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!