One More Surgery Complete - Check

Yesterday Lily Rose completed another surgery since arriving in the States 12 short months ago.  This one was a bit easier than her open-heart surgery.

We arrived at Levine's Children's Hospital at 8:30 a.m. and were home by 2:30 p.m.  Now THAT'S the kind of surgery I like!

The girls posed outside the gift shop on the way into the hospital.

Then we went upstairs to pre-op.

Lily Rose is always a ham for the nurses.  Yesterday was no exception.

Once we put the gown on Lily Rose, it finally hit her....another surgery. 

The expression on her face says it all.

After a minute, she put on her game face and was all smiles as they wheeled her back to the OR.



Lily Rose came to us with a perforated ear drum.  The hole was quite large and was presumably from multiple untreated ear infections.   The surgery, fat plug myringoplasty, is a grafting procedure using fatty tissue from behind Lily Rose's ear to plug the ear drum.  The hope is that the tissue will graft in around the fat plug and will ensure a return of full hearing once healing takes place.

The hole in Lily Rose's eardrum was quite large, so this grafting procedure may or may not be successful. 

Please pray with us that the procedure is fully successful and no further surgery will be needed.  Every surgery is significant with a "cardiac" patient.

Lily's Heart Cath Results

Lily's heart cath is complete and the results are excellent!  Now we are just hanging around the hotel waiting for 24 hours to pass, so we can head back to Charlotte.

Lily needs to lay still for 24 hours post cath (easier said then done).  Torie and Isabelle made the trip with us to keep us company.  They are making trips to the pool while Lily and I sit in the hotel and watch DVD"s.  The girls are also enjoying time coloring in their new coloring book.

Dr. Bandisode gave us great news!  Lily has 2 working ventricles, and if all goes well, Dr. Bradley will be able to do a bi-ventricle repair on Lily's heart.  This means she will have close to normal heart anatomy once her open-heart surgery is complete.  This also means she can have her surgery soon instead of waiting for surgery. 

This news is an answer to prayer and could not have been better!!

Tomorrow we'll drive home to Charlotte and look at our calendar to coordinate Lily's open-heart surgery around Isabelle's open-heart surgery which is already scheduled for September.

Home Two Weeks & Heart Cath Next Week

We've been home two weeks, and we're getting into the routine of life.  Polishing toe nails.  Dressing up like princesses.  Riding horses.  You know...the important things! 

While the girls and I have been playing, Phil has fixed everything that broke while we were in China. 

When deciding to adopt, you can rest assured the enemy will attack!  Our attack came in the form of a series of broken items.  A 3rd story plate glass window in our house which broke inexplicably.  Dishwasher.  Back window and door in our vehicle.  Washing Machine.  I'm thankful I married a man who can fix (almost) anything.  We did have to purchase a new washing machine, but he was able to repair the rest of the items.

Phil's teachers started full-time this past Monday and his students begin next Monday, so I decided to restart our homeschool this week too.  We managed to fit in a few weeks of school before I left for China, and today we had fun taking our "first day of school" photos.

After our photo session AnnaGrace practiced being an archaeologist and dug for a treasure in a pyramid while the little girls painted.  And Lily Rose seemed to enjoy her first day of homeschool too!

Next week Torie, Isabelle, Lily and I will head to MUSC in Charleston for Lily's heart cath on Tuesday.  We're praying it will reveal why her oxygen levels are so low and also give Dr. Bradley, the heart surgeon, the necessary information to determine which heart surgery he will be performing on her in the future.

I can't wait for everyone on staff to meet Lily.  The staff at MUSC are "old friends" now and Lily will surely charm them with her outgoing personality!

Summer Fun and Heart Cath

Our Spring and early Summer have been full.  We've been enjoying our farm life.  The girls have spent time playing in the sprinkler and camping out in the tree house while I've tried my hand at gardening and Phil has had fun "playing" with a back hoe he got to borrow for a few days.  He has also been expanding our Full Quiver Farm business.  He is cutting lots on the weekends with his tractor.  It offers a bit of stress relief from his job as principal of a Christian school and provides a bit of extra income which he only half-jokingly says is "paying off the lien on Isabelle." 

 Some of the girls made it a little longer in the tree house than others....

We've also added a few more Bantam chicks to our ever-growing chicken population on the farm.

And we've had to defend our farm against the nefarious black snake trying to rob our hens of their eggs...

Two weeks ago Phil had to go check out a possible middle school retreat location for his school.  We were thrilled to be able to accompany him and spend a few days at the retreat center which is located close to Grandfather Mountain near Boone, NC.

