grace led in life

What a wait this has been. The second you get your pre-approval...you are waiting.
These past couple of months have been the roughest part of the wait so far. There are so many blessings that we do not take for granted, but it does not make the wait any easier.
This season has been such a mix of emotions. There are so many thoughts that go through our minds each day. What is Zeke doing now? I wonder how he is sleeping, I wonder if he is eating ok? I wonder how many times he has giggled or how many times he has cried today? Through these thoughts we've become more and more attached and in love with our little guy. We want to protect him, love him, take care of him!
These emotions became magnified when we found out Zeke would be having surgery. Such a rough thing to think about him going through. I have to admit...I have cried every day ;) Can't explain it other than this little fella has grown immensely in our hearts and we feel so honored that we get to be his parents. Every day we are realizing how blessed we are to be able to do this. To become parents to Zeke. To be able to adopt. wow.

Thank you all for your prayers for Zeke...we are amazed at how many people are thinking of him and praying for him. He is so loved! We feel so loved! What a wonderful thing to be able to share with Zeke someday! I know a few weeks back we had asked you to be praying for Zeke's surgery...we were told they were wanting to schedule his surgery for as soon as possible, so we were under the impression that it would have happened already. Our most recent update was that he had not had surgery yet, and they did not know if it was scheduled. We hope to request another update soon to hear if anything has changed. We just keep praying for his safety and care.

On Tuesday we received what we have been waiting for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (do the 32 exclamation points show our excitement!? :) Our official L.O.A. date was Sept. 26th, but we had to wait for the document to arrive from China. It was a "nail biting" weekend as we waited for our official L.O.A document to arrive! Justin had to work (bless his heart for waiting and working!), so I waited and watched quite impatiently for that document to arrive! (a special thank you to those that dealt with my tears and anxiousness for it to arrive...oh dear ;) The L.O.A is our letter of acceptance from China. This document states that they have looked over all of our paperwork, essentially approved us to be able to adopt, and also approved us being matched with Zeke!


L.O.A. September 26th, 2014 - So excited!

It was beyond exciting to open the envelope and see an official document with all THREE of our names on it! WOW again! It asks for our signatures and now is back to our adoption agency to forward on to the U.S. immigration. We now are in travel prep mode!!! The estimate timeframe for this time is 2-3 months. As usual, everything is an estimate...so we are hopeful for AS SOON AS POSSIBLE ;) We are now filling out applications for our visas and gathering what we need for travel. Back in Sept, our agency sent a team to China to visit some of their orphanage partnerships. We were so blessed that they were going to Zeke's orphanage, and that they would try to get some photos for us!
We were thrilled when multiple emails showed up with precious photos of our little guy!
We consider ourselves VERY blessed to have these photos. Again...we don't take it for granted!
Here are some of the photos of our little guy :)

DIMPLES! SO CUTE!

I know we are biased...but seriously! ISN'T HE SO CUTE!!!! :)