Disney on Ice- Toy Story 3 Style

Last week, we took the girls to see Disney on Ice- Toy Story 3. They loved it! During intermission, I asked Braylee if she was having fun and she said, "I like it even more than I thought I would!" :)
We stayed in Indy overnight and the girls anxiously waited for the pool to open the next morning. It was odd seeing all of the snow fall outside while they were splashing in the pool...definitely made me ready for Spring Break! Then we went to the Children's Museum. They especially loved the Barbie exhibit.

Posing on the runway

Braylee could have spent all afternoon at this design center. She did it over and over. I'll admit, it was pretty neat and Alex and I kept begging for a turn too. :)

One ferocious little dinosaur :)
Braylee pointing out the Chinese dragons

That weekend, we cheered on the Vikings and Daddy helped them build a snowman...with not very sticky snow but they did it!No exciting pictures to share from this past week, but I do have two sweet stories to share about Braylee. One day she brought home a project from school. It was a book about her and she had to fill in the blanks... when it asked about siblings, she marked:

Brothers- 0
Sisters- 2

I just about cried. When I asked her about it, she said, "1 sister here and 1 sister in China!"

As we were driving home from dance on Thursday, she asked me how much longer it was until Spring. I told her just a couple more months. She said, "Yeah! That means it's getting closer to Christmas too!" When I reminded her that Christmas was just a few weeks ago and she shouldn't be wishing for it again already. She said, "But that's when we'll get our baby!!" She is so sweet and so excited about this new sister of hers!

God at Work

I continue to walk in wonder at how God is orchestrating our adoption. This is just one example of how God has been preparing us...

Last Spring, I read a blog that talked about two books the blogger recommended, one of them being Radical by David Platt. I wrote the titles down and thought to myself, I will look for them the next time I'm in the book store. Time passed...then I saw a blog post titled "Radical" on another blog...intrigued, I had to see what it was about. Again, it was recommending this book. I remember asking my pastor about the book at a Labor Day cook-out. He agreed it would be a good option. I still hadn't gotten around to buying it, so when my mom asked for Christmas ideas, I gave her the title of this book.

My mom does not disappoint, and I found the book in my stocking on Christmas Eve. And believe me that tears came to my eyes as I read this very passage in Radical by David Platt:

"...orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes."

I do believe our struggle with infertility was meant to help mold us to be more like Him, but I also believe it's because there is one particular little girl in China that is supposed to be in our home. During the trial of infertility, God was preparing us to go beyond our comfort zone, to accept the unknowns of our child's special need, and to remind us His plans are greater than our own.

I also know I was supposed to read this book and God kept creating paths for it to get into my hands.

(Totally unrelated to the adoption, I do recommend this book! It basically explores how deciding to be a follower of Christ is radical, but the reward is eternal life! It also discusses how the "American Dream" is contradictory to the gospel. I promise to share more from this book!)

Adoption Timeline

I've received lots of questions about our adoption over the last few weeks so I thought maybe I'd try to fill you all in a little. I say a "little" because it is all still so new to us too, so I can't guarantee that I'll be sharing all of this info correctly but at least you will have a better idea of what we are up to. :)

We have been collecting oodles of paperwork for 3 different parts of the adoption...
1)Home Study
2)CIS application- I800A form
3)Dossier (packet of documents) for China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA).

The Home Study evaluates our family history and background (including multiple background checks on us and our children), our philosophy on marriage, raising children, education, how we have prepared for the adoption of a special needs child, if our home is safe/suitable for raising a child, required training courses, etc. The paperwork also includes many references from family and friends, our employers, financial statements, and medical exams. The process is time-consuming for sure...which is often why these beginning phases of adoption are referred to as a "paper pregnancy." It's exhausting! :)

Now that we have our part of the HS completed, we are waiting on the Home Study agency to review, revise, and finalize it. We've been told this process can take 4 to 6 weeks. Once we have the Home Study, we will send it in with our I800A form to Citizenship & Immigrat*on Services. This process will also include fingerprinting and more paperwork. Once we have USCIS approval...we can send our Dossier to China!!!

Sounds easy enough...except the Dossier requires some of the same, some similar, and some totally different paperwork. These documents have to be notarized, then sent to the Secretary of State for seals, and then to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for authentication. We are in the final processes of having our papers notarized right now and will hopefully be sending them to the Sec. of State soon.

Because we are on the Waiting Children list (special needs), the next steps may vary a little. We may actually identify our daughter on a list before we even send our dossier or we may have our dossier sent and wait, wait, wait to be matched. But this is approximately what will happen...

Our agency will send our Dossier to China (DTC).
We will then be notified of its Log In Date (LID) with CCAA.
We will either find our little girl on a Shared list or be matched with a little girl. We will have a short time frame to review her file, consult with specialists, and pray over this little girl. If we choose to adopt her, we will send a Letter of Intent (LOI) to CCAA.
We will wait for a Pre-Approval from CCAA, which usually comes pretty quickly.
Then we wait for the actual Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China saying we can adopt her, which can take months.
We will submit our request to CIS again with a I800 form for the specific child we want to adopt and they will cable our information/Visa request to CCAA (not sure exactly what all happens here.)
Once we finally receive Travel Approval (TA), our agency will set up all of the arrangements and we will travel to China to meet our newest daughter!

