PRICELESS NEW PICTURES

Thank you all for such sweet words on facebook & our blog.  I just had to post these new pictures I just received of our Lexi Marie & according to the photos they were taken today!  Her precious little eyes seem to be longing for something.................maybe for her family that can hardly stand another minute without her.  Hold on sweet baby, we'll be there soon!  This is going to be a long several months!  Prayers for patience & peace in the between time.  I'm in tears right now.  Just priceless these pictures are!

THE CALL WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

Who could ever imagine what 5 short days could hold for our family and how two phone calls could bring such fear & worry on one end and excitement & elation on the other.  Last Monday night, Bart got the call that his Mom had been life flighted to a hospital in Louisville KY due to bleeding & swelling on the brain.  Bart immediately got on a plane & spent the next 5 days at the hospital with his family.  Praise be to God that the doctors discovered her condition was caused by severe high blood pressure & were able to properly treat her with medications.  She is now on the road to 100% recovery.  In fact, she was released from the hospital today!  Thanks is not enough for all of you who prayed & sent words of encouragement!

Fast forward to Friday, Bart flys home just in time to go to our daughter Addison's teacher conference where she got rave reviews. Go Addie!! (had to give her some props for her awesomeness).  On the way out of the school, we got a call except this time it was THE CALL every adoptive family waits for from their agency.  The one where they say "we have a little girl we'd like to talk to you about, would you like to hear more about her."  FREAK OUT MODE.  WHAT?.......YES!!!

Of course that was a Friday at 5pm so all we could do all weekend was pray, stare at her adorable pictures, pray some more, & do lots of learning & researching online.  You see her special need is a cleft lip & palate.....a condition Bart & I had agreed we were open to considering but something we were not very educated on.  Well until now that is....I think I could almost write a book after all of my reading & studying...haha.  She is now 14 mos old (her bday was Aug 20th) & was actually blessed to have had her lip repaired through an organization called Love Without Boundaries at 5 mo. old. She stayed in one of their Foster Healing Homes for a few months in prep for surgery & to care for her until she healed then she went back to her orphanage.  There are more cool parts to that story but I will have to hold that for another post.  

So on Monday we sent her file to be reviewed by our International Adoption Specialist, Dr. Staat, in Cincinnati & to our surprise she called us back yesterday (a day earlier than scheduled) to discuss her review and answer all of our many questions.  She gave us the positive report we were hoping for and encouraged us in moving forward.  Once you learn more about her little story, you will understand even more why it's a miracle she is doing so great.  In fact, according to her medical file she is 50% in weight (& that's on our American charts) and is developmentally right on track (not usually the case for kiddos raised in orphanages).  She is one heck of a survivor & it's without any doubt that God has amazing plans for her life.

So last night we talked as a family and with 100% approval & absolute over the moon excitement from our kids made the decision to adopt this little girl & become her Forever Family.  She is our LEXI MARIE!  The 2nd China angel God ordained for our family long ago.  I know you're dying to see pics so below are a few we received.  And I'm sure questions are popping up in your heads.  Hopefully, in the coming posts I'll be able to answer most of them about travel, time frames, medical stuff, etc etc.  But for now I can tell you that the average time frame between now and going to get our Lexi Marie is 4-7 months.  I know, kind of a big span & that should get more narrow as we continue on but we're looking at traveling any time between end of February and end of May.  

DRUMROLL PLEASE..................HERE SHE IS MISS LEXI MARIE!

At 5 months old, right before she had her cleft lip surgery

This is right after her surgery at the Healing Home.

THOSE EYES!  I MEAN WHO COULD RESIST!

I LOVE THIS STARE LIKE "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I'M JUST TRYING TO MAKE A CALL HERE"

WE HAVE OUR LOG-IN-DATE

This is the email I just received from our agency:

"Congratulations!  Your dossier has been logged in by the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption.  Your official dossier log-in date (LID) is: 8/2/2012"

Excited beyond words.  Those that have previously adopted from China will know what a big deal this is.  Now we wait patiently to be matched with our child & the call from our agency.  Could be weeks, could be months.  Will keep you posted.  In the meantime there is plenty of getting ready to do!  Have I mentioned that we got rid of every possible baby thing we owned at our last garage sale in October?  Yeah, God definitely has a sense of humor.  

