One year knowing Julia!

February 21st marked our one year anniversary of finding our sweet girl! In many ways, it's hard to believe it has been a whole year... then, I think back to last summer which DRAGGED. I think about ALL of the emotional ups and downs... finding out we couldn't travel last August due to the Ministry of Education, in Russia, taking the month off for vacation! Then, we were told shortly after, we can't even pursue the adoption of our child for at least a year, because her father was found! Imagine that bomb and what it did to us... only to find out a couple of months later that, that information was for ANOTHER child... NOT OUR CHILD! Then... scramble... get paperwork together... we're going to Russia in November... no, no... December! AND THEN...................
......... WE WENT!!! We actually WENT the first week in December and met our daughter! The little girl we'd been dreaming about for 10 months! Was the wait, the emotional stress, the sleepless nights, the tears shed, the many talks with family and friends, the money, the paperwork... was it all worth it??? ABSOLUTELY.

And now... a year into the process... we do believe we're in the home stretch! We've had to re-do some paperwork that started expiring (didn't think the adoption would take this long)... BUT the end of the journey is now in sight.

What have we learned??? Faith. Trust. Patience. What else??? We live in the greatest country in the world... we are blessed... God uses children to bring us closer to Him.

Although we can't wait for the adoption to be finalized (and hope to never look at another piece of adoption-related paperwork) we hope the journey will go on for a very long time. It has bettered us... grown us... and brought us closer to Jesus. How honored we are that He chose us to grow... and parent this little girl.