Here's the story

At the end of January some guys went to a men's conference. The wives and kids spent the night at our house. We had a fun time. See this post to jog your memory. Yes, I thought I was slick that I helped one of our friends start the adoption process. We had a fun time looking at pictures of kids for HER!

Well, our friends got two referrals to review. The sweetie below was one of them. I immediately thought they were crazy for not being drawn to the little guy but just sat on the thought. I showed Clayton the referrals they got to review.

He immediately saw this little ones picture and said, "Are you sure they aren't interested in him?" To my answer that I was sure... I had casually asked them twice... Clayton looked at the pictures, walked away and made a hum remark. I said, "What exactly does hummmm mean?"

He didn't answer and in my heart I knew what it meant so I dropped it.

A day or so later I remembered that China now allows you to use your dossier again within a year (at this point I didn't know when that year started... LID, adoption date, or whenever)

So I told Clayton and asked him if he thought I should call our agency to ask. He said sure, it can't hurt to know.

I found out that it is in fact a year from your adoption date which was April 26 for Joy and all you have to be is matched with a child by then. So all you need is a home study and new USCIS approval.

Then we did our taxes, which included the wonderful adoption credit from our adoption last year and we started pursuing the handsome guy below. This was met with the information that he had been assigned specifically to an agency and the agency wasn't exactly helpful in giving us information on when he would go back on the shared list. So our agency, which by the way, now more than ever do I think is AWESOME started going to bat for us. They had to ask CCAA twice to have his file transferred, because the agency that had his file was less than willing to transfer it even though they didn't have any interested families.

Then we had to get a waiver to adopt him which once again our agency went to bat for us, going above and beyond to get a yes answer.

So on February 2nd we saw his referral and on March 22nd we received pre approval to adopt him from China. Kind of a long road but lots of things learned on the journey.

So here we are paperwork pregnant again! Isaac will travel with us to China. Everyone is so excited and I am grateful it took some work to get matched with this little guy because in the last 6 weeks I've learned a lot about trusting God one moment at a time and relying on Him to answer, open and shut doors, and walking by faith.

Oh AND Yi told us last night that where our little guy is from is one of the prettiest places in China. They say that it is alway spring there!! Cool!