THE TIMELINE

After several conversations with friends over the last couple of days, I realized I probably needed to clarify better where we are in the adoption process and what our expected timeframe is.  We began the adoption process in February and have worked diligently over the past 5 months putting together our dossier (that is adoption lingo for our official file that is sent to China).  Our dossier consists of 13 documents including our home study & immigration approval that all have to be notarized at the county level then certified at the state & federal levels & then lastly authenticated at the Chinese consulate for the state in which the document originated.  Because Bart & I were born in different states & now reside in yet another state, we had documents that had to go through 3 different systems......fun, fun!  OK not really, but it's often been said that the paperwork side of international adoption is our "labor".......definitely not as physically painful, but mentally taxing nonetheless yet also worth every minute!!

Our dossier arrived in China on August 1st.  In the next couple of weeks we will be getting our official Log-In-Date (LID) which is what every adoptive family from China anxiously awaits.  Though we could get a call at any moment with a referral (or child they would like us to prayerfully consider adopting), once we have LID the number of children available for us to adopt expands greatly.  We have requested to adopt a little girl with minor special needs around the age of 10-12 months old at time of referral.  As far as "minor special needs", our agency has a list of the conditions we would be willing to consider & as you may remember, Addison was a special needs adoption also.  She had a minor heart condition called a VSD/PFO (or small hole in her heart) that was actually surgically repaired before we got her.  It was thankfully 100% successful.

After we accept our referral, it will be another 4-7 months until we can travel to go get her so she will most likely be between the ages of 15-20 months old by the time we bring her home.  That process has changed a lot since we adopted Addison.  When we got her referral, we had only 1 month before we traveled & it was a mad dash to get visas, travel shots, & a nursery up & ready.  I can only imagine how hard it will be this go around to wait those 4-7 months to pick up our baby girl!

With all of that said, we will most likely be traveling to China in the next 6-12 months.  As we've previously learned going through the process, everything with adoption can change at any moment & the timeframes are always unknown & something you just have to have patience & faith in God's timing. Your prayers as we travel down this adoption road are much appreciated & we can not say thank you enough for walking this road with us!

Below are a couple of pics of our adoption milestones thus far:


Jodi in front of KY state capital after getting KY docs certified

Our pretty docs after being certified in Georgia

The kids had to go along with Dad to get baby sis' docs sealed.  

BEHIND THE NAME

Though we've never met her or seen her sweet little face, she already has a name....Lexi Marie, named after the aunt she'll never meet on this side of heaven, Jill Marie, and the hometown of Lexington where her Momma & Jill grew up.  When we looked up the meaning of Lexi we found out it means "defender or protector of mankind".  How cool is that!  May she grow to know & love Jesus, her ultimate defender & protector, and live to be a mighty defender of her faith & fellow mankind!

THE STORY

This is our journey to adopt our second "stone" from China.  We never could have imagined what God had in store as we followed him down the uncharted path to adopt our first daughter Addison from China in 2006.  It was literally love at first sight & she has brought our family unexplainable joy.  The fire to adopt again has been in us ever since but with planting & pastoring a growing new church then looking at launching a second campus, it seemed as if God's plan for our lives was to focus on "birthing churches" not children...haha.  Well...that was until this past winter when He wrecked our hearts again & allowed that spark that had been smoldering there to become a full blaze.  So here we are, both in our young 40's, two kids in elementary school, in the middle of a huge endeavor to launch a 2nd campus, yet knowing without a doubt that God is leading us to adopt again.  See what we've learned along the way is that God's ways are higher than ours and His path is always greater than ours.  It doesn't always make sense & can put those of us who like to be in control to the test, but what better place to be than clinging desperately to the One who created you.