Well I Guess Our Plans Are Changing...

By now most everyone knows that our adoption plans have changed. God has blessed us and Joella is pregnant and safely through her first trimester. The news was certainly a great Christmas and New Year's present, but we decided to keep the good news under wraps until after the first few months had passed. For everyone's information, we are keeping the international adoption paperwork going for at least a few more months, but we will not be accepting a referral during the pregnancy. We will still consider international adoption in the future and we will probably look at sponsoring an older child in the meantime. The way our adoption paperwork was being processed we would not have had a referral until May and we would not have been traveling until July. Once we have completed the 20 week sonogram, we will officially put our adoption paperwork on hold. For those of you who are wondering, we will not be finding out the gender of our baby so you can start taking bets.

Our blog has obviously now gone through some editing, but we will leave much of the information on Kazakhstan as it stands because we still feel a part of the adoption community. We have certainly been blessed, but it is very rare to become pregnant in the midst of adopting and we feel close to all those people who are still yearning to complete their families. We appreciate everyone's prayers for us and we also ask that you pray for all of those orphans throughout the world who are still searching for a home.

One More Step Closer

We did receive some news a couple of days ago from our adoption coordinator that verified our adoption paperwork had completed the translation process and was being sent to the Kazakhstan embassy in New York. Once the paperwork is fully processed there it will be sent back to Kazakhstan where it must be reviewed by several different departments before the officials even start checking on the availability of children for adoption.

We hope that everyone is doing well and we are definitely looking forward to spring. It seems like we both have been sick the whole month and we can't wait for some nicer weather.