6 months

Wow! This post has been a long time coming!  It has been a work in process since mid-November, but illness and computer troubles have kept us from keeping you up to date.

Here is the short update from November:

We can't believe that Micah has been with us for 5 months! This was a busy month.
He celebrated his first Halloween dressed as Captain America.  He walked in the neighborhood parade and went trick-or-treating. He loved every minute of it! Of course, the candy was an extra bonus.
Micah celebrated his 6th birthday! He has been looking forward to his birthday, and the excitement surrounding the big day. He wanted everything to be about Jake and the Neverland Pirates. We had a party with friends and then traveled to Chicago to celebrate with family.  He also met his new cousin, Brooklyn.
With all of the cake and candy, he gained two pounds.  Now, that is something to celebrate!
The week of his birthday was also the week he had his activity restrictions lifted from his surgery. This meant one thing...hockey! He had been counting the days until he could join mei mei Claire on the ice.  It was finally time! He spent most of his time laying on the ice at first, but he has come a long way in a short time.  He loves it!

 

 

 

6 month update:
This month has also been filled with holidays, traditions, family and fun!  It started off with his first performance in the church musical.  He loves to sing! He has been begging for snow and at the first sign of sticking snow, he was out in it exploring and sledding. The end of the month we travelled to Missouri and celebrated Thanksgiving with Matt's family. Micah met more family, including his cousin Cooper who is also adopted from China.
At the beginning of December we started preparing our home for the celebration of Jesus' birthday. It was exciting to decorate our home and hang Micah's stocking for the first time.  He is very excited about all of the traditions at this time of year. We made a trip to a local tree farm to cut down Micah's first Christmas tree. The amazement on his face as he sees new things is so fun and a great blessing.

 

 

First Thanksgiving at Great Grandma Marquette's home

 



 

 

 

Celebrating 6 months since Gotcha Day!

 

Over 3 inches grown

5 pounds gained

Fluent in English

Loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates

Loves playing hockey

Doing well in school

 

A great blessing!  God is so good!

 

 

 



1 month home

6 months home

LID

Log In Date (LID)

Today our dossier was logged in at the CCCWA.  What does this mean?  Praying and waiting.  The next step would be receiving our LOA (Letter of Acceptance).  This process takes 2-4 months.  There is no way of predicting the date.  The CCCWA has no method to their madness.  We waited 63 days for Micah's LOA, but who's counting anyway? ;)  We know that all things happen in God's timing.  For that, we are thankful! 

DTC!!

Prayers have been answered!  We prayed to our faithful God that our dossier would be on its way to China by the end of October.  Today, our agency informed us that our dossier has been sent to China!! We are so thankful to be one step closer to bringing home our baby girl.  The kids are super excited about this step in the process.  Of course they translate "one step closer" into Hannah's arrival being any day.  The truth is that our best guess at travel dates would be Spring 2015.  We love to hear them pray for her and talk about her being a part of our family.  She is so loved and we are anxious to bring her home.  Thank you for your continued prayers!

 

I spared the FedEx man his picture and settled for a picture of his truck.  He delivered our authenticated documents from the Chinese Consulate.  All of our papers were then sent to our agency in Eugene, OR and onto China.

 



Yep, that's a lot of paperwork! 

More paperwork to come...

 



 

Our dossier packaged up and ready to be sent to China!

4 Months

We are happy to report that Micah is continuing to do well.  He is recovering well from his surgery.  He is excited to have his activity restrictions lessen with time.  We are praising God that the incomplete scan from surgery day was enough for the doctors to access his needs.  He will begin physical therapy next week.  He will also be seeing another specialist in December.  He continues to grow in height and he gained 6 ounces this past month.  Not much, but we are celebrating this weight gain. 

This past month has been busy!  Hockey season is in full swing.  Micah is looking forward to playing hockey in two more weeks!  He can't wait to join Nathan and Claire on the ice.  He is also loving fall with pumpkin picking and playing in the leaves.

Micah has been counting the days until his birthday in November!  He is so excited!  We are excited to celebrate him and give him his first birthday party!  He enjoyed celebrating Nathan and Matt's birthdays this past month, and he knows that his birthday is next.

He has such a sweet heart.  He is very quick to be a helper, show gratitude and thankfulness and share love.  He has a contagious smile that lights up the room.  He brings our family great joy each day.  We are thankful to God for the privilege of being his parents.  God has been so faithful in answering prayer for his adjustment, health care and well-being.  We serve an awesome God!

He LOVES Jake and the Neverland Pirates!

 

 

A visit to the pumpkin patch.

 

 

 

Enjoying fall leaves!

 



Surgery Day

Micah had surgery yesterday.  He had three procedures and all went well. 

 

 

Our brave boy!

 

 

Resting peacefully.

