my first blog...

Well here I am, doing something I never thought I would do - BLOG!  However, I know it is the best way for family and friends to follow our family journey to China to adopt our little girl!  

We are a family of 5 and it is crazy every day in our house! So we decided to add to the crazy by adopting a little girl from China!  Eric and I have discussed adoption since the beginning of our marriage, 14 years ago.  Even though we have 3 beautiful boys, we struggled with infertility and knew that adoption was always an option for us.  We thought about it before kids and then between kids!  After our third was born, I still felt the desire to adopt, but of course, my hands were FULL. I even remember holding the baby and watching the olympics in 2008 with our then 7 year old and telling him we were going to adopt from China someday.  I was totally kidding!  Then life got busier and the kids got older (and easier), and I stopped thinking about adopting.  Obviously, God still had a plan for our family.  All of a sudden, adoption was everywhere I went.  We met a neighbor in our new neighborhood who just happened to be part of our adoption support committee at our church and was also in the process of adopting a child.  Another friend from the city we had just moved from very unexpectedly adopted a baby. I took our dog to be boarded before vacation and he stayed in "The Great Wall" room.  Not even kidding-the shocked look on my face was funny I'm sure-the owner said "you know-like in China?" haha!  Then, our old neighbors and friends of 7 years moved to the town we had moved to, two houses down, exactly one year to the date from our move.  Guess what? Yep!  They were adopting a little girl from China.  She said "you're going to do this too!" .  I would laugh and say "nope, I'm good with my 3!".  Pretty sure God moved them here to be an example of an adoptive family and to show us that yes it's hard, but it's possible! Some of you know this family, the Coco's!!

As I said before, God's plan was different than mine.  I had a big long list of all of the reasons I did not want to add to our family.  I really thought I was nuts to even be considering another child!  Seriously-life was just getting easy! But I had one thought in my heart that never went away-we could do this.  If we can give just one orphan a home and a family, why wouldn't we?  My big long list was all selfish reasons.  So I kept praying, I kept talking with Eric (who also had the same list and told me I was crazy!!), I read every book I could get my hands on and asked tons of questions, prayed ALOT more and here we are. Once we let go and decided to proceed, all of our doubts were gone!  There are still things we worry about - but who doesn't have worries when they're expecting a new addition to the family?  We are at peace and know that we are honoring God's will for our family.   

Our thoughts on adoption have always been simply to give an orphan a family.  When all of this began, we had no idea where our child would come from.  We were open to most anything-domestic or international, girl or boy. I really can't even tell you why we chose China, but I can tell you that we are so excited about this journey we are taking to bring home our little girl. Our boys are over the moon!  They talk about her every day like they already know her and they are excited to meet her. Funny-they even pick out "girly" things we need to buy for "our baby sister".  I truly believe everything in my life before Eric, and with Eric, have led to this moment.  We are meant to do this.  So here we go!!!