God Keeps Amazing...

Our package to Zhong Yong has hopefully made it's way to him by now. We sent the package below along with a letter to him, some pictures of our family and house and a camera for him to take pictures of himself and his friends. We also included a return envelope so he can write us a letter back. We also got an update of his measurements and the pictures above. He is smaller than I thought he would be. He is 5 inches smaller than Bradley and 13 pounds lighter than Kennedi! I'm positive he will grow tons once he's home!

God keeps amazing me with this adoption! It just seems like all keeps falling perfectly into place. For not expecting to be adopting from China again and only a month ago finding our son waiting on a website, I just can't believe it sometimes.

Last night I came in contact with the family who is adopting the boy in the orange shirt in the picture below. I check in daily to the yahoo chat group for the orphanage our boy is at (all the families adopting or have adopted from there are on there) and last night I finally posted his pictures. The family saw the picture and wrote to me that they are adopting the boy in the orange shirt. By the looks of the smile on our boy's face, it looks like they have a lot of fun together, so it will be fun to keep them in contact after we return home! They live in Washington (so not too far) but she (Chris) grew up in Tulare and has lived in Fresno! They also have 3 kids like we do and their youngest 8 and they adopted her from China the same year we adopted Kennedi! They are also using the same agency as we are. Wow! How crazy is that?? So many similarities. They are just slightly behind us in the process. Would be exciting if we could travel together!

She also told me of a rumor that came out yesterday that China is cutting out a step in the process, called the LOA or letter of approval. If this stands true, this will cut out about 2 months of our wait time! If possible, I would really like to take the kids with us to China (or at least Bradley) because it really helped Kennedi having Katelyn and Bradley there. Kids just have a way of relating to each other. So I've been praying that we would travel over the summer so the kids wouldn't miss school. This is a long shot with all the steps in the process, more likely would be October. Last night when I was driving home I was thinking about the likelyness of summer travel and just told myself anything is possible. Then I learned that there's this rumor. See, anything is possible! It IS just a rumor at this point, but now I have more hope that it could happen!

Funny I keep wanting an earlier travel and plan for the kids to maybe come along, because we have NO idea where we will get the money to get to China...let alone stay there and eat for 2 weeks! But the money part really hasn't worried me (at least not yet). I just really have this feeling like it will all work out. Weird, because I have never had this strong of a feeling before. Maybe I'm just being naive. Right now, I'm just enjoying not worrying about it. We are applying for two grants, JSC and Show Hope. Show Hope's deadline is December 31st but with the holidays we are not going to make that deadline because WACAP still needs to approve our homestudy and get us a letter to send to Show Hope (and the lady to do so is on vacation). So their next deadline is the end of March then it takes 90 days to hear back so that's the end of June! Ugh. That's pushing it close! JSC is much quicker and I have talked to two people who just got $10,000 grant from them! Wow, wouldn't that be nice! So as soon as our homestudy is approved, probably first week of January, I will send off our applications and then wait for results. Praying it all works out in our favor.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderfully blessed New Year!