 

He was scheduled for a scan after surgery.  He was asked to lay still for 45 minutes.  This did not happen.  He was anxious and in some pain from his surgery.  We are asking for prayer regarding this scan.  We pray that the doctors will have wisdom with how to proceed.  The thought is that sedation will be necessary.  Due to his anatomy, his physician feels general anesthesia would be best.   We are praying that they were able to obtain valuable information, despite an incomplete scan.

Thank you to everyone that prayed for our sweet boy!

Happy Mail

We received our home study approval today from IL DCFS. Now, we will be sending it to US Immigration for the last approval we need to re-submit our dossier. Thank you for your prayers. We are one step closer to Hannah.

3 months

Wow!  Time is flying by!  We can't believe that our little blessing has been in our family for 3 months.  He is doing wonderful!  He brings our family great joy!

He continues to develop and grow each day.  He has grown another inch since last month.  He still has not gained any weight.  We are hopeful that the calories he eats will soon help him to grow in weight and height.  We didn't think he get any skinnier!  His English vocabulary is growing each day, also. He is learning to get along with others and follow structure and directions.  He continues to experience many firsts that are highlighted in the pictures below. 

 

He played baseball.

 



 

He met Matt's parents for the first time during a short visit.

 

 

He started school and loves it! 

 



 

 

Micah experienced his first visit to Tanner's. 

He loved picking apples.  Our bag filled up very fast with three kids filling it up!

 

 

This past month, he also officially became a U.S. citizen on paper.  He technically became a citizen when he arrived at Chicago-O'Hare airport.  We just received his official citizen papers in the mail.  We can now move forward with his re-adoption in the state of Illinois.

 

 

 

**Hannah update**
We are in the paperwork chase right now.  We covet your prayers that our home study would be approved at the state level.  This phase of the process is taking weeks longer than Micah's process.  We know that everything is in God's timing.  It is difficult to wait when we have Hannah's sweet face on our minds. 

Thank you for following our journey!

Labor Day Announcement

We are in labor!!  A labor of love, prayer, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork!  It is the labor of adoption…and we are in it again.  We are adopting!!  We’ll tell you again, because you may need to read it twice.  We are in the adoption process again.  Yep, that’s right.  You read it correctly.

Oh my!  Where to begin?!  Well, really it begins with our story.  We always felt God calling us to adopt more than one child.  We originally thought we would be adopting a sibling group, but those doors were closed.  China simply doesn't typically have any sibling groups.  Furthermore, our adoption agency prohibited us from adopting two children at the same time despite our asking.  We knew God was in control, and we would simply wait for God's timing.

The story continues on our trip to China.  While in Guangzhou, China, we met a family from Oregon who was adopting a boy a few years older than Micah.  Interestingly enough, we found out that they were originally from the Peoria area and even used to attend Bethany Baptist!  What a small world!  We also found out that they, too, felt God's call to adopt two children.  In fact, they submitted their application while still in China.  That was just crazy.

Crazy came knocking the Monday after we got back.  Deanna decided to e-mail Holt to see just how the process worked when adopting a second child.  What led her to do this?  We feel that it must have been God.  Holt replied at the end of the day with an e-mail that would tip the ball rolling down the side of the mountain.  Holt told us that they were raising their adoption program fees starting tomorrow, July 1.  If we submitted an application before midnight, though, we would still be able to lock in current fees.  After some discussion and prayer, we decided to submit our application and application fee later that night.  After all, what could it hurt to just turn in an application.  We would still have plenty of time to deliberate, see how Micah was adjusting, pray, do some financial analysis, build back up our savings, etc.

NOT!  Literally two days later our home study case worker was at our house to do our post-placement visit for Micah.  After talking about how well our trip to China had been and how well Micah fit in with our family, we asked about how the process worked if we adopted again.  She told us that since we were starting again so soon, she could reuse a lot of our home study.  In fact, she said she would only charge us a nominal fee for the updated home study instead of charging us a couple thousand dollars.  God was knocking down mountains AGAIN, showing his hand at work, and we were only getting started!

Next, Deanna called Holt to ask what else would need to be done to adopt a second child.  They told us that we could reuse a lot of our dossier, we could reuse our visas, and we could update our U.S. Immigration application instead of applying new again.  All of this reuse translates into money and time savings. We know this whole idea of a second adoption sounds crazy. The truth is God calls us to do crazy things.  We are stepping out in faith and obedience to God.  We are trusting that this is His plan and that He will provide in all ways.

Skip forward to today ... we have completed our home study update and are waiting for approval.  We have also been matched with a beautiful little girl we found on Holt's special focus list.  This little girl is 2 years old.  She lives in a different province than Micah.  One neat thing is that we have been able to get pictures and video of her.  We are so in love!  We are beyond excited to introduce you to our daughter, Hannah Wuxi.

 

 

 

The kids voting on whether they we were matched

with a mei mei (little sister) or di di (little brother).

 

 

 They are SO excited for mei mei Hannah!

 

First family photo with our FOUR children!

 

We humbly ask you to join us as we journey back to China and welcome home our daughter.  We are so grateful for your support and prayers.

He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them,  "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me." ~ Mark 9:36-37