Exciting News!

I have a couple of really exciting things to share. The first is that we were chosen to be a Reece's Rainbow 5/5/5 family!! Remember when I blogged about the 5/5/5 program in July? Well, imagine my surprise when we were chosen this month to be one of the five families!! I am SO excited and grateful! This means that every donation made to the 5/5/5 fund from April 6-May 5 will be split among 5 families, and we are one of them! In March the total was $2,828.15, which means that each family received $565.63! WOW!! That would be a great boost for us! If you are interested in helping, please visit this link! We would be so very appreciative!

The next exciting news is about a visit to Ewan's SWI. One of the biggest blessings when adopting is the sweet friendships you make along the way. It's always miraculous to watch our kids' "red threads" finding their way into our lives. Ewan was one of the thousands of kids whose file is prepared, but still waiting for a family. His file was nearly three years old when we got it. He was lost in the abyss of shared list older boys. He has waited so, so long. Without the advocacy and personal stories of Ewan from his Bring Me Hope buddy, we never would have known about him, much less had the courage to say yes!

Then there are the friends that lift you up along the journey. Friends that listen to you whine about wait times and throw out theories about travel dates on an almost daily basis, and friends that travel while you're still waiting.

One such friend went to Ewan's SWI mid-March with her newly adopted son. She asked specifically about Ewan. She showed our picture and his name, and they pulled him from the walk to school to come meet them for some pictures. There really aren't words enough to describe the emotions of having another contact who has met our boy. And the joy of having new pictures and video!? It's overwhelming in the best kind of way! I've studied every single picture and every second of video. I simply cannot wait until it's our turn to meet this amazing boy!!

He starts out very shy and uncertain. He doesn't know who these people are, and I'm sure he's wondering why he can't go to class with all the rest of his friends.

Then they ask him to say hello. When he does, it's the cutest thing ever! So of course the women in the room laugh, which makes him even more suspicious! I absolutely love his little face after he says Ni Hao. Like, "What on earth are you laughing at??"

He finally warms up, it seems, after my friend's daughter turned her phone around so he could see himself. Oh, buddy! You are absolutely the cutest!!

And one more cute video! "Hi!"

These little snippets into Ewan's life made us SO anxious to get to him! He is, according to my friend, very well taken care of and loved. I couldn't ask for more. I'm very impressed with a lot of things about Ewan's SWI, and it makes me so happy to hear he's in good hands until we can reach him ourselves!

As of today, we are on day 34 of our LOA wait. I'm very hopeful we'll have approval from China in the next month, which means probably mid-July travel. It's all too early to really know, but that's just an educated guess on my part. Nothing is scientific, and it could easily change. We had a board book made for Ewan with pictures of our family, home, Ewan's bedroom, and our dog. It turned out so cute! I can't wait for approval so we can send it to him! I digitally put who we are in Chinese characters on our pictures, so hopefully someone from the SWI will read it to him! Here are a few examples of the pictures we included:

 Jiejie, which means older sister.

 Gege, older brother.

 Meimei, younger sister

Didi, younger brother.

We also found out that Ewan's SWI is open to receiving QQ calls from adoptive families after they have LOA! In case you aren't aware (I know I wasn't!) QQ is like Skype. We can video chat with him before traveling to China! This is amazing! Not only is it exciting to think about seeing him, but it's also great because we can hopefully eliminate many of his fears about us, adoption, and his future before we ever meet him!

We could potentially be in China in three months from now! What!? Wahoo!! Thank you for all your support!