All I Want for Christmas....

is our LOA...guess what we got today!  Yes!!!!

 I left work at noon today for the holidays, not thinking I would hear from my agency since I had not yet...
well, I opened my home email tonight and there it was! 

 They had sent it to the wrong work email to begin with and no one called. I forgive them!!! 

Now we have to wait until Monday to send in next set of paperwork which is okay, I want it to be right. 

 All in God's time, all in God's time (a wise man told me that). 

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Words of Wisdom

I keep my nose in the goings on in the adoption world, for obvious reasons.  There have been many notices in the last few days about families receiving their LOA's (letter of acceptance), but nothing yet for us.  Our agency says "any day now" but that feels like an eternity.  My wonderful husband lately seems to know just what to say to make me be still.  I received the following email from him at just the right time:

"Just relax. This adoption thing has always been on God’s time table not ours. If you get it in the next day or so then great and if not then God knows what is best. His ways are not our ways. I Love You."

How blessed I am to have this man in my life...guiding us, protecting us, providing for us...and inspired by Him.

Fun picture, huh?

Random Thoughts

As we wait to hear about our LOA, I thought I'd chit chat for a bit.  Can you believe its almost Christmas?  I'm about finished with the shopping, sometimes enough really IS enough.  Abigail has been "home" for three and a half years now, this will be her 4th Christmas with us!  The really cool thing about this year is, she gets it.  She recognizes that this is all for Jesus and his birth.  She also keeps questioning whether Santa Claus is real or not.  We haven't tried to persuade her thought process one way or the other, but its interesting to watch the wheels spin!  We are going to bake cookies this weekend with Grandma and tie up loose ends.  Looking forward to that as it may be the last one that "small grandma" will remember, so we want to make it special.  Darn Alzheimer's...its so not fair.

(No that's not Abigail's bedroom, its a local nursery that does Christmas very well!)

So anyway, here's wishing everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.  My only wish this year is for a fast process from here on out, so we can bring that little girl home and pray for an easy adjustment.  Amen.

It Hurts So Good

When we decided to enter this crazy world of adoption again, it wasn't a well thought out plan.  It was a "we saw a picture and fell in love"" kind of thing...well I fell in love, Bern fell in shock.  Someone {Cheri} had advocated for a little girl, age 7, who tugged at my heart strings.  After having her file reviewed and praying about it, we decided to move forward.  Through a series of other events going on at the very same time, parallel universes we'll call them, someone else was having the file reviewed and locked it before we could.  I was sad and a little heartbroken, not for this little girl, but more selfishly, for me.  I got over it, picked myself up and moved on to the child God really intended for us to have, Zi Jing.

The coolest thing about this story is, through a mutual bloggy friend, I got to know the woman who would become mommy to this little 7 year old girl.  There are no ill feelings.  So, reading her blog, I am happy to report that this little girl finally has her forever family TODAY and she is so very "right" where she is.

Bittersweet....a  little; happy for them.....you have no idea. 

Congratulations Ma Pei and your forever family!

I.Love.It.

My new best friend, Christie, over at Bushel and a Peck, here , not only has the cutest darn kids in the world and such an honest heart, but her skills at blog design are MAD!!!  Look what she's done for me.  Someday I'd love to dig into learning how to do this, but for now, my money's on Christie!

We had a very nice, family filled Thanksgiving this year and are truly blessed to still have so many of those we love with us. We give thanks to the Lord for He is Good!

The Effort Continues

In an effort to record this crazy roller coaster we are on, I must report that we are finally LID or Log In Date for you who aren't in the know.  This means they have our file in China, they have put it together with ZiJing's file and now they are reviewing it.  Once that piece is complete, they will send us a letter of acceptance, or LOA.  I still holding out hope that we will travel in Feb or March.  Our agency is advocating for a fast LOA so we will see.

In the meantime, today is my Zachary's 16th birthday, so I'll have pics and a story for later :)  Love that guy!

Christmas Giveaways

Had to do a quick post about Stephanie over at Ni Hao Y'all; she's doing a cool giveaway for 30 days and I didn't want to miss out on being entered...do you?