Katelin's 1st Birthday!

Katelin (Lin Ji Rui) is celebrating her first birthday today! I wish we could celebrate this special day together. I know in my heart we will celebrate all her life's accomplishments and birthdays in the years to come, and this is a wonderful feeling. But today, I also think about her birth mother and wonder what she must be feeling. So today I also pray for Katelin's birth mother. As a mom, it breaks my heart to imagine the pain, sorrow, and heartache Lin Ji Rui's mother must have felt as she left her child a year ago.

My wish for Katelin as she celebrates her 1st Birthday is to receive the love and care she needs from her foster care family until we can be united with her in China.

Happy Birthday Katelin! We love you!

Note: Yesterday, I received some additional information on Katelin. She was brought to the Yulin City Orphanage on September 20, 2006. There wasn't a note left with her to indicate her actual birth date. The orphanage doctors estimated Katelin's birthday as September 18, 2006.

Grace & Hope For Children Foster Care Program

I am so happy to hear Lin Ji Rui has been in foster care since December 21, 2006, and extremely excited to hear the foster care program is Grace & Hope for Children.

Grace & Hope for Children (GHC) is dedicated to advancing the care of China's orphaned and abandoned children. Foster care is their primary focus. By recruiting and training foster families in China and by raising financial support for these families, they strive to get eligible children out of orphanages and into loving foster families. You can sponsor a child today by visiting their website!

https://www.grace-hope.org/

We have a beautiful daughter!!!!!!

We would like to introduce the newest member of our family:

Lin Ji Rui (discipline lucky)
soon to be *Katelin RuiAnn* (middle name is pronounced as ReAnn)
Yulin City SWI, Guangxi
DOB: 9/18/2006 and in 12 days she'll celebrate her first birthday!
Measurements: (as of 9-7-07) W: 17.6 H: 26.77
She is currently in the *Grace & Hope for Children* Foster Care Program
and her foster mother has deck her out with accessories...
check out the anklets!
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We have been truly blessed!

WE ARE IN!!!!! The cut off is Nov 25, 2005!

C is in bed and I'm doing the snoopy dance all by myself because I just found out at 10:45 pm that WE ARE IN! We've made the cut!!!!! We're getting a BABY!!!!!! I can hardly breathe!!!! We will see our baby sometime this week!!!!!

Now what am I suppose to do...go to sleep?!?! Not likely! I guess I'll go wake C up and tell him the good news! Labor Day has a whole new meaning now. And guess what? It's our 12th anniversary tomorrow. What a great way to enjoy Labor Day! :)

A Sign!

Do You Believe In Signs? I believe we were given one about referrals today! A video about orphans was shown during our church service this morning. It showed orphans from around the world, but the main focus was on families receiving referrals from China and bringing their children home. It showed joyful, tearful, and excited parents seeing their children's faces for the very first time! It gave me goose bumps, and I was a little choked up after watching, and just knowing our time for seeing our child was coming in a few days. Out of all the Sundays over the past 2 years of this very long wait, it just happened to be this Labor Day weekend prior to referrals! GOD works in amazing ways!

*UPDATE: Today (Sunday, September 2) around 10:30 pm (est), CCAA updated their official site to show they matched up to the 25th of November! We are INCLUDED in this MONTH's REFERRALS! YEAH! The long wait is finally over and it feels soooooo good! :)