Happy Gotcha Day Gracie!

Gracie's referral picture...don't you just want to hug her?

Grace Today...still so beautiful

Almost eight years ago, I brought up adoption to Dave. I can't say that his response was very positive. I mean, he already had 4 children. Why ever would he want to ADOPT a child? I didn't give up though. I continued to bring up the conversation, explaining why I wanted to adopt. I wanted Sarah to have a full time sibling and I wanted her to have a sister. It took awhile but Dave also came around to seeing that adoption was something he wanted also. I knew where I wanted to adopt from; China. Before I had Sarah, when I envisioned myself with a child, it was always a little Asian girl.

We ventured into the China adoption world at a time when quota's had been put into place limiting the number of families who could adopt. There were not many agencies who were accepting applications. But I had done my research and wanted to use Children's House International. To my surprise, right when Dave agreed to the adoption, CHI began accepting applications! We immediately began the process. Between collecting the paperwork, getting our homestudy completed, waiting for the INS (as they were known back then) and eventually the shut down of adoptions because of SARS it took us almost exactly one year to see our sweet Gracie's face on the computer. The rest, as they say, is history.....

SIx years ago a sweet angel walked into our lives and stole our hearts! We are forever grateful to Stefani and GInger of Children's House International who helped us bring our sweet Grace into our family. We also marvel at the wisdom of the Chinese when they matched us with little Wen Fei Zhen, even though we had requested a much, much younger child.

We cannot imagine another child in our lives. For the past six years we have marveled at how absolutely perfect we all fit together. When God placed adoption in my heart he knew that Gracie was soon to be found at the base of that mountain and she would need us to be ready for her. When we received our referral information, never, not once did we mourn not getting the baby we had requested. We knew that Grace was our daughter, no matter that she was 28 months old instead of 18 months.

Six years have flown by. Grace has blossomed from a frightened, quiet toddler into a wonderful, confident (but still quiet) young girl. We don't know what the next years will bring, but we sure are glad that we are on this journey together. We love you Gracie Feizhen!