Our journey is set to begin again

Dear family and friends,

As many of you know, Theresa and I were in the process of an international adoption exactly 2 years ago when we found out that our little miracle, Jackson, was on his way. We had wanted to do an international adoption at some point but didn't realize that it was going to happen so soon. After 3+ years of trying to have a child on our own, we were both tired and emotionally beaten down. We figured it was time to take a break from the the pregnancy stuff and do the adoption thing. Of course, we had heard the stories of other people who tried for so long to get pregnant, only to get pregnant shortly after starting an adoption. We never imagined that would be us. However, lo and behold, we turned out to be one of those couples as well! We are so grateful everyday for Jackson and he brings more love into our lives than we ever dreamed possible.

Even with Jackson in our lives, we knew we still wanted to do an international adoption at some point. We have had many long discussions about when would be the best time for us to proceed on this journey and have come to realize that now is the best time for us. Both of us were hoping that we would be able to adopt a little girl from Korea but very few agencies are allowing couples to specify the gender of the child anymore. Luckily, the agency that we are working with still allows couples with a boy in the house to specify that they would like to receive a girl. Should we have decided to wait to adopt after trying to have another natural child, this option may not have been available to us. Of course we would welcome and cherish a little boy as well but given the option, we would prefer to have a girl.

We also believe that from a timing standpoint, this is the perfect time for us to begin the adoption process again. At this time, we are estimating that the time to referral (when we are actually matched up with a child) will be approximately 18 months. We would then travel to South Korea 4-6 months after accepting a referral to be united with the child. If all goes well, we hope to receive our referral shortly after Theresa completes her schooling in August 2010.

This is a very exciting process and one that we dearly look forward to. It will be a long and emotional journey, one filled with many highs and lows, long waiting periods, and chances for bureaucratic nightmares with every submitted piece of paper. Though we don't yet know when this journey will end, we do know this journey will eventually lead us to the other side of the world to a child that has not yet even been conceived. We greatly anticipate the day when we can welcome that new child into our family and share her moments with all of our family and friends.

We hope that you will support us through our journey and keep us in your prayers as we go forward in this process. We will do our best to keep this blog updated with all of our adoption related news and invite you to follow along with us and we go forth on our adoption journey.

May God bless you and your family,

Paul & Theresa