Isabella's Room

As our heads spin around with all of the things that need to be done and all of the paperwork that now needs to be completed, I thought I would take a break and post a few pictures of Isabella's room. For those of you that know me, you will not be surprised that it is lavendar. We still plan on getting some shelves and artwork, but the essentials are complete.

I am also posting a picture of our letter of acceptance. We have signed and sent it back. Our agency should receive it tomorrow morning and then off to China it goes!

LOA! LOA!

I am shouting from the rooftops ... we got our LOA today!! I cannot believe it! This means that China has approved us to be Isabella's parents! HUGE step. It also means that we can post pics. I will post a couple now and post more later.

Now we wait to receive our travel approval, which can take another month or two.

Praise God!

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

We continue to wait for our letter of acceptance. As far as we know, there have not been any LOA's sent in quite some time. Rumors are flying around regarding the swine flu, BUT we do know that China has just recently given some families their Travel Approvals. Yeah! Good news! In our hearts, we were hoping to receive our LOA by the end of May, but know that it will probably take longer.
Always thought that once we got our referral, I would be content in knowing that our daughter is there waiting and that we would be bringing her home soon. Wrong! I am even more anxious now that I have seen her precious little face and learned her story. I have grown to love her more than I could even imagine without even holding her in my arms.
Please pray that we are given peace and strength to wait. We have waited this long ... what is another few months??

Happy Mother's Day

Just wanted to post a quick message to say Happy Mother's Day to all of the mommies out there. Whether you are a mom, about to be a mom, are a birth mom, foster mom, grandma, or have a mom ... this is a day for us to stop and reflect and say thank-you to all moms.
This is an especially wonderful mother's day for me as I now know who our daughter is and that we will be able to spend next mother's day with her. I am so blessed to now have three precious children from God.
Aidan and Keenan gave me three ferns today to hang on the deck around the pool. One for Aidan, one for Keenan and one for Isabella. How thoughtful! They think of her, talk about her, and pray for her like she has always been part of our family.
We are so blessed that Isabella is with a foster family. We just know that she is being loved and cared for and we are so grateful.

Welcome!

We are setting up this blog so that friends and family can follow along on our journey to become the Garland Family of 5! We are excited and so blessed to be on this journey.
To give you some background, we started the adoption journey 2 years ago, although it has been a life-journey. Adoption has always been close to our hearts and we openly discussed it since we were dating. We felt led by God to adopt a little girl from China. When we submitted our paperwork to China (after about 6 months of gathering and obtaining all of the proper approvals) we were logged into China on October 25, 2007 (Log in Date or "LID"). The wait that we thought was 2 years quickly began to increase and the current wait time to adopt a healthy baby girl is over 3 years and growing. Through waiting, following other families journeys and feeling the "tug" by God, we changed from a healthy baby girl request to being open to a "special needs" little girl up to 3 1/2 (as long as she is younger than Keenan). Special needs can mean anything from a minor correctable surgery or condition to spina bifida to deaf, blind etc. We filled out our "special needs" paperwork last fall stating we were open to a number of the needs listed on the form. On March 30, 2009 while at work, we got THE CALL! Well, we both missed THE CALL so we both got THE VOICEMAIL. We were shocked, amazed, scared, excited and every emotion in between. Our social worker told us we had been matched the previous evening to a 3 year old little girl with post-op CHD (congenital heart defect) and cleft lip/palate (unrepaired) and asked if we would like to receive her file. We had about 4 hours to review her file and make a decision to lock her file in for 2 weeks or to "release" her file back onto the portal for another agency to lock her file in. We looked over everything and her precious pictures and called our social worker back that afternoon and said yes! We then took 2 weeks to review the file with medical professionals and to also request additional information from the orphanage. We were again shocked when we received additional photos and information because she had had her lip repair and looked so much older. All we can say is that she is the most beautiful little girl! She is with a foster family and has been for the past year. We can see that she has made great progress since being with her foster family and we are grateful for the love and care they are giving her. She is behind developmentaly and she seems quite small, but we are praying she will catch up once we get to bring her home. She still needs to have palate repair surgery which we will do once we get her home.
We submitted our acceptance paperwork on Wednesday and it should be on its way to China. We have to wait to share her pictures with you all until we receive our letter of acceptance (LOA) from China, which will probably take 1-2 months. BUT if we see you, we are proudly showing Isabella Xin (pronounced "shin") Hope Garland's pictures. We expect to travel in 3-6 months to bring Isabella home. Her brothers are already preparing for her arrival and talk about her all of the time.
We ask that you keep Isabella, her foster family and us in your prayers as there will be a lot of transition and unknowns for us all. Thank you for your love and support!

This is a work in progress as we learn how to use this site, but stay tuned as we get this up and running.

Love,
The Garland's