We Have PA!!!

On Friday, July 2 we received our Pre-Approval for Baby Jia Yi!!! In just 5 days!!! Yay!!! I guess that means that China has acknowledged that we have requested her and so far are ok with us getting her. I am sure that now they will have to go over all our documents and make sure that they really think that we are ok for Jia! The Letter of Confirmation (LOC) could be a few weeks to a couple months away. I have noticed that a lot of people call it an LOA so I guess it is also a Letter of Acceptance or Approval or Affirmation, maybe? We are waiting for our updated Homestudy to approve us for "Special Needs" children and then we can send that in to USCIS (basically Homeland Security) so that the US can approve us (once again) to bring orphans into the US.

Since we received our match with Jia Yi, we have been working on preparing for a fund raiser sale. We are planning it for August 5, 6 and 8th. The 8th will be our LID-versary of 4 years in China. Won't that be neat when we have all our funds raised as a celebration!!!? We of course will be advertising a bunch and fasting and praying a lot for someone to come and purchase our Motorhome, the Baja1000 ready race quad and whatever else it will take to bring Baby Jia Yi home! My friend Bonnie's youngest kids have offered to bring over their Lemonade stand and sell Lemonade and cookies (i think), We are selling tons of books from our library and boxes of scrapbook supplies... I have only kept my absolute favorite items. I am making homemade cards to sell to. We should have all your normal items like clothes, toys, and probably some tools, antique furniture (our first donation, from Jerry's parents), crystal dishes and hopefully some garden produce as well. If you have any other ideas of things we could make to sell or if anyone has anything they would like to donate to the "Cause" we would LOVE it and be forever grateful!!!

This adoption stuff is not cheap and since we started this journey to a daughter in China the estimated cost has gone up by at least eight thousand dollars! Goodness! But seriously the money is not a problem for God to take care of... its our hearts that seem to be the problems these days... so many people have said to me that they would love to adopt but it is just too much money... kind of a bad excuse, since everything is God's in the first place. And what is a little money in exchange for a child growing up in a family and learning to love Jesus like we do!? The Bible tells us to take care of the Orphans and the Widows... God has put it heavily on OUR hearts and we are obeying... and couldn't be happier about it. Alex and Anthony are the most amazing little boys I could ever ask for. I wouldn't want to imagine life without them. They are MY children through and through!!!

Today the boys went with grandma and grandpa and some of their cousins to a water park... Anthony's first time... it will be neat to see what he thought of it! I know Alex loves it, he is such a fish!!! Anthony was sure NOT worried about driving away from me today in G & G's motorhome for their day trip! So cute! Next week they will both be heading to TN for a week long "vacation" at their cousins' house in said motorhome! Goodness... i will be kid-less for a week!!! Jerry will be home then and we have Tissiana and Travis coming up for a visit this weekend so they weill get us all to themselves for a few days... that has not happened in a long time!!! Scrapbooking... here we come with no little boy interruptions! I think the guys are going to go on a little quad-ing excursion for a couple days even. We will miss the boys, but it will be refreshing not to have the responsibility of them. wow! It will be Anthony's first time away from us overnight. They'll be getting practice for when we go to China!

Hopefully i can get some pictures posted from the last month of the boys soon. I have some cute ones. Maybe we will have other exciting news to share about Kimi, like an update and new pictures.