100 Good Wishes Quilt

Okay, so we got this idea from our adoption agency and I'm really excited to try it. Apparently there is a Northern Chinese tradition that when a baby is born, family & friends bring pieces of fabrics that mean something to them and they make a quilt out of all of the pieces to get passed down. The idea is to bring their best wishes/blessings for the baby. The Americanized version of this is the 100 Good Wishes Quilt. We are going to have our friends and family bring us quilt pieces and we're going to make one quilt for Lily and one quilt to send to our future daughter after we're matched with her. We're hoping to have both sides of our families contribute some squares and these squares will all tell a story....give some history for each of our girls to cherish as well as our families' blessings and good wishes for them as our precious children.

Some people will additionally take a piece of each fabric and make a memory book out of who gave what fabric and the story behind the fabric. We may do that as well but at the very least, I want both of my girls to know how loved they are and have something special for both of them that came from the hearts of our family and friends. I wanted to pass this idea along to any of you who are adopting and want to have a special way to commemorate your special journey. I think that this idea can apply to any type of adoption and can be as creative as you want it to be. Eventually, we'll add this on to our website www.4-everfamily.com as we'd like to pass this along to all of our families there as well. Let me know if you've done a quilt and what was special about it for you.

Balancing faith and actions

Well, as of Monday, we're officially also in the queue for the waiting child program thru CCAI! Basically we'll be on 2 tracks until one or the other opens up. Now the crazy application process for grants begins! I'm sure we can't be the only ones who don't have an extra $12k or so in our pockets and now we begin the nerve-racking process of applying for grants and fund-raising. We're really hoping that we don't have to add to our debt in order to finalize our adoption but I guess we'll do what we have to, to bring our little girl home! We've found a lot of great sites w/information that we're hoping to soon add to our website so stay tuned!

So, for those of you who are Christians, I have a question. How do you balance faith & trusting that God will provide all that you need to complete your adoption with doing all that you can do to raise the money for your adoption? It really feels like a teeter-totter to me. I've continually struggled w/giving up my panic and anxiety over where the finances are coming from to having moments of trusting that God will provide. I'd love to hear from you in how you balance those two elements.

China update...

Well, we met w/our caseworker last night and good news.....she's signed off on us entering the waiting child program and we'll have approx. a 10-12 month wait on our China adoption! We're excited about this only because it'll allow us more time to raise the remainder of our adoption fees via grants and fundraisers. This will also give us a little more time to get ready ourselves, finish training, prepare Lily, etc.

One of the big decisions we've had to make is whether or not to bring Lily on the trip. We're trying to figure out that now because if we bring her, we need to get her passport going, etc. This has been a real wrestling match as to what to do. We are now pretty much leaning towards leaving her at home w/relatives. We landed on this decision because of the LONG flight there, the potential for her to pick up something while there (her immune system has been a little bit compromised since birth) and mostly because her routine would be incredibly off. She very much needs her routine and everything we've read says that the key to a successful trip is flexibility. Jim & I have no problem being flexible on our own but I think we would both be incredibly stressed out worrying about keeping her on a schedule which wouldn't be good for anyone. In addition to talking w/family and our caseworker, we also spoke w/Lily's pediatrician. In addition to the reasons above, they all pointed out that this will be hard enough trying to bond w/our new little daughter let alone adding in giving Lily attention. All thought that it would be a good idea to have that time to bond w/her before coming home. Obviously for each family, it's going to be different and you have to do what's right for your family and your kids. We would encourage you to talk w/other families, do research, seek wise council and ultimately land on what's best for your kids. We have spoken w/people who have brought their kids but also brought a relative or friend to help w/their children so that they could be free to bond w/their new child. If you've adopted internationally, tell us what you did. What made it successful or not and why? What would you do differently?

TGIF!

Well..this week has been a crazy week and we both feel completely spent, physically & emotionally. Business-wise, we attended the Child Abuse Rally on Tuesday. It was great to be there and we met a lot of great organizations but unfortunately the venue was set up in a way that didn't allow for a lot of interaction between organizations and people trying to get resources. There were so many entertainers that many felt compelled to watch rather than walk around and interact w/the companies represented. Still, we felt happy to be there and be a resource for the few people who came by.

