a reason to celebrate!

Yesterday we received our travel approval!!! We are finalizing all of our travel arrangements, making To-Do lists, and making Kinsley's dr. appointments for when we return.

We are so excited to finally be here.

The road has been long and the lessons are still being learned.

So many posts have gone untyped and unpublished.

So many thoughts and emotions I've guarded inside.

I've been a pitiful mess for the past few days, blinking back tears.

Tears of joy and tears of thankfulness as I look back at how God has stretched me, my husband, my children.

Tears that remind me of the change in me and how I NEVER want to go back to who I was before adoption changed me and our family!

My heart swells as I hear Jackson calling out "Mama, Mama, Mama...Mama" from the backseat of the car as I'm talking to the big kids about travel -only to ask about the airplane and Grandma and Grandpa and to give his cheer with his fist pumping the air.

Thankful that he's understanding more about what is happening.

Grateful to know that God can even speak to his little heart about the orphan. If you ask him if he wants another sister he will tell you "No...5 sisters!"

I pray each of you will know how blessed we have been to have you walk this journey with us...supporting us, lifting us up in prayer, responding to our texts with excitement, donating items to our garage sale, listening to me, donating to our Go Fund Me, buying coffee and 147 Million Orphans gear, making meals to put in our freezer for when we return, unselfishly giving us your refrigerator to put in our garage when you bought a new one, bringing our children home from soccer when we had adoption conference calls, and simply loving on our family and our children.

We pray that our lives will always be a testimony to what The Lord has done in our lives and that it will only bring Him glory and to bring Him honor and not ourselves!

Absolutely none of this could have ever been accomplished without the power of Jesus!

There is still so much on my heart that I want to share with you but it would probably be a jumbled mess!

Once we have itinerary we will post it so you can begin praying for the rest of our journey.

15 days to Travel!





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

in a holding pattern

Our Article 5 paper, the document from the U.S. Consulate that tells the Chinese Adoption Authorities (CCCWA) that we have completed everything on the U.S.side of the adoption was picked up on February 6th, 2013.

Ordinarily this would start the countdown for our TA (Travel Approval)

BUT...

We are in a holding pattern.

Because there were only 2 days left until Chinese New Year began, our agency decided it would be best to hold off on mailing our A5 so that it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle while no one was working.

We are thankful that our agency is proactive in looking out for our best interest, but it leaves us and a few other families still waiting.

Our families have had a good chuckle knowing that our papers are being toted around in Elsie's backpack in China just waiting to be mailed.

The plan is that our papers will be mailed this Saturday, Feb. 16th in order to be received on Sunday, the 17th.

We will begin our official TA count on Saturday.

TAs have been arriving as early as 9 days and as late as 16 days.

Once we have TA, we will begin booking our flights and leaving within a week and a half to two weeks!

So, we embrace these last few weeks as we complete projects around the house and enjoy our last days as a family of 5.

From then on, our family begins a new kind of holding patttern...

Holding the hand of our precious treasure who has waited far too long for a family to call her own!

a little blog update

our blog was in need of a little update~

not like I had anything else that I needed to do

There are a few things I'd like to still change, but not quite sure how to do it

but for now...

this will do