Happy Fall, Y'all!

We wanted to share some recent photos from happenings in FL over the last few weeks. We enjoyed having Judi and Doug spend a long weekend with us last weekend...and we are really excited to have Jeremy, Emily and Peter joining us for Thanksgiving this week! We are thankful to have family willing to travel long distances to be with us...

Not much new to report on the adoption front...we are still awaiting our PA (preliminary approval), and are awaiting a Home Study addendum which will get sent to both the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as well as to the Chiense Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) to get all the final approvals that we will need in order to travel to China and bring Lilly home. Still a few months of waiting ahead. We are thankful that this time of year seems to speed by, so the wait should seem quick.

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving! We have much for which to be thankful...

Lillian Joy!!

We received a phone call from our agency on Friday, asking us if we would consider reviewing the profile of a little 2 1/2 year old girl named An Xiao Xue, who lives in foster care (a huge answer to prayer for me) in Henan province. I eagerly said "yes, yes! Please send her file!" and then had to immediately run to get Anna from school without any time to check my e-mail and look at her. It being Halloween on Friday, of course we also had costumes to put together and pumpkins to carve, so I had to wait patiently until the kids were happily and independently preparing for the evening's festivities so I could sneak onto the computer and pull up her precious photos and file. She looks like a sweetie! She is currently quite bald (looks like they shaved her head--not uncommon in the orphanages to help manage "bugs"), and, as you can see in her photos, she stands a little bit crooked, as she has congenital scoliosis.

I also left voice mails for Tom and forwarded him her file at work, but we did not have a chance to talk it over until late that evening after Trick-or-treating through the neighborhood and getting the kiddos into bed. I had been almost afraid to hope that this might be our daughter, not knowing Tom's opinion on the severity of her scoliosis and our ability to get her whatever treatments would be necessary to correct her spine's significant S-curvature. Once we got to talk, however, my heart was ready to burst when Tom said "yes, I think this is the little girl God has for us to take care of!" He just needed to spend some time on Saturday researching congenital scoliosis to make sure he felt confident this was something we would be able to handle.

So we have submitted our Letter of Intent to adopt little An Xiao Xue, who will soon be named Lillian Joy (Lilly or Lillie or Lily or Lilli--still working on which spelling we like!). We hope to bring her home before her 3rd birthday--which they estimate to be March 25th. There is a whole new set of paperwork and approvals to be done now that we have been matched with our daughter, so I am praying, as always, that the process goes smoothly and quickly in God's timing! The waiting seems easier now that we know who she is.

Praise God with us for His goodness and His faithfulness!