Weekend Fun and Continued Prayer Requests (lots of them)

Hello all,

Hope everyone had a great weekend. We had a Birthday Party filled weekend and it was mounds of fun. We went to Art Ventures Studios in Rockwall on Saturday and it was a blast. Below is Miss C's first stab at sculpture......maybe we can move to Santa Fe full time and I can represent her at all the galleries!

We also went to Bounce Town in Wylie for one of my life-long dear friends daughter's 2nd B-day! It was loads of fun!

Wednesday we have our 2nd and final Home Study interviews! It starts at 9:15am and should last about 3 hours! Again, (sorry to be redundant) it will be another joint interview, individual interviews for J and I, an interview with Miss C, and a safety check of our home.

*Pray that the SW feels that our home is suitable/safe to raise our sweet Korean baby (or babies).

*Pray that J and I speak honestly and openly about our faith, our lives (past and present), our marriage, our discipline methods and our desires and expectations for our new addition.

*Pray that Miss C is not nervous or intimidated and enjoys her time with the SW.

*Pray that she (SW) is able to complete our HS and write it up favorably and swiftly so that we may be officially waiting VERY SOON!

*Pray that God has the perfect child(ren) waiting for our family and that our hearts will know each other when we meet for the very first time.

*Pray that the Birth Mother (BM) is taking wonderful care of her health and body throughout her pregnancy and seeking prenatal care. Also, that she is not partaking in any substances that would/could hurt the baby in her womb.

Love to all....and thanks for supporting us!
J,C and C (and another J or C real soon)

Home Study Part 1 Complete!!!

Well, we survived our first joint Home Study interview! It actually went very well (J and I thought so anyway). Our social worker (SW) was very sweet, informative, and easy to talk to. She explained a bit more of the Korea process to us and just put us at ease (as much as you can have with International Adoption). We pretty much just told her our life stories, talked about marriage, talked about issues that adoptive parents face and especially issues that adoptive children face. We talked about what support systems and resources we have, how we are going to incorporate Korean culture and heritage into our family, and how we'll handle issues/situations as they arise in the future! I won't bore you with all the details, but we feel that it went great. Neither of us were nervous or anxious and we thank you all for the prayers!

She went ahead and scheduled our next and last interviews for next Wednesday at 9:15am. She will conduct another joint interview and then interview us each separately, and then interview C (should be fun)! She thinks there is a good chance that we'll officially be waiting by mid May!!

Thanks again for all of your prayers, thoughts and interest in our lives. It truly is a blessing to our family.

Just wanted to share a sweet gift that was given to me by a sweet, dear girlfriend....It speaks for itself...and meant so much that she thought of me....

Quick Update and...HOME STUDY PRAYER REQUEST!

***REVISION***

Our Home Study Interview is now Wednesday @ noon.

Hello again,

Please keep our family and our adoption in your prayers. We made contact with our new social worker and have our first interview/meeting on Tuesday (tomorrow) at 11:30am! It will be a joint interview with J and I and will be approximately 1.5 hours! YIKES! Last time it actually flew right by. The next meeting will be in our home (no date yet) and she will interview us individually, together again, will interview Miss C and will complete a "Safety Check" of our home. The Home Study is the last step before we officially begin the "wait" to meet our baby and bring him/her home forever!!!

Friend and Family Filled Weekend

Had dinner for our dear friend Mr. R's Birthday! Primo's on the Lake...great weather, great food, great friends! What more can you ask for??????

Celebrated Easter on Saturday with J's Family and had breakfast and Easter Egg Hunt at our house. The kids had a ball! J's g-parents were able to come. It's such a joy to see them enjoying their great grand-children! How I hope to be in such great mind and health when I am in my 90's! The kiddos truly enjoy their time together!

Teeny Tiny Update

Well I heard from our agency today and they said we should be hearing from the Social Worker any time now to start our Home Study! woo hoo! It will likely take 60-90 days to complete and get to Korea! Then we officially wait!

The wait is a max of 12 months from the time your Home Study hits Korea until you are referred a child! Then another 3-6 months until travel. Korea actually has an escorting program (they'll escort your child here to you), but we REALLY want to go and see where our little one was born and meet the wonderful foster parents that devoted there lives to the first few months of our childs life!

On another note...what a beautiful day today! We went to the "Castle Park" as Miss C calls it with some friends today and had lunch and lots of fun! Then for some reason (she has a delightful imagination) we came home, put on her swimsuit, made an "Olympic" obstacle course in our driveway.....and she went through it on her scooter! GREAT FUN! I'll try and post the pics soon on that one!

Hope everyone is having a fabulous week!

New Yummy Crockpot Recipe...

Velvet Chicken with Mushroom Wine Sauce

2 cans cream of mushroom soup (I use the heart-healthy ones)
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup white wine (or white cooking wine)
1 cup uncooked converted rice
1 pkg Lipton dry onion soup mix
fresh sliced mushrooms (amount desired)
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste
grated parmesan cheese

In a large bowl, mix the cream of mushroom soup, milk, wine, rice and onion soup mix and mushrooms (optional-we just like them a lot). Place the chicken breasts in the bottom of crockpot (optional-place one pat of butter on each breast). Pour the soup mixture over chicken and season with salt and pepper (I use a bit of garlic as well). Sprinkle small bag (6oz) of grated parmesan over top. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-6. I stir occasionally so the rice doesn't stick!

Hope you enjoy as much as we do!

Welcome to Blogger World!

So we've decided to create a blog to capture our journey of expanding our family through adoption! We're VERY new at this (other than reading other peeps blogs), so bear with us while we work out the kinks!

Well as many of you know we started out last year (March 5, 2007) on our journey to adopt from China. As you've probably heard....China has really slowed down and exponentially extended our wait to to bring home baby! So, after much prayer and consideration, we have decided to go ahead with a concurrent adoption in KOREA! We couldn't be more excited! We are very hopeful that this process will be much more expeditious, but only time will tell! We are not closing the door in China either. We both feel that right now there is still a piece of our hearts there as well!

We have already been approved with our agency for Korea and will start a new Home Study any day now! We do have to start all over. Our first agency is a China-Only agency and Korea works with very few agencies, so looooong story short....here we go again! We know what to expect to some extent and that gives us more peace!

Well, I guess that's it for my first stab at blogging....Happy Monday!

Feel free to click on the "comments" link below if you'd like to leave one!

Court~