Favorite Photo Friday ~ FAMILY DAY

2 years ago TODAY we became, as my blog title shows,...A Family of FIVE!!!

In honor of today, I am reposting two of my favorite photos of our boys meeting Emma for the.very.first.time!

Our first family photo...

Life is so sweet! We are blessed beyond measure!

Adoption Update

I got a call yesterday from our agency! There is a little girl who may still be available for International adoption in the region of Sakhalin (the island north of Japan). All we know is that she is between 2 to 3 years old. That is a lot older than we had originally had our hearts set on. Almost immediately, I decided to not even persue this little girl. From the very beginning, we had told the agency that we were open to any region of Russia except for Sakhalin. The main reason was because it is an eight hour flight from Moscow, and there are extra costs involved with adopting from that region.

Anyway, our agency coordinator kept talking about the region, and the successful adoptions that they are seeing there. She also reminded me that most of the other children are older coming out of every region because of the foster care system.

The Disadvantages to this region

1. More travel...longer flights

The Advantages

1. Medical information is available before travel

2. Possibly up to 2 photos available before travel

3. Most adoptions are having the 10 day waiting period after court waived

The more she talked, the more interested I became so I asked if she could forward me the information. That's when she told me that our dossier will need to be filed in Sakhalin before the information will be released. That scared me a little - like I was thinking, does this lock us in to adopting from this region only if this little girl does not work out? I asked our coordinator to find that out for us. I told her that I would call TheDentist and see how he felt about it too...

So...I hung up the phone very excited. I called TheDentist who actually answered his phone. He immediately said to go for it...have our dossier filed to get the information. He didn't even want to wait to see if we would be locked in to that region.

I called our coordinator back and had to leave all that in a voicemail. I finally got a call back from her about 5 hours later, and she had spoken with the facilitator in Russia. She requested our dossier be filed, and she found out that we are not locked in to that region!

The information will hopefully be sent out, translated and forwarded to us by the middle of December!

I am really trying hard not to get excited since this is the second little girl that could be our daughter.

We shall see...we'll just wait and pray taking it one day at a time until we receive the information.

Our Story

First of all, let me say that I am new to the concept of blogging! What a great opportunity though to journal and tell the story of how our family will be growing from a family of four to a family of FIVE...

Our story truly began May 2, 1998. On this beautiful day, TheDentist and I were married in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – one of the most special places in the world to us. I had just finished pharmacy school, and TheDentist was starting his third year of dental school. Looking back it’s amazing how young we were and how we had the whole world at our fingertips. Two years later, TheDentist graduated and was commissioned into the US Navy as a dental officer, and we moved to Camp LeJeune. We were blessed with our two sons, (seven and five) while we spent those three years in the military. In May 2003, TheDentist separated from the Navy and joined a dental practice closer to my hometown. As the years passed and our children grew from infants to toddlers to young boys, we felt very strongly that our family was complete. What more could we possibly ask for or need? Well, the desire for a baby girl is stronger than one may imagine!!! From my first memories of growing up and having children, I’ve always wanted a daughter. I did not know when or how this was going to happen, but it’s just something that I always felt in my heart. In December 2006, we first began talking about another child. At that time, our oldest was in Kindergarten, and our youngest still had a year and a half in preschool. The timing was just not right so we put these thoughts of a daughter on hold. After Christmas this year, however, the time was right! It was as if our plan had been laid out before our eyes by the Lord. There were no questions or what ifs this time – we just knew what to do…adopt! It didn’t take us long to decide that Russia is the country where our little girl is waiting for us. We chose Carolina Adoption Services as our agency at the beginning of March 2008, and we haven’t slowed down yet!.