Finally a glimmer of hope!

We received news this week that 14 days had gone through the referral room this month, taking it through 7/28/06. It doesn't seem like much, but when you've spent years looking anywhere from 2-5 days a month, this is incredible.

We believe this month will be another low batch because there is a 1 week holiday in China..........they sure seem to have a lot of longer holidays there.

We are officially 35 LID days away from a referral! I hope to be receiving one by February, if not in Dec/Jan............who knows. Praying not to get my hopes up too high.

Since my last post 4 years ago, I think, alot has happened. In Fall 08 we decided to try embryo adoption to see if I could actually give birth to a child. It worked and we ended up with Isaiah Pax (peace)...........immediately after birth I told Gary I wanted to do it again IF he had any biological siblings left...........there were 3 embryos left and we took 2 (the most they'll do at a time)...........we ended up pregnant again with Sierra Faith..............they are both such blessings to us, just as I know our little child in China will be.

I will eventually close down this blog. It will be part of our child from China's journey and will be a great story, but we have decided NOT to name a daughter Hannah after all of this time -- and purchasing MANY things with Hannah on it---

We may still change to SN, but probably not since the line seems to be speeding up. We would like another girl, but also another boy...........and so my heart is a little apprehensive about not getting a boy right now. I know we are supposed to have both, we feel and believe that God has told us so (1 hopefully biological to us), but my fear sometimes gets the best of me and makes me want to change the China child to a boy just in case so I don't have to worry if we have another boy later or not..........

That said, if it weren't for our "Hannah Faith Mei Yi" we wouldn't have any of our other children...........I'd saved up $10,000 for the trip, at that time it was what we needed............if we didn't have that money, we couldn't have traveled to get Belle. We got money back from her adoption (IRS) -- resaving it for Hannah, and used that for Isaiah's adoption that Fall........then IRS gave us more back from Isabelle and we used that (instead of saving it for Hannah) for Sierra's adoption. Much of what the IRS had given us at this point was from taxes and a little from the adoption credit.........Well, this year they changed the refund amount a little (higher) and made it so we could get the remainder all at once instead of just continuing to get the credit.........so we got all of our adoption credit from Belle back and that is the money we now have to get "Hannah" (to be renamed) and it was actually more than our original $10,000 so God took what we gave Him in faith and multiplied it with both children and money.

We are growing close to heading for China and have raised all we need for the trip EXCEPT our plane tickets. Isabelle is going with us and we have her ticket money. We have frequent flyer miles for our tickets, but I am concerned that there will be a blackout date or the airlines will change something. It's United and they recently merged with Continental -- so they're changing their plans. We hope to raise another $5000.00 somehow for these tickets. When we went for Belle we didn't have plane money either and that's how we ended up with credit card bills.......fortunately this child will not need 3 trips like Belle did.......wwwwooosshhh.

We figure that if we raise the $ and don't end up needing it for the tickets, we'll use whatever is left to purchase the bed we still need to buy (a bunk bed for the small rooms we have!)........so it's not just going to us............


SIDENOTE for our own personal memories -- When we started this journey, I wanted 5 children. I think Gary and I had discussed it. But with the long wait we dropped it. I went to 4 children in my head and didn't think much of it. When we were pregnant with Sierra, Isabelle declared that she wanted 2 brothers and 2 sisters (not 4 kids total, but 5). When I told daddy, I laughed and said, well I did want 5 and he said, I thought that was just me.............so we are more convinced than ever that it is supposed to be 5 children. I don't know where #5 is coming from. If it's adoption, it will be in at least 5 years and we'll have to make more $..........for now I'm trying not to hope to hard that God will grant us a biological child as the 5th. We'd tried hard to make it our 1st and it would be God laughing at us granting it as the last child and with our ages (though I'm still younger than Sarah and Abraham)...........I've prayed many years that God would take this desire away and I thought maybe He had somewhat after Isaiah, only to have Gary make comments about a biological child that drove me right back to it. I can't love the children I have any more or less than a biological child. They are TOTALLY MINE no doubt about it........but there's a little tinge I get when I think about passing on my parents (deceased) genes and what a biological child of ours would look like as well............negative of that is that this child would also have my bad genes too.....:) guess I'll just have to teach him/her how to eat healthy and exercise from the start........:)