Picture of July including our vacation in the wisconsin northwoods.  Last vacation before our trip to China.  Thinking of Nathan.

The flower garden is getting big.

4th of July sparklers

On the lake fishing.

Got one.

Dad got one.

We are currently in the last stages of waiting to travel to get Nathan. Just today we got our Article 5 approval from the Consulate in Guangzhou. The approval was then forwarded to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) where they will then grant us travel approval (TA). Our agency says that TA can come as early as 15 days, but more than likely 3-4 weeks. So we are praying for a fast TA.   Craig

Our social worker, Cheryl Schroeder of LSS has done the home study for all 3 of our children and we really appreciate what she does. For this adoption she completed our home study in extraordinary time. Thanks Cheryl!  

We have 2 wonderful kids who have filled our lives to overflowing with their personalities and love. Abby was adopted in 2001 at the age of 8 months. Abby was born in the Jiangxi province in China. That adoption took almost 2 years, which at the time seemed like an eternity, but compared to adoptions today, it was somewhat short. Micah was adopted from Korea. We got Micah in 2003 at the age of 6 months. Each of our children have had very different journeys to arrive in our family, but both are without a doubt very much brother and sister. They have a great relationship, not without squabbles, but they really get along well. We pray that they will always be close and we hope that the addition of Nathan doesn’t affect their close bond -Craig

Now that I have this blog up, I wanted to add a few post as background information to Nathanael’s adoption:

Jackie and I had contemplated adoption for a few years. Even prior to building our house in 2007, we had contemplated adopting a third child. Around mid-November, 2009, Jackie had called the AAC adoption agency about a child that she had seen on Rainbow kids. The girl she had called on was not available for adoption, but Regina (AAC) started talking about the boys that the agency had papers on and encouraged Jackie to look further at their waiting child list. We decided to get information on the boy that they had named Gavin. Gavin was a healthy boy with hand and feet differences. Jackie and I were on the fence with the big decision to bring him into our family. On Thanksgiving Day our pastor gave a sermon that we both believe was God’s way of talking to us about this decision. The sermon spoke of a lady on the island of Tobago with missing nose, ears, lips, fingers & toes. The woman was yearning for the missionary to sing “Count Your Many Blessings”. Needless to say, this woman knew more about God’s blessings than most people. And the message of this woman got us to realize that with all the blessings that God has given us, we should have room in our home & hearts for Gavin. And more than anything that we have learned in our prior adoptions, God does provide for all our needs. So following that day, we started the process of bringing Gavin (we named Nathanael) home.   Craig