Prayer

It is only hours before we start on our journey!  I am so elated!!  I can not believe we are at this point, today has felt so surreal.  I have been drafting these blog posts and it is finally coming together!! We have had a wonderful weekend getting together with friends, going to church, hugs, phone calls, and saying see you later!! Tonight we sat in the family room as a family of 3 and prayed together.  It was very emotional.  We have trusted God faithfully on this journey thus far and we felt we had so many things to say thank you for.  It was beautiful to hear Isaac ask God to help him be the best big brother.  I can not tell you how thankful I am to hear him say that.  I am so happy he will be a big brother soon!! We cried and hugged and cried some more.  It was a moment I will remember for a long time.  We know and we trust that God goes before us and will be with us each step of the way.

Specific things you can pray for us about:

Health: pray that we will be healthy on this trip.  Pray that we adjust to the altitude as it is almost at 9,000 ft.  It may take a day or 2 or 3 to acclimate.
Health of Baby A: (We will refer to her as this until we have our court decree) We will not be able to post any pictures of her on here until we have Sentencia which is our final decree stating she is our daughter.  We will hope to post pics of what we are doing and where we are at.
Safety
Bonding: Together as a family.  This is such a precious time for all of us and we are so thankful for the time we will have together
A smooth and quick court process.  We are told there are 20 some courts in the city.  Some are considered slower than others.

I will plan to post every couple of days or so.  It will take us some time to get settled in and we have a few appointments when we arrive.  The best way to communicate is email.
Please sign in to post comments.  We would love to hear from you.  Next post from Colombia!! :-)  Blessings to you all!!
We are coming baby girl!!!

Mark 11:24  Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Thankful

Tonight as I sit here my heart is full and I am feeling very thankful.  I am feeling very overwhelmed by all of the blessings we are experiencing in this journey.  Here are a few things that come to mind:

*Thankful to God for answered prayers!
*Thankful for the beautiful little girl who waits to join our family.
*Thankful for the caregivers taking care of our sweet baby girl until we are able to meet her!
*Thankful for our agency, our caseworkers, and our social workers that have helped us through this process.  We have felt so much support and are grateful for all of their help.
*Thankful for the fact that we are going on this journey together as a family and for the time we will get to be together and bond.
*Thankful for my amazing husband.  There are no words to explain his love and support of our family on this journey.   He has kept our entire paperwork process together, setting up meetings, booking tickets, keeping track of dates, making many phone calls, calling the embassy, he travelled to Chicago on his own to get our visas etc.  I am very thankful for him and for his time he has spent in this process.  He is truly in love with this sweet girl and is so excited to be her dad.
*Thankful for my sweet Isaac who has been so excited to become a big brother
*Thankful for our families and friends who have prayed for us and will continue to pray us through this process and for all of their love and support.
*Thankful for friends who have shared in this experience inviting us to their home and in to their lives to share their experience with us, emailing, facebooking, inviting me to coffee, calling us and all of the support we are shown by people who have walked this journey.
*We are also thankful for those who have written blogs with many tips.
*Thankful for my job and my coworkers and their love, support and prayers
*Thankful for Jeff's job and his coworkers, the support he has received from everyone and the blessing to be away through this entire process
*Thankful our dog Buddy is healthy and doing well ( he is going to be 14 years old in March)  He will be in great hands while we are gone and we are thankful for that.
* Thankful for wonderful house/dog sitters while we are away.  Such a blessing to have such wonderful people caring for everything while we are gone.

There are so many many things to be thankful for at this time in our lives.  These are just a few of many that come to my head right now!

Psalm 107:1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!!

Isaac

Many people have asked how Isaac is doing.  He is very excited to become a big brother.  He is also excited to travel and be together with us for an extended period of time.   But as with all 9 year olds, he asks questions and wonders what is going to be like, will he like the food, will there be things to do, is the baby going to cry a lot, how long will we be there.  Isaac is a very gentle spirit, sweet, and tender hearted.  I know that he will do his best to have a good attitude but I very much expect it to be a time of adjustment for him.  He has been the one and only for the last 9 years.   He has made clear some of the things he would like to be in charge of once the baby is here and those he does not want to be in charge of.  For example, reading bedtime stories especially in spanish he would love to do, changing diapers...not even on his list! :-)

He has done some really sweet things lately.  The other day I went in to the nursery and on the shelf found a bunch of his books.  He said he wanted baby A to have these to read.  He had also put a few of his stuffed animals in the crib that he wanted her to have.  Melt my heart.   He prays every night for her and keeps a picture by his bed.  He thanks God for the people caring for her and prays she is healthy.  Melt my heart again.  He has asked a lot of questions about what we can bring for the kids living in the private casa.  I know he is thinking about many things.  He says he is a bit worried about using his Spanish while he is there fearing that they will not understand him or that he will say something wrong.  Many people have told him to just speak slowly and tell people that he is learning and people will speak slowly to him and be more understanding.

