Sorry it took so long

Ok so I have several things to say for this blog so I am sorry if this gets lengthy but there is some good info at the end that you might want to know so bear with me!!  I have literally been having this blog run thru my head over and over and I knew that I needed to do it but when I would sit down the words just weren't right.  So I have decided to just go for it and hope that it comes out the way I want it to!!! 

I will start by a little update.  Home visits are FINISHED!!!  She has 1 month to get the report written and approved and then hopefully we will move right along to the Dossier which is the packet that goes to China!!!  The 3rd and final visit was pretty painless other than the fact that she interviewed our boys without us present!!!  She apparently just asked Grady if he would share his toys with his new little sister to which I believe he actually answered yes!!!  Connor was as sweet as ever though as the social worker had to tell us 2 of his answers!!  She said that she asked him if he felt like we were good parents and he replied "they are the best parents that I know".  She also asked him what he thinks about having a sister that doesn't look like him and he said "it doesn't matter what she looks like, just what is in her heart".  That is just soooo connor!!!  The social worker said she would have thought it was rehearsed if not for his face when he said it.  So she said down with Jason and I just for a bit longer and just like that the home visits were over!!!  She did say that she might have forgotten a few things so I have been watching the portal for a question or two but nothing yet. 

Ok so I have been getting a great deal of response to this adoption, I have received ALOT of questions and I first want to say that I LOVE the questions!!!  They always start with "do you mind if I ask you a few questions" and the answer is always NOT AT ALL.  At this point I have very limited information as we are still in the middle of it but I am willing to give you any information that I have or any advice that I can!!  Please know that international adoption and domestic are quite a bit different so I am probably no help with that!!  Along with the questions though I get a lot of "you guys are amazing" or "what an amazing thing that you guys are doing" or "there will be many jewels on your crown in heaven" and let me say this is just not the case AT ALL.  I am a planner and as a child I thought I had my life all planned out!!!  I have always wanted to be a mommy and when that happened I just assumed that God will let me life be as perfect as I had dreamed.  However, years of infertility and 6 miscarriages was definitely NOT in my plans!!!  When I got pregnant with Chesney though life was finally going to end the way I had planned.  I was going to have the 3 kids that Jason and I had agreed on, I was going to have my 2 boys and finally a little girl.  All of my children were going to be white headed little kids running around and life was perfect again!!!  Losing Chesney was never in the plan!  Having a tombstone at a cemetery that I am forever attached to was not the plan.  This morning Pastor Danny spoke on Jesus and how if we believe He was God then we must believe that He is sovereign.  That yes it is true that He healed the blind man, but it is also true that He made that man blind, let him live blind for 30 years so that everyone would know he was blind, and then healed him for His glory!!!!!  God doesn't promise life is going to be this perfect little bubble just because we are followers, in fact if you read the bible the men that followed Jesus side by side on His time on earth didn't have a perfect life AT ALL.....some were stoned, beheaded and even skinned alive.  So who am I to think that my life is going to be perfect!!!  So back to my point, less than 8 months ago I had my life all figured out and none of it had to do with fundraisers for an orphanage, mountains of paperwork, invasive interviews in my home, and flying across the world....but it did include finishing my family with my daughter.  This is where God stepped in.  God LITERALLY blew doors closed and opened and left no doubt for either Jason or myself that this adoption was exactly where He wanted us to be...although it was no our plan it was His.  So you see us adopting a special needs daughter from an orphanage in China was NEVER in our plans so we are not these great people doing great things and hoping to get rewarded.  We are simply being obedient.  So what you mistake for greatness is simply obedience.  Not everyone is called to leave the US and live in a place like Chad Africa and be a missionary....not everyone is called to go to China and adopt a special needs child....not everyone is called to do the same things....all that God asks is that what we are called to we are to be obedient!!  So that's where we are....we are so excited to get MeiMei even though she wasn't exactly what we had planned she is EXACTLY what God planned so it is going to be even better then we could have imagined!!!  I love the Christian author Lysa TerKeurst so I will end this part of the blog with a quote from her that fits this just soooo well!!!!

