Matches Have Arrived!

Title from the CCAI website: "We are excited to announce that we have received a match group today!! We received matches for families logged in on July 14, 2006."

Tomorrow, just after noon, we will see our precious baby girls face! (The tickler on the right of this blog says, 5 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 day we have been waiting and praying for this little girl.) We will also get to know her full name finally since we want to incorporate her chinese name. We are going to pick Parker up from school and go to the agency to get the information instead of having them call us! Parker has no idea yet so we can't wait to see his face when we meet up with John and he realizes where he is! Here is a little of what I wrote in Gracie's journal tonight.

'Right now, I’m feeling a little anxious knowing that I will see your face tomorrow! Daddy feels like it’s surreal. For about the last six months, I have felt like you were born and you were somewhere that I didn’t yet know. You were somewhere in China and I couldn’t see you or hold you, I couldn’t sing to you or rock you! I’ve wondered if you are comfortable and feeling safe, if you are missing your birth mother or if your caregiver is holding you and smiling at you every day. I keep thinking that tomorrow, we will finally know more about where you have been and how long you have been waiting for us!"

Also as a nice surprise, we received our "Notice of ... (something about our finger prints)" in the mail. So thrilled to have that after our scare less than two weeks ago!

Favor with USCIS

'Panicking' must be where I am! Yesterday around 4:30, I realized that we had missed our fingerprint appointment on Wednesday at 3:00! I didn't put it on the calendar when it came in and my brain just won't function these days!! (It takes about month to get an appointment and then another couple of weeks to get our documents back. I'm not sure we have that much time). My clear headed husband told me to stop panicking and call CCAI. Chaunda, who is the person we contact at our agency for most things, told me to try showing up there this morning and see if they give us mercy. We prayed before going to bed and asked a friend to pray for us this morning when we dropped off Parker at school. We are thanking God this morning because we did show up at USCIS... The gentleman who greeted us at the door recognized us and said, 'you guys are going to have about 8 kids before this is over!' I guess he thinks we've been adopting each time we go down there. :) He walked us thru basically and never even said a word about the fact that we were two days late showing up! Talk about a major gift to this mommy who has major adoption brain!! Whew!!!

First Day of School for Parker

Parker started 4th Grade today at Cornerstone. He was excited to get back but not happy about getting up in the morning! He didn't really want to say goodbye to his brother though. :) Those two sure do love each other!

Next Month

Another month has past and the update is that China matched log in dates through July 12, two days before our log in date. As far as I can find, there aren't any waiting families on July 13 so baring something strange, sometime next month, we will see pictures of our sweet baby girl! I really felt sure that we were going to be included this time and I think we were all very disappointed that we didn't find out where GraceLin is last week but it's all in God's time. That baby girl has been chosen for this family for a very long time.

We are enjoying the last two weeks of summer day by day and letting the house become a complete disaster. As always, summer has gone by way too fast! Carter is going to miss his big brother so much when he goes back to school. I don't know who will miss him more because when Parker is in school, Carter is going to look to me for his entertainment and I'm just not as much fun. :) Parker is going to miss Carter too because he is always so anxious to get back to him after he's been away doing something fun this summer.

Until next month...

Five Year Anniversary and Happy Birthday!

Today is not only Carter's birthday but it marks the 5 year anniversary of our wait for Gracie! It's hard to believe that we have prayed for and waited for this little girl for so long but the fact that we will very soon have a face to go with the name is surreal!

Our big boy Carter is 2! He moved into a big boy bed just a few days ago and thinks he's big stuff now! He loves sleeping next to his big brother and having some freedom! So many happy moments from today but this picture shows the highlight of Carter's day I think. He ate his slice of cake and then pulled the entire cake over to himself and started digging in. Once he got his fill, he said, "I wan bwow! Mama, Mama, I wan bwow!" Once we figured out that he wanted to blow the candles again, he had a field day. He must have blown out candles over and over for a half hour! He cheered for himself each time he accomplished it! Each time we lit the candles, he had to remind us that they were hot! What was left...

Not Yet

A new batch of babies were matched yesterday and we are not in the group yet. We first felt sad about that fact but then realized that we now have another month to get ready. We really haven't done much at all to Grace Lin's room. The room and bathroom need to be painted and the closet is piled with things I've stored there. I would also like to get the kitchen painted and finish the cabinets we started in our bathroom three years or more ago:) We are also taking a family vacation this coming week and I think it would have been hard to focus on just enjoying the boys and our extended family if we were thinking we should be home getting ready to travel. You gotta look a the positives right?

We went to the courthouse in Eatonton today to order passports for the boys. The reason we hadn't done this before is that we didn't have Carter's birth certificate until Tuesday! We all had to be present to get the boys passports ordered. Amazing how nice it was to walk right in and get sweet southern hospitality - there are lots of good things small towns! The fact that we did not get a match this time around allowed us to order their passports without expediting them too.

Praying for a match at the end of July or early August!

Pre-Placement Packet

We got our pre-placement packet last night from CCAI! One step closer to the reality of getting our match information for baby Gracie. This packet gives us a document to complete so that CCAI knows how to contact us on match day (phone numbers, calling order, address to overnight the packet...) If we aren't at the beach the day we get the call, we will hop in the car and drive down to CCAI to pick up the information, pictures from China. This packet also asks us to start thinking about our travel - order passports NOW, plan for things like a dog sitter, buying gifts to take to China, etc. We have done very little to prepare so here we go! Over-joyed!!