALLY get to China, but in the interest of having a more positive attitude I decided to look up animals that have a longer gestation period than our adoption is taking. We started our paperwork in November 2012 so we're going on about 8 months and as shown below, it could definitely be worse!

1. Giraffes: 13-16 months, plus they give birth standing up and their babies have to survive the fall to the ground!

2. Manatees: 13 months

I especially love the look on the mama manatee's face as her baby is attempting to eat her arm.
Ahh the joys of parenthood!

3. Dolphins: 17-19 months

4. Elephants: 22-24 months

And finally the longest gestation period I could find (according to professor Google) is the frilled shark with a gestation period of 3.5 years. Seriously, 3.5 years???
Also, frilled sharks are really funky looking animals so I have substituted a picture that won't terrify young children.

So hopefully this post has given us all (mostly Brian and I) a little perspective.
We will return to regularly scheduled blogging when our file is finally on it's way to China!

Stuff we love

Hey all! Sorry for the lack of posts! 

As a change of pace, I thought I would show you some things for the new kiddo that we love. 

We have been really trying to hold off on buying much stuff until we are matched, but it is getting harder and harder the closer we get! 

We have received a lot of great gifts so far for our kiddo and wanted to give a big thank you!

 We REALLY appreciate the love! 

This carrier is very comfortable and will get a lot of use as we have been told that carrying our kiddo helps with attachment. Here's hoping our kid will be as light and easy going as the panda!

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This little puppy is the perfect size to bring to China (packing for this trip will be a whole post itself, I can't even imagine how hard that will be!). Plus with every purchase a donation is made to a rescue shelter. We have always been big advocates of pet adoption and hope to pass this passion on to our child. 

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Along the same lines, anyone in my family can tell you that I had a teddy bear obsession collection when I was young and I have several sizes of this Gund bear that I still can't seem to get rid of (even though they are missing eyes and are obviously falling apart well loved). 
So our baby definitely needs a Gund of his/her own (mostly because I don't share well)!

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Brian bought me this necklace for Mother's Day and I can't even explain how much I love it.
 I love the cut out of China, I love the saying underneath (I searched the world for you) and I love how the saying is a little hidden because our journey to our child is so personal and special. 

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I love this quilt (obviously with China instead of Africa)! It will make a great first comforter for them, as well as a beautiful keepsake for the future. 

Check back soon for more updates! Our documents are in their final stages of being sent around to various consulates around the US and will hopefully be on their way to China in the next few weeks! Once our documents are "logged in" we will officially be eligible to be matched with a child. Can't wait!

Where's Waldo?

Now that our I-800A approval is back, our dossier (aka our entire life in a stack of papers) needs to go through a few steps before it goes to China. I recently asked our coordinator where everything goes and Brian made a little visual.

Makes perfect sense, right?? 

So our paperwork could be in any one of those cities as we speak.

Hopefully they will be heading along the red arrow by the end of June! 

Watch out for the next step, its a doozy!

Remember this picture and this post?

Well look at it now!

Yay for check marks!

That final checkmark for the I-800A was done on Saturday when we received this document:

If you can read the tiny writing, it does say that we are approved for 2 children. We are open to twins or siblings, but the chances of it happening with Chinese adoption are incredibly rare, so don't get too excited.

Yes my friends, that means that we are OFFICIALLY done with the paperchasing portion of this adoption! Yes there are lots of papers to be filed once we are matched, but I think the excitement of being matched and finally getting to see a little face that is ours (and FINALLY being able to shop!) will take over and it will feel completely different than this past 7 months has felt. 

So what's next?

The most exciting part! Our dossier is being sent (hopefully today) to be translated and certified. Not sure how long that will take, could be a few weeks, could be a month, but once that is done our documents are sent to our agency's coordinator in China and they will take them to be officially logged in. Once we are logged in we will be eligible to be matched from the shared list (list of kids that are ready to be adopted) that comes out once a month. We are hopeful that we will be eligible for matching with the June shared list, but it's possible that the July list will be our first chance. Either way we are just happy to be looking towards the end of this part of our journey and more than ready to start the next part knowing who our son or daughter is. 

P.S. Extra bonus points if you recognized where the title came from!

An update in 2 pictures

This conversation repeats about every other day, 

which is as often as I'm allowing myself to email them. 

We will let you know when the reply changes! 

Why we need our own reality show

We have been getting asked a lot lately about the show "The Little Couple" and what we think about it.
For those of you who don't know, The Little Couple are Jen Arnold and Bill Klein (You can learn more about them here or here.) They both have forms of dwarfism and are pretty amazing people. We have been fans of the show for a long time. They seem like really nice people and it's fun to watch how they adapt their lives to their small stature and don't let it become an excuse for not experiencing life. Their new season just started and the season premiere showed them deciding to pursue the adoption of a little Chinese boy with dwarfism.