“One thing you can be assured of is that God has already worked out all the details of what your obedience will accomplish-and it is good. We need not fear what our obedience will cause to happen in our life. We should only fear what our disobedience will cause us to miss.”

Finally I have a little something exciting to share!!!  I am from a small town of 350 people, so everyone knows everyone and everything.  There was a special little boy that basically affected everyone in St Peter's life, his name was Alex Wodtka.  Now let me say that because I was a child during all of this I am going to tell it as I remember and if any of my facts are absolutely perfect then I'm sorry!!  Anyway, Alex was born with a heart defect on April 1.  He had a heart transplant and was a sweet little boy with a huge future.  It's not my place to give his entire story and isn't necessary for this story anyway.  Alex ended up in St Louis where he would eventually pass to be with the Lord, but while he was there he had a "wish" to meet Mark McGwire.  This was around 1998 and McGwire was who all little boys wanted to meet.  However, because he was who he was he wasn't able/chose not to go to the hospital to meet him.  BUT Fred Bird went along with John Mabry.  I was a Junior in high school during this time and this was a HUGE character building moment for me.  I never want to be seen the way McGwire was seen in our small little town....like he just couldn't take the time to see this little boy that just wanted to meet him because he was a good ball player.  I also learned that I wanted to be the kind of person that John Mabry was and wanted to teach my kids that you are never too busy to be there for someone else.  So I had the picture of Alex, Fred Bird and Mabry in a collage frame in my dorm room thru college because it was a defining moment of sorts.  So when we were trying to find a name for MeiMei I immediately fell in love with the name Mabry.  So our little China doll will be named Mabry and therefore the boys could still call her MeiMei if they choose to.  I hope that I can teach my children to be great examples of their faith and also have the compassion that John Mabry had to go to the hospital even when he wasn't the one that was asked to go!!!  Lets just say that I might have to buy a Mabry cardinals jersey for all 4 of us for the airport.....you are all welcome to sport yours too....lol. 

By the way...tshirts are still for sale......

Second home visit

Alright so we had our second and most dreaded visit and I can say we survived!!!  It was as they explained they questioned each of us individually for over an hour. I'm sure you are all shocked to hear that Jason took longer than mine lol. The questions ranged from the members of our family, past relationships, deaths in our family, infertility, how we fight, what we fight about, strengths and weaknesses of us and our spouse and on and on. Basically every detail of your life is fair game. I can see why they warn you that you might get emotional but since I talk about our fertility stuff all the time, I survived. 

So we have this week off and then our final visit with our social worker is on the 11th. She will then have a couple weeks to write report and then on to dossier!!!!!!!!!  Dossier is the paperwork that we have to send to china. So basically it is a much smaller stack of papers and we get the state seal and notarized as needed and then mail to china and get a log in date (LID). One we have an LID we are officially a waiting family!!!!!!  This process is moving right along and we couldn't be more happy!!!!  

I want to tough on the tshirts again. We are not fundraising to pay for our adoption but we want our friends and family to be involved in this process and we also want to be able to help the orphanage that we get meimei from to take tremendous care of future babies waiting for their forever family. Please consider getting a shirt for your entire family!!!!  They are $20 and come in any size you could want!!!  You can contact me or anyone in my family!!!  Also I have order forms at the dental office if u want to get one or maybe make copies and put them at your place of business!!!!!  Also feel free to request order forms if you want to get some group orders!!!!  It really is a great cause and we really want to show how much we appreciate these people caring for our daughter!!!!  I am thinking about setting up a Facebook page for the adoption updates and also would love for you that order shirts to take a picture of your family in the shirts and post on our page!!!  I will post more information on that when I get it going. In the meantime, please sell and buy the shirts!!!  If I am going to reach my goal of 300 shirts I am going to need for all of you to buy them, put order forms in your work and ask everyone you know if they have bought one yet!!!!  Thanks to all of you that have already ordered one, I cannot wait to see your pictures!!!!!!!