It doesn't feel like the time will come soon enough, but we are trusting in His perfect timing and enjoying our sweet girls at home while we wait. They have been practicing some Chinese and learning more and more about the culture. We will not be taking the girls with us for 2 reasons...1) It's so expensive. 2)We want to focus on bonding with our new baby. We will miss our girls so much though as we have never been away from them for 2 whole weeks before...thank God for Skype!!

Our little girl will have a Chinese name but it will be our choice of whether or not to include this in her American name. We do know her first name will start with a B for sure. :) We have been tossing around a few names and I know we'll know for sure once we see her picture.

Thank you for your prayers for our family and our little China girl!

New Year = New Do

On New Year's Day, we helped a little sweetie celebrate her birthday. Our niece Ella turned 2! She won't be the baby of the family much longer since we will be welcoming her new sibling and our little girl this year (hopefully!). We will quickly go from 4 grandkids to 6! :)
On January 3rd, we made a visit to Aunt Trista's shop to get new hair styles! Braylee had been begging for a few months to get her hair cut. A few weeks before Christmas, I cut about 3 inches off, hoping it would suffice...It didn't. So we asked Aunt Trista to officially cut it. Once it was done, Braylee kept flipping her hair around and looking at herself in the mirror. When Trista asked her if her teacher would recognize her the next day, Braylee replied, "I don't know?!" :)
(Sadly, since I had already cut a few inches off and I didn't want it to be TOO short, we didn't have enough to save it for Locks of Love. This made Braylee sad, but she knows we can try again another time.)

And here's a quick glimpse of what Aunt Trista did to my hair...made me a brunette! I love it! Sometimes I see my sister Tracee in the mirror when I'm getting ready though...didn't realize how much we resembled each other before! :) Also- our home study social worker told me I better make it blonde again before we go to China so that I match my passport! I'm excited about going to China... but I definitely want them to let me in AND let me leave! :)

One of Braylee's snow days fell on a day I had to work. The girls had a blast playing at Gramma's house in the snow. I love getting to see what my girls were up to while I was at work.

New Year's Eve 2010

We had a wonderful 2010 and enjoyed sharing the last evening of the year with some of our best friends! I am so thankful for our church family. We love them!! (Please excuse the poor quality of most of these pictures...it's a combo of using my phone and poor bowling alley lighting!)

The girls had talked all day about watching the ball fall that night and as midnight approached, Alex mentioned that there was only the one little TV at the bowling alley...so we hurried out of there at 11:45 so the girls could watch it on our big screen instead! :) The girls loved it and kept giving us lots of New Year's kisses!

Our girls talk about their new sister every day. During the day on New Year's Eve, they kept talking about how it was already 2011 in China (They realize China is 1/2 day ahead of us.) Braylee felt certain 2011 was coming to America since it had made it to China. lol. We also added our little girl to our Wii family. Isn't she cute?! I thanked my hubby for making mine so skinny! :)

Baby, Braylee, Brynna, Daddy, and Mommy

Christmas Memories 2010- Part 2

Since I'm way behind, I will try to be brief. :)

I left off on Christmas Eve...the girls were anxious for Santa.
They were even more excited to see what he left them the next morning.
Digging through the stockings is always first on the list.
This may be my favorite picture from Christmas 2010.
Brynna had just opened her gift from her big sister and she leaned over to give her
a "Thank you, Sissy!" hug. So sweet!
If you look closely at Braylee's new Barbie,
it may give you a hint as to where we will be on Spring Break. ;)
Christmas evening, we celebrated with Alex's mom's family.
The kids did a craft while the adults played Dirty Santa.
My girls sure love their cousins/best friends!
The next day, we celebrated with my mom's family after church.
All of the great-grandkids lined up on Grammy's fireplace...
We enjoyed spending another day with the twins.
On Dec. 27th, we had Christmas at Gramma & Pappy's house. Little Gabe and birthday girl Ella were not feeling well, but we didn't let it stop us from having fun! We opened gifts, ate seconds (or maybe thirds) of Lou's yummy meal, and wished Miss Ella a Happy #2!Thanking Uncle Adam for their new princess dolls.
Trying out their new umbrellas from Gabe & Ella.

The whole family- Andre', Alex, Adam
Braylee, Ella, Gramma, Brynna, Pappy
Tristen, Mandi, Gabe, Tera

We had a wonderful time with our families.
We were very blessed with their generous gifts and love.

Click for all of our Christmas 2010 pictures.

Christmas Memories 2010

On Christmas Eve, we always go to my parents' house to celebrate. We couldn't wait to get there because we knew two little munchkins would be waiting on us...Hadlee and Kooper! They are so adorable and look too cute toddling around being so little. We had a wonderful time opening gifts and eating lots of yummy food. Then we had a special event to attend. The twins and my cousin's baby were all dedicated that night at my Grammy and Gramps' church...the church we've always went to for Christmas Eve services.

Definitely her favorite gift...a DSi.
She was too excited to get a clear picture. ;)

Aunt Tracee's gift to Brynna...so cute!

Brynna's favorite- A puppet show stand with lots of puppets!

My parents recently bought a new house so it was a little sad having our last Christmas in that house. We moved there when I was 7.

Everyone together...our grandparents and Uncle Tom always celebrate with us.

-Our Family-

Mamaw & Papaw with the silly grandkids

Ready for Santa!

More to come!!