Personally, it's been an exciting week to see God bring Jim & I on the same page as far as the waiting child program in China. Jim & I are very different and to have God give us almost the same exact vision concerning this program was very exciting. Additionally, we had applied for certified birth certificates for Lily's passport and they came in 48 hours! That has to be some kind of record for a government agency! There were a number of other things that also fell into place for us as far as insurance and some info. concerning grants...all together w/ the peace we both felt has started to confirm that this is the path for us.

You'd think we'd have no worries at all, right? Wrong! Today the time frame really hit us and we've both been feeling a lot of panic. It's one thing to know you have 3-5 years to come up w/the remainder of the adoption fees and know that it'll be a God-thing for that to happen but another to have the time frame shortened to 10-12 mos. Then today we found out it could be 3-6 months..oy vey! Talk about a miracle! For those who aren't Christians this probably won't make much sense but for those of us who are, how do you balance wisdom and faith? Wisdom says to not do this in the first place until you have every last penny saved up but faith told us that this was God's plan for our family and to move forward anyway. Bottom line? Even though we've seen God provide in miraculous ways, we're still wondering if he'll provide when it's time to go get our precious little girl. We feel compelled to be obedient but so long to see the provision before we move forward.

Please keep us in your prayers while we continue to try and be wise while stepping forward in faith. Pray that God will affirm the things He's laid on our hearts and be clear on His time frame. Pray that we'll have peace and wisdom to discern our next step and for us not to move too far forward. And pray for the financial aspect, that God would provide every penny we need. Hang on with us...I think we're in for the ride of our lives! :-)

1st post...

We have officially joined the rest of the country in finally getting our blog up and running! Yea! The reason we're blogging is 2-fold. First, we want to document our journey to our future daughter from China and have a way to keep people informed. Second, we want to give other adoptive families from our website a way to share Adoption and orphan care resources with each other. We've definitely had a challenging time in our own adoption journey to find quality products and resources so we're trying to bring it all to one spot. Check out our website at www.4-everfamily.com We hope that through our experiences we can come alongside of others on the adoption journey.

So, being new at this, I guess I'll just share the things going on w/our business and our Adoption process! Business-wise, I launched our website the middle of May 2008 and am working on adding 2 other company's products to our site. Tessera Publishing has some beautiful Adoption memory books for both babies and kids, so I'm working on getting those products added for our customers. Also, we fell in LOVE with Julian & Co's gorgeous handmade jewelry and can't wait to get those products added as well. I've also been researching some GOOD (Good is so hard to find!) children's books on Adoption so that we can offer those resources to our families and am in the process of getting a few of the good ones on to our site. Additionally, I have a TON of information that we're trying to put together and get added to our site so that families have the resources they need to look into adoption and orphan care. Oy...there are just not enough hours in the day!

Tomorrow we'll be at a local event called Connections for Kids Rally hosted by Pikes Peak Family Connections. We're excited to be a part of any event that raises awareness for community issues like child abuse and adoption and can't wait to see some of you there! It's free and is from 4-7pm at First Presbyterian Church at 105 N. Weber.

Personally, we are doing some research on how to better connect w/our daughter, Lily. I don't know if any of you have come across any sensory and/or attachment issues w/your adopted children but if so...You HAVE to get a book called "The Connected Child" by Karyn Purvis & David Cross!!! We're working on getting this book on our site but in the meantime you can definitely get it on Amazon.com AWESOME resource! Our daughter has some sensory issues due to drug exposure as an infant and this book has been totally life-changing for our family. We HIGHLY recommend it! If you want more information, just send me an email.

Additionally, we're praying about whether or not to adopt a "waiting child" from China. Basically, these are children that are considered special needs, whether physically, mentally, emotionally or developmentally. Lily is considered to be a special needs child due to her drug exposure and mild delays so we're thinking and praying through adopting a child w/similar conditions. We'll keep you posted on this as this could dramatically change our time-frame from 3+ year wait in the traditional program to 10 months or so in this program. Time-wise and age-wise it would be great to have our 2nd daughter be closer in age to Lily but we'd have to come up with the remainder of our adoption fees a lot quicker. We want to make sure that our family can handle whatever special needs this precious little one may have and so we're trying to be extremely thoughtful and wise in this process. Either way, we're just praying for God's direction and trusting that if He wants us to go through the waiting child program, He'll provide the resources and make that path clear. It's scary but oh, so exciting to soon have our daughter from China adopted into our family and have our family adopted into Chinese culture!

Well...that's it! A little snapshot into our lives! I hope we'll get to hear from some of you soon and if there's anything we can do to help you in your adoption journey, Please let us know!