Happy New Year brings 10 Months of Life

On the first day of this New Year I am excited about......

our baby girl turning 10 months old.
knowing that our daughter will be home with her forever family this year!
seeing how each of our boys will change in the coming year
what God has planned for our family
continuing forming friendships with our neighbors
and much, much more

I cannot believe that another year has passed. This last year seemed to go by so quickly. Today I am celebrating not only the first day of a New Year, but the 10 month birthday of our precious daughter, Alesha! As the 1st day of every months comes I am filled with lots of emotions. First, I am so thankful that God has blessed us with our beautiful daughter. It sure has been a LONG road, but I am thankful to now see the precious face of my daughter. Second, I am sad that it means I have missed another 30 days of her life. Oh, how I wish she could be home so I could feed her her bottles, get her dressed, change her diaper, sing to her, read her stories, rock her, give her hugs and kisses, tell her how much I love her, watch her brothers hold her and play with her, and start making memories as a family of five. Third, and most important, I know that God has this entire adoption journey planned out and sees that big picture of how the timing will play out. We continue to surrender to His timing, even when it hard and doesn't seem to make sense.

It has been exciting to start talking about our travel plans to India, finish up our adoption eduction, and sharing our adoption experience with others. I am thrilled that the people we share our adoption experience with are so excited and can't wait to have Alesha home. It is refreshing to hear such a positive response. The one question I get right out of the gates is "Why does it take SO long to adopt? It doesn't make sense." My response has been you are right, it doesn't make sense. I simply state that there is a lot of paperwork and lots of government bureaucracy that you need to wade through and I have stopped trying to figure it out. I tell them that God led us to adoption and we are trusting in Him to bring our daughter home in His timing. It is frustrating and it breaks my heart that it is so difficult, because I believe that so many MORE people would adopt locally and internationally if the process didn't take years to complete.

As we bring in the new year we are still waiting for our Article 5 to arrive. It seems that since we accepted our referral the following steps of the process have gotten delayed by Thanksgiving, Christmas and now the New Year. I am excited to receive the email that says our Article 5 has been approved and we can move on to the next step.....the NOC. Until then we will wait and pray for our daughter that she will feel God's love through the wonderful ladies who are caring for her in our absence. We love you Alesha and you will be home soon.