Our Beginnings and Journey

You never know where the twists and turns on your journey in life will take you.  I can say fully that I have been pleasantly surprised.  Being in a difficult first marriage and then being a single parent I always envisioned that I would be working full time the remainder of my life. I had one birth child and one adopted child and longed for more.  As a child I always said that I wanted four children close together and to be able to stay home with them.  I remarried in the year 2000 and gained a step-daughter. At that time I still longed for more children.

I finally convinced my husband, Billy, that we should adopt from China.  (I had adopted my son in the US ad working with the adoption entities in our state had not been a pleasant experience.  For several years we thought at any time that he was going to be sent back to his birth mother.) It took me over a year to convince my husband to adopt and I think he agreed to just to make me "shut up".  Once he agreed I had him signing paperwork before he knew what was happening.  We adopted our now 10 year old daughter Mary Bailey via the healthy child program in China in 2004.  We visited her orphanage and saw all the precious children waiting on families.   As we left the orphanage that day I looked at Billy and stated "There is no way that I can not come back here".  At that time you had to wait one year prior to submitting paperwork.  When the year was up we were on the track again.  In 2006 I made the leap of faith to stop working to devote more time to our family. We brought home our now 7 1/2 year old Anna Elizabeth home in 2006 who was also NSN.  We truly thought our family was complete.  Our older daughters were married and having children and our son was an adult and beginning his life.

In the spring of 2010 I became aware of China's waiting child, special  needs program.   We kept getting sign after sign that we should adopt again.  We applied and to say the process was the worst roller coaster ride imaginable does not sum it up.  After multiple agency changes we found the best! We received the most precious Christmas gift possible - a child! We adopted Maya Grace on 12/25/12! She is now 3 yo. She was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate.   Once again we felt our family was complete.  Yet we also knew that you could re-use your dossier for China up to one year following an adoption.  The possibility remained in the back of my mind.  (Continued next post)

                                                  Sweet sisters and awesome big brother!