How it all began...

June 2006 was when we began our journey to the adoption of our children from Thailand. We made it fairly quickly through the Holt application and home study process and then began working on the dossier. Although we had hoped all along that we would be able to adopt a sibling group, we had been told that it was a rare occurrence and not to get our hopes up. We anxiously waited to hear if we would be matched with a child in December, but when the month came and went without a word from Holt, we sighed and looked forward to the possibility of March.

What a surprise when, on February 28, 2007, we received the phone call informing us that we had been matched with not just one, but two children!! We were thrilled, needless to say, and went through the motions of "considering" whether to accept the match or not, knowing all along that we would say YES!

Since then, the most challenging wait was for the travel dates. But, at least we now had pictures and could look forward to the quarterly updates. We chose names for our two children...Elizabeth "Beth" Grace, age 4, and Jack Mitchell, age 2 1/2. We started to "fix up" their bedroom. Margaret was thrilled to be able to shop for clothes and toys for her "own" children. Mitch started surfing the net to get as much info on Thailand, airline tickets, hotels etc.

New pictures arrived in May, which was very exciting because a couple of them actually showed the children smiling! We were assured that the children are very happy and playful. We continued to wait for our travel dates, but started to really pray that we would be able to go get them in September, rather than the original estimate of November. In the meantime, we found a graduate student at the University of Oregon, Mai, who was willing to come to our home and teach us some Thai phrases so that we could communicate with our little pre-schoolers. Our dining room/kitchen walls were soon covered with posters of Thai words for us to learn. The excitement was really starting to build!

An answer to prayer it was when we got the call the last week of July saying that our interview appointment in Bangkok would be September 12!!! Woo hoo! Now we could purchase airline tickets and book the hotel! Not to mention all the other things like purchase gifts for the foster family, finish up the paperwork, and pack! A week later, we received another update with more pictures...

Long story short, these past couple of weeks have flown by incredibly fast and now here we are just eight short days shy of boarding that plane and flying to pick up the children of our hearts! (We leave September 4.)
Please enjoy this adventure with us as we do our best to give you daily updates on our journey and our new family.