Be Still My Heart.....

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This morning we woke up and found the most precious gift.  One that we have been anxiously waiting for.

We got our update on our beautiful, precious daughter, Meiya Lin.

She weighs 21 pounds and she is 31 inches tall.  She is still considered on the small side even for Ch*na's standards.  She now has 12 teeth!  Our baby girl is growing up quickly!

She is too cute!  Check her out dancing and that gorgeous smile! (heart melting here)

And her sense of humor!  RAA! 

She can stand with some help! 

We are overjoyed with this update!  She is absolutely gorgeous. She takes our breath away!  I mean look at her!  Don't you just want to pick her up and hug her? 

Her Jie Jei's Hannah and Hailee keep kissing her pictures and asking us when can we go to China and bring her home.  In God's timing we keep telling them!  It is HARD to wait but we know who is in control of all of this.  We pray that God is preparing her heart for us.  Whispering in her ear about us.  Telling her she has a mama, a baba and two jie jie's who love her and are coming for her soon.

It has been an emotional day for us.  We know our dossier will go to China on Friday and we got our update today!  Praise Him for all His blessings He has given us this week and throughout this adoption.  Please pray for Meiya that she remains healthy and safe and for our adoption. Pray that God protects all of us and our adoption. We appreciate your prayers!

YES!!!

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This morning I called the USCIS to check the status of our i800a and it was APPROVED on July 26th! It took 43 days for it to be approved which is pretty good!  We are so excited! 

Now we wait for it to come in the mail so we can have it notarized, state certified then authenticated by the Ch*n*s* Consulate in DC, along with several other documents that we already have.  All of these documents together are called the Dossier.

After all of our documents are notarized, state certified then authenticated by the Ch*n*s* Consulate in DC we will send all of those documents to Ch*n* (also known as DTC)!  We have been dreaming of having DTC and now we are one step closer!  Having DTC is HUGE!  Once we get DTC then we will be so much closer to traveling to get our beautiful daughter!  Our prayer is to have DTC in AUGUST!!!  The sooner we have DTC the sooner we travel to get Meiya!  We know that everything is happening in God's perfect timing!  He has moved HUGE mountains for us and proved His faithfulness over and over throughout this process.  We are fully relying on Him to help us meet every goal and financial need we have!  We thank Him everyday for his blessings he has provided for us.  We thank Him for all of the people He has put into our lives that have been so supportive and encouraging during this entire process.

Children Who Wait....

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Hope is Fading from Allan Rosenow on Vimeo.

Busy Summer but things are moving!

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Yesterday our church took our Youth Group to an amusement park for the day.  It was very hot and thankfully they had a water park!  The kids swam and rode the water slides for a couple of hours then we broke for lunch.  After lunch the kids wanted to ride rides.  I am a water park kind of gal so I was not thrilled about the rides especially since it was so HOT!  But the kids had fun!  Hannah and Hailee saw go carts for little one's so they wanted to "drive"!

AND THEY'RE OFF!!!

Hailee is taking the lead....WAIT A MINUTE, THEY ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!

Thankfully no other kids were driving while my crazy driving kids girls were driving.  Jeff certainly has his work cut out for him when he teaches them to drive someday. 

 After some convincing we got Hannah to ride the Ferris Wheel for the first time and she loved it!

I finally talked Hailee into riding it with me and she was not a fan as you can see in this picture!  Mama hates heights too!

We had a good day!  It was fun!  

We are super excited because things are FINALLY moving with our adoption.  Last Wednesday we overnighted our i800a application to the USCIS and on Monday I got an email and text from the USCIS saying that they received it along with our reciept number.  Today I got the i797C in the mail which told us that they received our i800a on June 14, 2012.  It also tells what the next steps are.  The USCIS will schedule a biometrics (fingerprint) appointment for us at our USCIS Application Support Center.  We will get this by mail and hopefully soon!!!  We are hoping we get to go to Charleston, WV for it because they are suppose to be fairly quick.  And we want quick!  The quicker the better!  After the fingerprints we will wait for form 797 which means we were approved by the United States Government, Homeland Security to adopt!  Then we can send our Dossier to C*na!  Oh how I dream of THAT day!  