I am grateful to be his mom and I am so thankful he will be along on this journey with us.  Please pray for him on this journey.  He is going to be the best big brother.

TRAVEL DATE!!!

It's official!  We have tickets booked to fly out on 2/10.  We have a presentation day to meet our daughter on 2/11.  So EXCITED!! Praising God!!!

Lists

With the holidays over now I feel like I am really focused on getting ready for our trip!  I have been planning things for months but now it feels like the time is getting so close and I am so EXCITED!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love working off a list.  I love getting things crossed off my list and love being organized.  Sometimes I just write things on a list to cross it off.  These days my list is long.  Our agency provides us a travel packet of all things to get ready to pack and to bring.  It has been super helpful to know what we will need.  There are many details not in that packet though that I need to still complete such as completing the list for a house/dog sitter, planning Isaac's school work while we are gone with his teacher, travel appts, calls to the bank, credit card companies, work HR, and to our insurance companies etc.

We are anxiously awaiting a call from our agency with a travel date of when we are invited to come to the country and have heard that there may not be a lot of turn around time once we have that date so we want to be prepared.  I have been keeping busy gathering things that we are going to need to take on our trip.  I have a few friends that I have met along this journey that have been wonderful resources and have travelled to meet their children a little over a year ago.  I have been sending a lot of emails or messages their way with many questions!!  I was also able to connect with another family who was just recently in country and talked with them while they were there!  It has been so helpful talking with each of them and messaging when I have a quick question.   I spoke with one friend Megan on the phone for a few hours one night.  She was so helpful and so insightful.  She lives locally so we hope to get our families together soon!!  My friend Carol lives in Michigan and her blog has been helpful.  She even created a list of what she wished she would have known to bring.  We are so thankful for people's eagerness to help us along on this journey!

This weekend we had a family church retreat scheduled but being that Jeff is taking a J term class on Friday night and all day Saturday for the entire month of January we figured we probably would not be able to make it.  Our friends volunteered to take Isaac with them for the weekend so we would have some time to get things in order.  What a blessing that was!! I spent Friday night getting paperwork together and making lists of all that we need to get done in the next couple of weeks.  I spent Saturday finishing small projects around the house, cleaning, shopping for gifts to bring with us for people that will be helping us once we are in the country.  I also layed out the things that I have for baby A and made a list of things that I still need to get.  Jeff was teasing me that he thinks the nesting is setting in! HA!  We were able to sneak in a a date night to Stella's on Saturday evening.  Many of you know how we are groupon junkies and we want to make sure we use them up so they don't expire!  It is on the list!! :-)

It is so fun to look through the little girl things that I have.  It moves me to tears when I sit in her room almost every time I go in and I find myself just sitting in there rocking and praying.   I pray that she is safe and healthy and pray that we will get to hold her in our arms soon.  I also thank God for those caring for her while I am not there.  We have been told by several families that have adopted their children from the same private home that she is in great care.  This was such a blessing and so comforting for me to hear.

Please continue to pray for us while we wait to hear.  Please also pray for us to stay focused and enjoy our time as a family of 3 in anticipation of being a family of 4 as schedules are a bit hectic!!

The Nursery

I know a few of you have also asked about what we have done for the nursery.  I thought I would post a few pics to practice as we will be posting pictures once we are there of what we are up to.  As you can see Jeff has been busy painting!! ;-)

Adoption Q and A

I know that several of you probably have questions so I wanted to try and highlight answers to some of the frequent questions we have been asked since telling people about our journey!

Why adoption?
Since I was young I have always had a place in my heart for wanting to adopt a child.  After waiting years to have Isaac and trying to have another child we prayed that God would guide us in our decision in growing our family.  We felt that God layed it on our hearts that we needed to explore this option above any other option.

Why Colombia?
It is a beautiful country with beautiful people and very family focused.  We felt that God was leading us in the direction of looking into the program offered in Colombia.  We have many connections with friends who have adopted from Colombia.  Colombia has a strong relationship with the US and it is a stable program.  We have learned a lot about the culture in Colombia and we figured it would be a great experience for Isaac using his Spanish in travelling with us.   He has had several teachers that have come to his school to teach for a year from Colombia and we look forward to connecting with them while we are there.  We loved the fact that we can travel back to visit after our kids are older.

Why do you have to be there so long?
Once we are in the country we take custody of our daughter and take care of her while our case goes through the court process.  We are told to expect this process to take 6-8 weeks.  We are looking forward to this time in our life to being together as a family and bonding, spending time exploring our daughters birth country and learning about the culture, and spending a lot of time together getting to know her.  We have many friends who have taken this journey ahead of us and have been very helpful in educating us on all the wonderful things to see and do while we are there.