Thanksgiving came and went. My husband is in Afghanistan, so the three kids and I decided not to cook and stay home by ourselves, so we ate out! It was fun, and we had no dishes to do afterwards! One of the downside of being so far from home.
Christmas......well, we were on our own again! I did cook Christmas dinner though.....Kiwi style! The kids had a great day, and so did I....but I really missed my family back home :-(

Today we received our 'log in date' (LID). This is the date our Dossier, or paperwork, was officially logged into the adoption system in China. Hooray!!!

Hooray!!! Our adoption dossier is finally complete, and sent to China today!!! We have also asked for an update on our daughter-to-be....so we hope we will get some pictures perhaps, and a note on how she is doing!

On July 19th, we heard the terrible news that our beloved socialworker, Ms Laurel and her three girls were tragically killed in a horrible car accident! We were all in shock.....this was heartbreaking! Ms Laurel's husband was the sole survivor. I will never forget this day, as we had to tell our three young children of the accident.....we all mourned for the 4 precious ones taken, and for the dad/husband who lost his family that day.

 

On May 30th, 2011 I had a call from our agency about a file of a little girl that they thought we might like to see.....a few minutes later, we saw her face for the first time....and she was beautiful!

We had an hour and a half to decide.....well, it took all of 5 seconds! We said "YES". We then had to send a letter to China to indicate our wish to adopt this little girl. On June 13th we received our 'pre-approval' from China, and the paperchase became more urgent, as we looked at her face each day!

In May 2011, we began our homestudy, with the most awesome Social Worker....'Ms Laurel'. We were so nervous about her first visit to our home....would she think we were fit parents, was our home suitable? So, we scrubbed, cleaned, polished, and scrubbed some more! The house sparkled! Then Laurel arrived....and we nervously opened our front door......there was a very vivacious, bubbly 'Ms Laurel'. We immediately felt at ease, and enjoyed all our visits with her. We later had playdates with her and her three beautiful girls.

How we began our jouney...
After several miscarriages and lots of heartache, we looked into both adoption and infertility treatments. We tossed around the International adoption vs IVF decision…… A few years later, and three kids in our family…..we still wished to adopt from China. That ‘Red Thread’ was firmly imbedded by now!
So began our adoption story…..