Meiya, we are working as fast as we possibly can to come and get you!  We know you are in loving hands with your foster mama!  God is watching over you!

The Ball is Rolling...FINALLY!

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Hallelujah!!!!! Our Home Study has been approved by our adoption agency!  

So glad to have this part of our adoption process complete and we are SO READY to start the next step!  

We have several steps left in our adoption process and now that our Home Study has been formally approved by our adoption agency (or placing agency) now we can get the ball rolling! 

So you may be wondering...

After we get original, notarized, signed copies of our Home Study we will submit an application to the USCIS.  This application is called the i800a and the USCIS, aka homeland security, will review it along with our home study and schedule Jeff and I to be fingerprinted at their office.  We PRAY that we are blessed with a USCIS officer that has a true heart for adoption so we can get our process with them done quickly.  After we get our i800a approval then we will send all of our documents to be certified by the Secretary of State and authenticated by the Ch*n*se consulate.  When that is all complete then we will send ALL of those documents to Ch*n* also known as DTC.

  We are really excited to get DTC!!!! Once we have that then we can relax 

a little!

One other great blessing with having our home study approved by our adoption agency is that when it is in our hands we can start applying for grants!  Praise the Lord for those awesome organizations that offer grants to adoptive families!  It will be a while before we hear anything on them, I've heard it can take several months to hear if you've been approved for them.

For now we are plugging away at our FUNDRAISING!  We are still selling these COOL t- shirts:  Proceeds for EACH shirt sold will go towards our adoption fund!  Click on the box below to go to our store and see all of the other amazing styles we offer!

We currently need to raise $4,020 to get our next step accomplished!  We are doing EVERYTHING we can do to raise this money for Meiya.  We are having a garage sale on June 8 and 9th to raise funds. If you live in our area and have stuff you'd like to donate to our sale we would really appreciate it.  Please email me if you live in the Martinsburg area for directions.  We appreciate any prayers and help that we can get.  It means a lot to us!  We are grateful to all of you who have prayed for our adoption and for Meiya.  We are also grateful to all of you who have supported us through giving and through our fundraisers.  Our dream and prayer is to get Meiya home THIS year!!!  Nothing is impossible for God!  He is in FULL control of everything in this world because this is HIS world not ours!  He can change the hearts of kings, He can move mountains! We are fully trusting in Him to see us through!

BEAUTIFUL!

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I am in LOVE with THIS print!  I want it!  

I am doing a lot of research and asking a lot of my adoption friends if they know what the name of this beautiful print is and where can I get it.  I've never seen a print like this of Jesus with Asian children before.  I LOVE it! If anyone knows the name of it or where I can buy it PLEASE let me know!

Sweet Frog Spirit Night!

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On Monday, we had our second Spirit Night Fundraiser. 

This time at Sweet Frog!

If you are not familiar with Sweet Frog it is a frozen yogurt cafe.  So YUMMY!

Hannah and Hailee wore their new T-shirts that say "I Love my sister in Ch*na" with their Mieya red thread bracelets.

All in all we had a pretty good turn out!  I think we did pretty well!  We met a lot of sweet people who loved the fact that we are adopting and they commented on how adorable Meiya is, who can blame them?  Have you seen this precious face?  She gives me goosies every time I look at her pictures! 

As far as our process, we are hoping to get our home study turned in to our agency NOW THIS week!  Yes, we are still waiting on it (84 days to be exact) but we know it will happen.  It MUST happen this week.  I am running out of patience!  We should have our DTC right now but sadly, we do not!  Nobody's fault!   Just the devil throwing wrenches and God is always right there throwing them back at him.  God is in control, this I know!  
He will make a way!

I LOVE this!  I need to tattoo it on my forehead hang it up all over my house because I am so guilty of feeling alone and defeated.  I get angry!  I won't lie!  I get really angry because of how things are moving at a snails pace!  I see other's who started the adoption process when we did and already have DTC!  We do not even have our stinkin home study turned into our agency yet!  It is frustrating!  But God keeps reminding me that this is HIS world and HE is in control of everything!  Nothing is impossible for Him!  He will see to it that we get our sweet Meiya home soon!  He knows what she needs.  She is His child created in His image. I need to trust Him and let Him take the wheel.  It is going to happen in His timing.