First let me say, I love love love that they are showcasing special needs adoption and obviously adoption from China is near and dear to our hearts. My issue comes from the fact that it is a little frustrating to watch how "fast" their process is moving. I am well aware of the magic of reality tv and the need for things to move quickly to keep viewers' interest.
The thing is, although you all are very sweet to read our blog and wanting to know about our journey, the reality of adoption is it is A LOT of hurry up and wait. We have been at this for 7 months now and are still probably 5-8 months from getting to bring our child home. It would be nice if they hinted at how long this process actually takes and that even fame and camera crews cannot speed things up.

Their most recent episode showed them deciding to also adopt a little girl from India and in the blink of an eye they were decorating a room and they made it seem as though they would be able to just swing by India on their way home from China and pick her up too. So not true. As far as I can tell, they are now home with their son and they are still waiting to travel to India to bring her home. It sounds like it has been 8-9 months since that video clip where they first heard about her.
That my friends is the reality of the international adoption timeline.

So, we are really happy for Bill and Jen (yes we are on a first name basis. I'm sure they are reading this right now and wanting to become our BFFs) and thrilled that international adoption is getting some tv attention, but if TLC is looking for people to star in a series that truly shows all the waiting, sighing, paper cuts, many trips to the post office and large check writing that REALLY comes with international adoption, give us a call.
We'll be here by our phones. We've gotten really good at waiting.....

WOO HOO!

YAY! Our fingerprinting is DONE!!!

We were a little nervous at first because there was quite a line when we got there at 7:50. And when it was our turn at the desk the USCIS employee gave us MAJOR side eye when we told her that we were told we could walk in early for our appointment. However they just asked us to wait until everyone who actually had appointments went through and then they had no problem getting ours done. These people are SUPER efficient and patient, the DMV folks should take a lesson from them!

We're not really sure what comes next, but this was the absolute last step that we had any control over before we are matched, so now we are just waiting for our paperwork to be processed by who knows how many people before it gets sent to China! We will keep you all updated, thanks for the support!

In case anyone reading is a prospective international adoptive parent, our tips for getting fingerprints done early are to get there at 8:30 instead of 8 to avoid the first rush of people that do have appointments because they have priority. Also don't expect to pass the time by playing on your phone, drinking Starbucks or eating breakfast because they don't allow any cell phones, food or drink and they are pretty serious about it. Other than that just be polite and smile, it was easy!

Tomorrow!

Just a quick update to let you all know that we need massive prayers/good juju/happy thoughts/whatever tomorrow morning as we head to the USCIS office to try to get our fingerprints done earlier than our appointed time. Our real appointment time is only a week away, but if walking in earlier means that we get our paperwork processed a few days faster, then it is SO worth it!

We will let you know how it goes!

Waiting....

It was a huge rush when our I-800A was mailed off. We really felt like we were making progress and things were moving. And then this week comes and we are back to waiting....We received the letter confirming that they received our application. We also received an email from our coordinator, a text message and an email from the government saying the same thing. Nothing like a little redundancy in the process! 

We are now waiting on our letter to let us know when we can go get our fingerprints done. I've never been so thankful that the US postal service didn't cancel mail on Saturdays!  This letter will give us an assigned time to do our fingerprints, but we have heard that if we beg, smile pretty and bring coffee and muffins they *might* let us get them done early. We will let you know when that is so you can send lots of good thoughts our way!

So that's pretty much it. I thought about taking a sad picture of us waiting by our mailbox, but then it snowed 50 feet again so this is the best I could do!

Finally!

Hi all! 

Sorry for the lack of posts, we've been busy dealing with a typical Colorado spring, 60-70 degree days 1 week and 2 feet of snow the next! After growing up in Fargo, I'm very much a snow person, but even I am ready for this snow to turn into rain so that we can start growing things!

The big adoption news is that both our CBI and FBI clearances came back!!!!!

Not only that, but it then took less than a week for our homestudy to be certified by the state!  

                                               

                    

So what comes next? We filled out another form called the I-800A. It basically says that we are ok to adopt a child from China (of course it takes 10 pages to say that, plus asks us to repeat information we have wrote a million times already). It is also the first step in finalizing our future child's US citizenship, which is pretty awesome. The great thing about adopting from China is that our adoption will be 100% finalized in China and our child will be a US citizen the second our plane touches down in the USA. I'm guessing that is going to be a pretty emotional moment for us, hopefully we will be awake and with it enough to recognize that after the 13+ hours we will have spent traveling. 

The I-800A form should take about a month or a little more to process as we also will have to get another set of fingerprints done. We'd appreciate any prayers you feel like throwing our way for fast processing and government employees with this attitude:

We (meaning Brian and his dad) also finished another pre-baby home project on our list this weekend.

We are anticipating the extreme amount of crap toys and equipment that comes with having a child so we wanted to maximize our garage storage. So we got rid of 4 garage shelves and built this instead:

It's pretty awesome as we were able to fit all of the junk very important garage stuff on these shelves PLUS still have lots of empty space. 

So things are moving again and we couldn't be happier. We are still hopeful that we will be matched and travel by the end of the year, but that will require everything to go smoothly and quickly, so many good thoughts and prayers are needed!