pictures of our family

Here are some pictures of our family.

Getting Started

Our Beginning,

We met in college (ok, the second day if anyone is counting) and dated for 4 years before we graduated and got married. From the very beginning adoption is something that we knew we wanted to pursue. After we had been married about 5 years we started to talk about this goal more seriously. We decided to look into foreign adoption because of the need and our hearts were soon captured by the girls of China. After talking to a couple of people who adopted from China we decided this is what we wanted to do. China has a requirement that both adoptive parents must be 30 at the time of placement so we decided to try the old fashioned way before our daughter came home from China. Cambria came into our lives and 2 months later we started the paper work for adoption. We chose a very reputable company to facilitate this for us. CCAI has worked in only Chinese adoptions for many years. The paperwork is daunting. It took us 8 months of working and waiting for papers to be approved by different agencies and waiting for the money part to work out before we sent our papers to China to be approved. We were approved on 4/12/06. This is called our log in date and basically this means that we were put on the bottom of the pile. When we got to the top we would be placed with a child and we would go to China 6-8 weeks later to get her. At the time of our log in date we were told to expect to wait 6-9 months to get to the top of the pile. This was daunting to new parents but we wanted our children to be close and knew that God's timing is always perfect. We are now at almost 4 years of waiting and close to 5 since we started the process.

During these years we have gone through times of sadness and longing to hold in our arms the child who has been in our hearts for so long. She has been Olivia for many years and she is our child even though we have never seen her. After over 2 years of waiting we decided to try to have another child biologically and Joshua entered our lives in October of 2008. So Olivia will be number 3 for us. (Patrick is sure we will be done after this but Donna is not completely convinced of this.)

At the very beginning we prayed over this process and for the timing to be perfect. I could tell you many reasons why looking back I can see God's hand in this process. I am able to work part time now, money is more stable, we are more experienced parents, our children are in good places in their development, and so on and so on. God is always faithful and we have known that in our heads even when our hearts took longer.

We are nearing the day when we will get our referral. We expect a call from our agency sometime this week or next. This is very exciting but also very daunting. All of a sudden the child who I don't let myself think about much is coming and we will begin a new chapter in our lives. We would like to use this blog to keep those that we love informed about this step in our journey.

We have some prayer requests for right now.

1. That Olivia is healthy.

2. That we will be able to save the last couple thousand that we need to go to China.

3. For Joshua and Cambria and their adjustment during this time.

4. For wisdom specifically concerning the attachment needs of Olivia.

With hope and love,

Patrick and Donna