Giving Blogger a try for the first time! YIKES!

Well, here we go! I have been encouraged by a few family members and friends to blog or journal our wait and impending trip for the adoption of our first child. I have followed many, many, many blogs over the last 2 years and have read where people said they had no idea what they were doing when they started, but now have beautiful blogs for everyone to enjoy.



Let me first introduce ourselves. We are Patrick and Jennifer, and we live in central Florida. That means you are 30 minutes to the beach and 40 minutes to Disney World! Ha! We have been married for almost 12 years and are in the process of adopting our first child who will be from China. We have both wanted children for a long time and after failed fertility treatments decided we needed a "guarantee." We wanted to start a process and be sure that the end product was a baby. Now I know what most people say "there are no guarantees in life." However, once you find an adoption agency for China, do all of their paperwork, get clearance from the Dept of Homeland Security, spend hours in the immigration office getting your fingerprints done, and thousands of dollars later, you will come home with a baby-GUARANTEED! We like this alot and started our journey 2.5 years ago to bring a baby from China. Now the time line may not be for some one else's liking-it has taken us 2.5 years so far, and we really don't expect to have a referral for another 6-10 months.



A referral is when you get your baby's information, date of birth, where they live, what their likes and dislikes are, developmental update and all the medical information they have. You then have about a week to review the information and accept the referral. Once you accept the referral then you can expect to travel about 4-8 weeks after that. We will be in China for 2-3 weeks time meeting our baby, completing the Chinese side of the adoption paperwork, and bonding and getting to know our baby. When we leave China, we will come home with our baby and as soon as we step ground on American soil-the baby will be a US citizen as well.



Notice I keep referencing "baby" in this post, I did not say baby girl specifically. The reason for this is Patrick and I decided it didn't matter whether we have a boy or girl, we want to be parents, period. We just want a child that is healthy, and hopefully younger than 12 months of age. But, we have faith that no matter which child is chosen for us it will be the child that God intended to be with us. Just as the time line has been expanded, and expanded, and expanded since we started this process-2.5 years ago the wait was 6-8 months, now the wait is around 3 years-yet, we still know that when it happens the timing could not be more perfect.



I hope you will enjoy following along this journey with us. We have had many words of support so far and the end product of this particular blog will be much cuter than Patrick or I that is for sure! Until next time-