The internet is amazing

I joined a yahoo group that is just for parents with children from Hanna's orphanage. There are members all over the world. So far I've met moms from Sweden and Australia! These moms looked through their pictures they took while they were picking up their child, found Hanna, and emailed them to me! People have also posted pictures in this group that I've been able to scour and find some pictures of her! I just can't wait to get our official word from China so I can post these pictures. I just cried when I received these pictures. She is absolutely beautiful! Keep praying for us to leave soon! Hanna needs us! Thank you God for all the blessings you've given to us and for showing us our daughter.

Sleep

When will I sleep again? I have been waking up around 4:30 each morning for the past week (since we saw our sweet daughter's face!). When will I sleep? I'm tired, but I just wake up and don't go back sleep. I just keep dreaming of my China doll!

We finished up the paperwork for our Letter Of Intent (LOI) and will mail it today. Once Bethany Grand Rapids receives the paperwork from our social worker and possibly the rest of our referral group, they will enter the information into the online portal to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affair). We are now waiting to hear from China for our Letter Of Adoption or Acceptance (LOA), and then our Travel Approval (TA). Let's all pray that this all comes quickly!

Hanna Jo

Hanna Jo is 2 and a half years old. We saw her beautiful face on her half birthday. We is living in northern China. I've been asked not to publically share pictures or identifying/personal information about her yet - which is killing me! I cannot wait to share my daughter's face with the world, but for those of you who know me well, know that I can't break a rule without feeling too guilty about it! I promise, I will share as soon as possible - or email me! The boys are excited. Reese is glad to not be the "baby" anymore and Brooks pumps his arm like he does when he strikes out someone! We are so in love already! Thank you God for blessing our family and Thank you everyone else for praying for us for the last 2 and a half years! Can you believe we started this adoption journey at the time our daughter was born?!

The call!

Wow - so much has happened since our last post. We saw our beautiful daughter's face for the first time on June 18th. I got home for a workshop for reading and saw that there was a new COP list for our agency. I immediately requested to see files for 3 of the girls. As I opened our daughters file, I had a feeling! Then came the part where I had to show Jerry. Normally, he just wasn't all that interested. But it was different this time. He smiled and his eyes twinkled! He read through everything! Long story shorter, we submitted our names to be matched on Thursday, June 19th and had to wait until Tuesday afternoon! What a long weekend - but we filled it with baseball!
Tuesday, June 24th, I took the boys to see Kung Fu Panda as promised. I promised before I realized Tuesday was the day we would get a call from our agency. I figured out how to completely silence my phone and off we went. There I was sitting in a movie theater eating popcorn, when all of a sudden I felt my phone ringing! I excitedly left the movie and answered my phone in the hallway. I had missed it, so I called the number back and it was our social worker! She asked if it was an ok time and I explained that I was at the movies, but yes it was fine. Then she said the most amazing words, "Grand Rapids (that's how we describe/call the home office for our agency - where the COP matching was completed) didn't waste anytime in letting you know that you were matching with your little girl! I cried, said are you sure, and sat down on the floor. I just couldn't believe it. She said some other stuff to me, but really I have no clue what it was. After we hung up, I tried to call Jerry, but he didn't answer. Reluctantly, I went back to the movie, whispered in the boys' ears that they have a baby sister, and sat there dreaming of China while they finished the movie. :) We quickly left the movie when it was over, went to Wal-Mart to buy a doll and a gift bag and brought it home to give to daddy! It was so exciting to watch him react to the doll and run inside to call his parents as I was calling mom. Just amazing! God is so absolutely wonderful and we feel so blessed that he is allowing us to adopt our Hanna Jo.
Now I am busy getting paperwork in order to send off our LOI (Letter Of Intent) and not so patiently wait for our Travel Invitation. We are praying we get to go in September (what a birthday present!), but it could be October (Brooks' birthday) or November (Jerry's birthday).

We have a POOL!

We finally got our pool. The installers came yesterday and the boys were determined they were getting in. It was cold, but we all got in at least for a few seconds! I think I spent the least amount of time. Brooks and Reese really enjoyed themselves - especially when they got out their innertubes. We are going to have some fun this summer -and many more to come.

Reese Hit a Homerun!

Reese hit his first ever homerun last night in his baseball game! He was so excited - and out of breath! He had a great game - 2 singles, 2 triples, and a homerun! Papaw really wanted him to get a double to complete the cycle! Congrats Reese

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Happy Birthday Grandma D! We love you very much. We'll see you on Saturday for your party.

Summer!

It is finally summer. We are all enjoying the life of leisure! We've been busy planning the layout of our pool (we finally bought a pool!), playing baseball, and getting ready for VBS next week. I'm going to try to attach a video that we just made using our new flip video camera. It's fun! Hopefully it will work well and you'll get to enjoy many videos of us! We can't wait to take it to China and get our sister!