Home Study Complete

Hey all! Sorry it's taken so long. Our net has been down at home, but we're back in the saddle!!

Well, since we've last logged, we have had our home study visits. Our first one in our home went very well. We were anticipating an eventful evening with our agent here and the boys having to behave for 2 hours. They were ANGELS!! I was even a bit concerned they were "too good" while she was here. (Is that possible? I am SURE I will NEVER hear myself say that again!) Our Home Study Agent was SUPER nice. She had adopted two children from Guatemala. She totally made us feel at ease and completely comfortable. We scheduled our 2nd visit which was out of the home. It also went very smoothly. We felt like we were just talking to a friend about our life story. We have since had a total of four visits with our agent. She just sent us a copy of our home study to review, and I was thinking that everyone should have a home study completed. It is an account on paper of your life story. How cool is that? (I am sure our children will enjoy reading it someday!) So, our home study agent is sending our home study to our adoption agency to review. We will soon begin the "paper chase" . We have to have all of our documents we've acquired authenticated, certified and notarized! All I know is that I'll be traveling to our state capitol a lot this summer! Road Trip with the boys! Woo hoo!!

We're holding up well all in all. We're still early on in the process we know. We have been extremely busy with the boys and the end of the school year programs and such. We're very happy that schools out for the summa! Looking forward to some serious bonding at the pool!!! We still think about and pray for our baby girl each day, but we're trying not to be consumed by WAITING. We've decided that if we wish the next two years away that we're also wishing the lives of our two boys who happen to be right here in front of us away ...and we're not doing that! Time has flown since they were born.

Keep us in your prayers! Thanks for checking in! Hopefully we'll have more news to tell ya this summer about our dossier (paperwork) being sent to China soon.

Take Care and God Bless!!!

The Home Study

Hey everyone! Right now we are in the home study part of the process. We have selected a wonderful home study agency. We are having a home visit very soon. It's supposed to last two hours, and they've requested for the boys to be there as well!! Yikes! We'll definitely need your prayers that night!!! I just pray that they are well-mannered and behave! We're nervous but very excited to keep the process rolling along.
Doug went to Frankfort to obtain some of our documents to speed up the process as much as possible, but we know there isn't a whole lot we can do about this "TIMELINE" we're given. It just seems like it will take so long before we'll be holding our baby girl in our arms! I just keep feeling extremely blessed to have our boys to be busy with! I know in God's timing we'll have her with us. It's just hard to wait now that we've gotten the process going.
Well, thanks for your continued prayers. We need them!! Most of all, thanks for your support. It's so awesome to have so many wonderful people in our lives. We are so extremely blessed!!
More info as we get it! Love, J

Snakes and Snails...

These are our precious little guys. They are always keeping us busy!

They are very excited to meet their new baby sister from China!

Journey To Our China Doll

Dear Family and Friends,
Many of you have asked how we got started in this whole process. Doug and I both feel a strong calling that this is God's plan for our family. Having two beautiful, healthy boys, we have always felt so incredibly blessed. Doug always talked about having a third, and I wasn't opposed to having another, but for some reason, we never felt like the time was right and we never decided to move forward to attempt to have another. Adopting is a subject that we many times had discussed light-heartedly, then dismissed the idea, but somehow along the way, God laid the burden deep within our hearts to seriously consider adopting. We started reading up on the adoption process on Steven Curtis Chapman's website and began to research on hundreds of websites. We continued to pray that God would make it very clear to both of us that this was HIS plan and not ours. Well...guess what...HE DID.
So, here we are. We have submitted our application and have been accepted by our agency. We are currently in the process of starting our Home Study and have started filling out various forms and have begun collecting a few of the MANY documents we will be needing to acquire.
We just told our families this weekend and were very happy to know that they supported us in this decision. We just ask that everyone please pray for our us on this journey, and most importantly for our baby girl.

We will keep you updated!
Julie