Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Week 52 - Always a Good One

The week between Christmas and New Years has been a good one in regards to bringing children into our family.

December 31, 1999 • While the world was celebrating Y2K, we did some celebrating of our own and found out about six weeks later that Jackson would be arriving sometime in early September. He was born August 29, 2000 (three weeks early).

December 26-31, 2003 • Lots of discussions between Dana and I took place this week about international adoption. We searched websites, made phone calls and did some deep soul searching. Could we really do this? I think we only had $50 in the savings account, but with lots of prayer, soul searching, researching and a little bit of craziness, we took a HUGE leap of faith and started the paperwork to bring Gracie home to the USA. Little did we know that our little girl wasn't even born yet, but God had us started on the journey to get her. We applied for copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate on December 30, 2003.

December 30, 2007 • We got the call from the adoption agency that we'd been waiting for — travel approval from the Chinese government to go to China to pick up DangHui - aka Gabriel Stanton. It was a fast and furious couple of weeks of final paperwork and travel itineraries, but we left for China in late January 2008 and came home with Gabe in early February.

Thankfully, there are no more additions to the Stanton clan, but I always enjoy this week between Christmas and New Years. This time of year brings great memories - and has an important part of each one of our children's life story.

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