This season I was blessed to take part in so many family gatherings and while I have loved being with everyone there is a bit of sadness that has crept in. My parents and youngest sister are moving this coming Monday all the way down to Texas for a job opportunity. Even though I know it’s for the best for them at this time it still rips my heart open a bit. It’s so hard to see my dad leave again when he just got home. My mother has truly become my best friend and my sister – well how could I have gotten past the first year of motherhood and working from home without the help of “Aunt C----”! I have been blessed to see that awesome girl 2-3 times a week for the past year and can’t begin to express how much I am going to miss her. She is talented, beautiful, dances to my strange dances and sings to my funny mommy songs (“Peas and Carrots”, sung to the tune of “I Want Candy” is on its way to becoming platinum in this house). I seriously wish I was that cool at 15.
This day always holds mixed feelings for me. It was on January 1st, 2010 that I first told John he was going to be a father. What a wonderful day that was! Now here we are, six years later, four children with Jesus, one sleeping (though whimpering occasionally, poor girl is cutting some teeth), and one face yet to be seen by my eyes, but is nestled deep in my heart.
We were waiting until after the New Year to restart some of our adoption paperwork. We are going to update our homestudy to indicate our decision to adopt from China instead of Colombia and to change our children requested from 2 to 1. To refresh everyone’s memory the homestudy is the report that is put together by our social worker that basically contains our lives in summary. It’s funny to see yourself on paper! While we do this we will also be updating our USCIS and preparing our dossier for China. This will contain a lot of the same or similar documents and papers – medical statements, financials, fingerprints, our signature in blood (just kidding on that one). Then – if all goes as planned (haha!) – we will submit our dossier to China right after my birthday in April. After that is a slew more acronyms (LID, LOA, TA…) but I won’t boggle your mind with those until we reach that point. That’s when the exciting stuff starts happening! All signs point to a quick match and God willing we will see ourselves in China before 2016 is over!
This just may be the best year yet…
God Bless, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
-Theresa