Welcome to our family!

 September 12 was Watsana's first birthday!  Dave left for a trip to Ghana on September 10, and was sad to miss her birthday celebration!  The boys and I went to Orange Leaf to celebrate her.  She came along in her picture frame and sat with us, as we said birthday wishes to her and enjoyed celebrating!  This family loves birthdays, and we are so glad that we knew of her and her birthday just in time.  Next year at her 2nd birthday she will be home and ready to join the party in her honor!

David came home safely from Ghana a week later, and we were able to fill out the necessary documents that would officially accept Watsana into our family.  We sent along a cute outfit for her, a disposable camera for her foster family to take photos, and a birthday card with Dave and I recording our voices!  We also included a letter, welcoming her into our family, and a photo album with our pictures in it, and our closest friends and family.  This packet should get to her soon, and I continue to pray for her to know us as mom and dad soon.

Waiting for Norah

We were hoping and expecting a referral for a child March 2012.  We had worked our way up the waiting list to #3, and were told March is very probable.  An average of 5-7 kids usually get matched with families every referral quarter, and being #3 is a good place to be on the wait list!  March came and went without a phone call from Holt.  As the news sunk in that it did not happen for us in March, I shed a few tears, and resolved that June was our month.  Referrals happen every 3 mos.  We had moved up one spot on the list to #2!

In June we went on vacation with our friends, the Prestidges, to a cabin and lake in Oklahoma.  We had been discussing names for our little girl with the kids, and Sam was convinced we would name her Elinor.  Dave thought her name should be Sun (maybe a middle name), because she would be the light of our family.  I did not agree with either name.  On the vacation, Norah Jones came on the Pandora radio, and I realized I loved the name!  I looked it up, and it means, sunlight, honor and compassion.  Elinor is another version of Norah.  I showed David and he said "we don't have to look any more!  That's it!"  Sam and I agreed too.  We finally landed on a name!

June ended without a call from Holt.  I received an email update about the June referral group and other news.  I cried and cried.  We felt like an infertile couple looking at another negative pregnancy test.  No Norah.  It turns out that we did not change places on the list, we were still #2!  The last 2 groups just did not have children that matched our family.

I decided I would be more reserved and not get my hopes up so much for September.  Announcing our expectations the last 2 referral months had led to a lot of explaining and disappointments for us.  So we went into September hopeful, but quiet about it.  AND THEN IT CAME!!!

Holt called me on my lunch break at work on Thursday, Sept. 6, announcing a probable match for us!  She is a girl named Watsana, 11 months old, and very healthy.  After some description about her, Thoa asked if I would like to see her file.  YES PLEASE!!  Dave and I agreed on the phone that we would not open the email until later that night.  After dinner, and getting the kids to do something quiet in the other room, we opened it up.  The picture on the email was of our daughter.  We were finally looking at our Norah.

Paperwork...and scrutiny

We decided to apply to adopt from Thailand November 2010.  It was a big decision, and we both had excitement and peace in our hearts about it.  So November 11, 2010, we applied to Holt International.  Holt is one of only 2 or 3 agencies that works with Thailand.

We knew we were signing up for a wait.  Judy, the Kansas City Holt director, said that 2 years is typical for waiting on a child from Thailand.  So now the real fun (and scrutiny) begins!!

We really walked into our home study and all other rigors of this process with confidence.  We are GOOD parents!  Our boys are super, we love them, they love us, and what's to question?  We are going to fly through these questions and examinations.  Well, Barbara came to our home for the home study, and with an upturned nose and general frown, looked us and our house over, and asked us to prove ourselves worthy and innocent, because we were guilty and unworthy until we did!  (Not really.  Just really felt that way)  It turned out ok, but we were not prepared for that!  We understood Barbara was there to do her job, and probably has seen people try to adopt with wrong motives.  Disarming any charm is probably wise in a social worker's job.

We did pass our home study, and went through several rounds of fingerprints and background checks.  We collected the mounds of paperwork needed for our dossier.  I think there were 22 documents needed for our dossier.  We finally got our dossier all together in May, 2011.  I had to take it to the secretary of state's office downtown to be signed and reviewed before we sent it to Washington DC.  The documents needed to be in a certain order, all stapled together, and NOT tampered with or else our government would reject the whole thing!  So when I presented it to the secretary of state's office, a young lady employee, ripped all my documents apart from the staple, scattered them all over the desk, told me I had missing documents, wrong documents, and threw them down in front of me!  I remember starting to shake, temperature rise, and I tried to hold my shaky voice down.  I tried to explain that they WERE right, and please don't mess them up!!  David eventually took over because I had a break down right in front of everyone in the office!  I went into the hallway and cried.

Turns out that we did actually had it all in order, and another friendly woman in the office helped out, re-stapled our documents, and calmed me down.  I left the office seething, but thankfully got it all back correctly from Washington DC, bound correctly, and signed by Hillory Clinton herself:)  We sent it to Holt the next day, and celebrated our accomplishments!  Now we hurry up and wait...

Joy

David came home from Thailand June 2009, and shared his thoughts on adopting from Thailand.  I didn't really have to think it over.  It felt like 100%YES!  The Lord really established this country in our hearts as THE ONE to pursue.  For some reason it felt different from any other country he has been to.  We did some brief searching around about how to move forward, but not alot.  I guess we were dragging our feet a bit.

In November we had a surprise pregnancy!!  I had a thousand emotions around it, but in the beginning I was very thrown off guard, because this means our dreams of adoption would not happen.  Thailand allows only 2 children in a family for parents to be eligible for their program.

Our daughter Joy, sadly did not live.   I had the honor of carrying her for 8 mos before she went to be with Jesus.  We felt the Lord tell us VERY clearly to name her Joy.  She would be a joy to The Father and to our family.  I learned a lot about the meaning of true joy, and that it is not dependent on our circumstance.  It is only found in the crazy peace and hope offered in Jesus.  I will see my daughter again, and the blissful introduction a mother has with her child at birth has not been stolen from me... just delayed.

We grieved deeply for Joy.  We still grieve.  We made her room into a quiet place to retreat.  To pray and be quiet.  We bought furniture to outfit it for a serene space, and it is still the prettiest room in our home!  We call it our "Joy room".  It will be Norah's room when she comes. 

 In the months following Joy's death, we had some of the most amazing and memorable moments as our family of 4.  After a few months, we opened the adoption conversation again.  I knew it was going to be a long process, and my heart was starting to heal.

So as we see it, we gave our daughter Joy the gift of life in heaven, and she is giving another child the gift of family.