We're Done!

The last thing on our list of things to accomplish for the adoption was to be fingerprinted for the Department of Homeland Security and as of today, we can mark it complete!

We drove to Albuquerque (about 3 1/2 hours away) last night and stayed in a hotel so we would be able to make our 8:00 appointment this morning.

We hopped online and got directions to the office and headed out with plenty of time to make it by 8:00. As we were driving, we felt like we were getting farther and farther out of town, but the directions were very straightforward so we just kept going. Pretty soon, we were driving through farm country and suddenly found ourselves driving around some old Indian ruins in the middle of nowhere!

You can't just call the office, they absolutely will not give you a phone number (not even sure if they have a phone there), so we just had to take a guess and start driving in a different direction. We ended up finding the office at about 8:15. Turns out, it was actually pretty close to our hotel, but we drove about 20 miles out of the way!! Of course I was worried that they wouldn't let us in, but when we told them the online directions led us astray, they just laughed and told us the online directions are wrong and it happens to people all the time.

The fingerprinting process was pretty simple and it was over in no time!

Now, we are finished with everything we need to do for the adoption. In Taiwan, we still need to have our court date, and a final decree from the judge, and then we can go get our boy!!!

Scrappin'

This year for my birthday, Lance got me Adobe Photo Elements for digital scrapbooking. My birthday was back in February and I have experimented with the program a little bit over the past few months. These are some of the more recent pages I made; I'm starting to get it figured out!!

This is the Day :)

Our good friends are adopting from the same Ministry in Taiwan as us. I posted pics of Caysen and and their baby girl, Leia, together a while back- we thought it would be fun to have their picture taken together while they are in Taiwan since they are practically going to be cousins! Leia's family got some very wonderful news today about their waiting baby girl. Go here to see them share their wonderful news!

10K. Done and Done.

Since February 24th (the day we got our referral), things have been pretty crazy and exciting; but I've still been finding time to get a run in here and there. Today, I accomplished my first 10K. I had actually only run 4 or 5 miles at most before doing this run so I was hesitant to sign up for it; but I decided to just go for it. I have two wonderful friends (Andrea left, Chloe middle) who are very encouraging and made me feel like I could do it and I did!!!

It's always scary to commit to a run, but I feel like such a rock-star once I cross the finish line :)

Trust

It became pretty clear to me a while back that God has been giving a lesson in patience over these past few years since Lance and I decided we wanted our family to grow. I'm not a patient person by nature and I definitely have a long way to go, but I do think I've learned a lot about patience and am much more able to accept God's timing than I was before this experience.

I was reflecting back on everything today and realized that this adoption has taught me more than just patience; it has taught me about trust:

When I drove up to Denver to find out that the computers were down at the secretary of state's office, I walked out of that building and asked God why he would let this happen. No more than an hour later, the computers came back up and everything worked out fine.

We didn't receive a letter in the mail inviting us to get our federal fingerprints done like we were supposed to. I started to panic and worry that this would greatly delay the whole process...but God didn't let that happen. It's all been straightened out and we'll be going to get our fingerprints done soon.

When Caysen was in the hospital, once again, I started to doubt God. Only a few days passed, and Caysen showed great improvement.

Before we got our referral, we started to feel something in our hearts. We felt that it was God telling us that Caysen was the one for us. We had many fears knowing that Caysen was born so early and had some major complications, but we decided to just follow God and trust his plan.

I don't know for sure what Caysen's future holds. So far, the tests have all come back great (all things considered), and I hope that he is a healthy and happy boy. With that being said, I trust that God is carrying out his plan and that he won't give us anything we can't handle. God won't always work it out the way I think it should be, but he WILL work it out the best way so I just need to put my trust in him and let the magical plan unfold.

Mochie-Roo

I just have to brag about these amazing watercolor paintings of our puppies! I've included a scan of the painting and the picture I provided to the artist so you can see how talented she really is. I am still blown away at how much the paintings look like the pictures...but I can tell you they are real watercolors (not prints) because I've seen the artist in action! You can check out her blog in my side bar, Mochie-Roo, or you can go to her website here. I don't want to give away any secrets, but let's just say it might not be long before she is painting pet portraits for all of Hollywood!!!

Puerto Rico!!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our Puerto Rico Babymoon:

This was right out in front of the house we stayed in, Beautiful!!!

Where we stayed.

Here we are on one of the many beaches we enjoyed :)

In Puerto Rico, they like their butter and fried food! This organic foods store was the only thing that kept us from starving!

This was just down the street from where we stayed; Aguada, PR.


For any Lost fanatics, we decided this looked like a Dharma station ;)


Aguadilla, PR

Buye Beach, PR

Buye Beach, PR


Too cute, they're still little boys at heart :)

Here we are waiting in the airport in Newark for our flight to PR. Can you tell we were excited ?!?

We had a great time on our last vacation that was just the "two of us" (and two really good friends). Hopefully our next plane ride will be to Taiwan to get our precious baby boy and then it will be three :)