A Whole New "Us"

Wow, I knew it had been awhile, but didn't realize it had been so long from my last post! So much has happened and my gracious friend has changed the look of my blog for me to tell everyone about our news.

We've finally gotten our referral and though we didn't get twins like we had originally hoped, we are going to be blessed with the cutie you see on the header of the blog! This new year of 2010 has been a whirlwind of happenings with getting back from family in MI to finding 5 feet of snow on the ground, to getting a referral a few days after arriving home, then getting our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) before we got our pre-approval (we actually skipped a step!), and now we wait for our travel invitation to go to China and pick up our new little Lexi. Amongst all of that it, of course, is hockey season at our home, and that means tons of travel around the snowy, icy state of South Dakota! I don't know about the rest of the family but I am exhausted!!

Alexis Grace Erming (her Chinese name) will hopefully be joining our family in the next couple of months. She is 13 months as of the time I write this, is starting to walk along furniture (we are told) and has a few teeth. Alexis is from the Waiting Child list (special needs) and we are thrilled with all the comments of "really? Why?" because, though we see it and know about it, many of you don't see it. She has what they are calling Atrophy of the Left eye and it looks as if she is cross-eyed with a clouding starting over the iris. China says that she has no vision in the left eye, but is fine in the right - we shall see when we get her home! :)

The boys are as excited as we are about our adoption FINALLY coming to a close. I know we have not waited as long as some, but 2 1/2 years was long enough for us. We pray for all of you that are still waiting and know God will bless you in His perfect timing. I am normally not a patient person so this was soooo hard for me. I am really glad that for 5 months of the year we are so involved with hockey. The boys are on 2 different teams so we split our parenting duties and off we go in different directions for December through February. It really helped some of the time pass, but with the ever present questions of "Have you heard anything?", it was always a challenge to stay faithful to God's timing and not get super frustrated.

Now we are praising God for this wonderful opportunity to expand our family. Tim and I really feel blessed from A to Z! Alexis to Chris to Danie (even to Latte the cat)to Zach! It will be so much fun to have a girl in the house again.

Until we hear more...

Thanks for praying for us!! For those in the area - we are having a tip night at Pizza Ranch in Orange City March 17 to help raise money to get us to China.