No words needed

Ok maybe a few words. 

Other than our college diplomas and our marriage license, this piece of paper is one of the most amazing and meaningful things we will ever have. 

Feeling very blessed. 

And also a quick shout out to my amazing husband. Happy birthday Brian! No words can describe how much I love you and how proud I am to be your wife. (I added this after he looked at the post or he would have totally vetoed this PDA!)

426 days

426 days ago we signed the paperwork to start our adoption journey. Little did we know that less than a month after we started, our son was born, 6000 miles and a day away. This process has had it's ups and downs, but I think we can truly say that every setback, every tedious piece of paper and every minute spent worrying has been worth it.

Yesterday, China officially made us parents and granted us the honor of calling this little boy ours.

Blog friends, we are thrilled to introduce you to our son, Milo.

It was not hard to know when we opened the email and saw this face for the first time that he was meant to be ours! 

Next up is our immigration paperwork, which should hopefully only take a few weeks. It looks like we are still on track for travel in late April.

We will post again soon after our heads stop spinning from all the good news!

What else can we tell you?

Hoping parenting is easier than trying to get these two to sit together for a picture

Thank you everyone for sharing in our unbelievable joy of being matched. We are still somewhat in shock!

So what comes next?

We are currently in another wait for yet another piece of paper (shocking right?). This paper is called an LOA (letter of acceptance) and it makes it official that the Chinese government says it's ok for us to adopt this little guy. We are very hopeful that we will get this before Chinese New Year begins at the beginning of February because the Chinese government shuts down for a few weeks. So any prayers and good thoughts you would like to throw our way are appreciated!!

Until we get this approval, we unfortunately can't share pictures or a lot of specifics about our new son.

Here are a few things we can tell you:

1. He recently turned one.

2. We have 2 pictures and they make us melt every time we look at them. We hope to get an update with more pictures as soon as we have our LOA.
In the mean time, he looks kinda like one of these. See that one right there? He looks just like that.

3. He lives in an orphanage in a province somewhere around here

4. He does have a Chinese name that was assigned to him by his orphanage. As far as we can tell the name doesn't have significant meaning, so we are planning giving him an English name. We may or may not have decided on one. We may or may not have been debating names for the last year and shockingly when we saw him we both knew what his name should be. Maybe. 

5. He has a special need that we will post about at a later time. It will require some extra doctor's visits, but it is very manageable and we are comfortable with what his needs will be in the future. 

6. We hope to travel in April or May. Three or four months might seem like a long time, but considering the fact that we are new parents and have NO idea what we need or how on earth we are going to pack for our trip, I think we will need every day of this wait to feel prepared. I'm an overpacker by genetics (just ask my mom) so I think it will be a challenge for me to feel like I have everything and yet not have suitcases that weigh 1000 pounds. I'm guessing Brian will be in charge of packing as he is much more level headed about this and doesn't buy into the notion of needing 2-3 outfit choices for every day or needing our entire medicine cabinet (I blame my family for that too, the nurses in our family have impressively stocked purses). 

That's about all we can tell you! 

If you have any questions please feel free to ask. We already love talking about him!

One less

Happy New Year everyone!!!

We hope everyone had a good holiday season! We were HUGE party animals New Year's Eve...... we got takeout and watched football and movies. I think I may have saw midnight on the clock briefly, but I was mostly asleep.

Why was I so tired? Was there some sort of excitement that would cause me to barely stay awake until midnight?? (actually, I really like sleep so it's not that shocking, but back to the point)

As 2013 was quietly coming to a close in our little corner of Colorado, a little boy in China was waking up to a new year with a new title: son.

We are very honored to announce that there is one less orphan in the world and that our family has grown by 2 (really small) feet!

So....

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Source

 

 

 

 

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!