bodner004

Who knew that things would get harder before they got easier? Once we got the referral for our daughter I thought the hard part was over, but I never anticipated how difficult the knowing who she was and not being able to just scoop her up would be. It is pure torture!   Today I was blessed to open my email and find a new message from my adoption agency with updated photos, however. Our liaison between the agency and the orphanage was in China this past week and he snapped a few shots of Lily for us.  So without further adieu here you all go - the precious new pictures of our smiley little Liliana: Psalm 136:26   Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever. Look at this precious scene! Our precious Lily is the happy little girl playing peek-a-boo in the ball pit with the big smile on her face :) Our Lily: I can practically hear her little giggle! What sweet music to our ears that first laughter will be..... Is that an honorary look or wha...

Wow - yesterday was an emotionally supercharged day! It was my husband's 38th birthday and the day that we received our "hard" LOA (or the official stamped version of our Letter of Approval) in hand. As soon as I had received the FedEx package containing the LOA I called our agency, as I had been instructed, and they walked me through the additional 4 different USCIS forms that I would need to fill out and send in with a copy of our official LOA and some other important paperwork. It was important that I get these docs together and over-night them so I worked as quickly as I could to get that done before we had to leave to go to my 4th grader's music concert at school. It was a "divide and conquer" night for sure with me taking a couple kids with me to the FedEx office just before heading to the school and my husband taking the others in order to get Maxwell to his concert a bit early. It was a rushed flurry of activity but we got it done! The concert was gr...

I can hardly believe that I am even able to report this has happened so quickly, but we got our online approval today from China (CCCWA)!  This is huge. Our agency had told us that we wouldn't really expect to get this notice (tells us that they are processing our LOA - "Letter of Approval" already!).  What does this mean? Well, even for someone who has been at the process for 3 years (me! :) I get confused by ALL the steps that have to take place. So, you may remember that in my last blog - or maybe the one before that - I explained that we had submitted our LOI - Letter of Intent. This letter has all the required  wording that basically states we want to adopt the child that we were sent the referral on. We sent ours in on Friday, May 2, 2014. That was last week. In China last Thursday and Friday - May 1st and 2nd - was a national holiday so they were not in the offices at CCCWA to even receive our electronic form. At any rate our LOI was translated and entered into the...

I was shutting down my computer at the pregnancy care center this afternoon and just as I hit "log out" on my screen I saw the subject line of a new email come through that said "update for Tye"! My heart skipped a beat because I realized it was from our adoption agency!!! Of course, I quickly signed back on and opened up the email. It read:  "Just got this from Zhou! Have a fantastic day!! Chris <3" **Zhou is "Uncle Joe" - a Chinese gentleman who works with our agency as a sort of "go between" with the orphanage and he will also be our guide when we travel to China so he is back and forth from Ohio to China constantly with families. "OMGosh!!!! We just got our referral last week and put in the request for additional pics on Thursday, but we didn't think we would have any for a couple of weeks. I just couldn't believe that we were getting them already :) Of course I burst into tears and called Derek immediately!  Would y...

 ***Warning: This is a very long post!!*** Even as I type this the reality of this past week is still sinking in.  It feels foggy....like when you wake up from a dream and aren't sure if it was really a dream or memories. Where the details are fuzzy and entire pieces of the events are missing entirely.  Well, thank God, this is not a dream, but rather a dream come true! On Tuesday morning I dropped my daughter off at preschool and went about a very full day of meetings and appointments. I was at my final appointment of the day (a doctor's appt) when my phone rang. I knew it was our adoption agency, but I didn't answer knowing I couldn't talk while waiting on the doctor. As soon as I left his office I ran to my car and listened to the message they had left. Chris, from the agency, left no clues but asked that I call her back as soon as I got this message. After about an hour of phone tag we finally connected!  Her first words were, "Are you sitting down?".........