Our family spent the days hiking, tubing in the VERY cold mountain stream, playing carpet pool, trying our hand at archery, and even riding horses.  (Isn't there something a little strange with Torie (20) and Michaela (15)...who have to get up EVERY morning on our farm to feed their own horses, take care of them, ride them and then repeat the whole process EVERY evening...and then when we finally actually leave the farm for something other than a horse show, the first thing they want to do is go find the barn so they can ride.  I'm just sayin????).  In the evenings we played cards in our cabin which had a fabulous view of the mountains.  It was a great getaway, and we're grateful to the    camp that hosted our family.

We got back from the mountains and made the trip to Charleston for Isabelle's heart cath.  It couldn't have gone better.  Everything looked PERFECT for her upcoming open-heart surgery.  What an answer to prayer!  We're hoping to schedule her surgery for September, instead of this summer as we originally intended... because...we received our Article 5 this week which means we should be traveling to China in the next 4 weeks or so to pick up Lily Rose.  It just doesn't get any better than that!!

We are LOA!

We have reached the next step in the alphabet soup of adoption.  We are now LOA (Letter of Acceptance.)  We received our letter from China, officially accepting us as parents of Lily Rose, on May 23rd, and we quickly mailed in our I-800 on the 25th.  If our timeline moves along according to a "normal" pace, we will travel at the end of July/early August to pick up Lily Rose!!

We received an amazing e-mail in our in-box today.  Another family is in Shanghai adopting their son.  He is just a few weeks older than Lily Rose.  The mom was kind enough to take Lily Rose's photo with her to China to see if she recognized her in the orphanage.  Today she e-mailed me several photos of Lily...from just yesterday. 

This is her description of Lily Rose....

Your daughter..."is a little peanut...a bit tentative, but smiling and interacting once we were there for a bit .  She was ticklish and giggled when I tickled her belly.  She is super-cute and oh so precious!!"

I can't tell you how special it is to know that someone saw our daughter yesterday and even got to tickle her belly!  It makes me home sick if that makes any sense...home sick for my daughter.

For those who have never adopted, I can't explain the love the Lord puts into your hearts for your children hundreds of miles away.  I can tell you that the emotions I felt on the delivery table with our first two biological children are the identical emotions I feel when my adoptive children are placed in my arms for the first time.  And the longing I have to hold Lily Rose right now is more intense than the longing I had with my first two pregnancies because Lily Rose isn't safe in my womb but hundreds of miles away where I can't protect her.  But my loving Father is holding her safely in His arms.  And He is giving me bits of encouragement through a woman like Shannon who took time out of her amazing adoption journey to bless me!

We're coming Lily Rose...

Lily Rose Update

Last week we got our first update on Lily in six months.  One of the hardest parts of the adoption journey is seeing your sweet child's face and then waiting and waiting and waiting to hear an update.  Our last update on Lily, besides getting her oxygen level, was in October, right before we said "yes" to adopting her.  You can imagine our joy at getting an e-mail update last week!

Unfortunately the news on her was a little discouraging.  We found out she spent a month in the hospital from mid-February to mid-March for a severe "infection of the tonsils" and "acute tympanitis" (ear infection).  We have no idea if her tonsils were removed and what else occurred in the hospital.  Of course my heart breaks that I was not there to hold her and advocate for her while in the hospital, but I pray that she had loving caregivers that did the best they could.

I continually remind myself that the Lord loves her even more than we do, and I take great comfort in this!!

After receiving the update, we requested a few new photos of her.  We are so grateful that the orphanage took the time to take 2 photos of her and send them to us just two days later.  what a gift!!

So here is our sweet Lily, just last week!

Please continue to pray with us for God's hand of protection on Lily while she waits to be joined with our family.  The update did say that her oxygen levels continue to be 81% and that she gets tired and must rest if she walks too much.  She is clearly weak and needs her next heart surgery soon!  We are thankful that God is on His throne and is overseeing this whole process.

We are Officially DTC!!

We finally received our I-797 on Monday.  Tuesday, Phil and I drove the paperwork to Raleigh to get the required authentication.  We then overnighted everything to a courier in DC who had the paperwork authenticated by the US State Dept. and the Chinese Consulate.  The courier overnighted the paperwork to our caseworker, in California, on Friday.  And Xiaoqing, our amazing caseworker, managed to get it out in the mail on Friday to China!!  

We are now officially DTC (dossier to China!!).  We are praying for a speedy LOA (Letter of Acceptance) which is the next step in this adoption paperchase.

Until then her sisters are eagerly awaiting her arrival (although her oldest 2 sisters aren't nearly as eager to pose for photos as these 3:)

Torie, Michaela and I went garage sale shopping today and bought Lily a pretty white bed to prepare for her arrival!  I can't wait to begin setting it up in the nursery where Lily and Isabelle will be sharing a room.  I guess that project will have to wait for a future Saturday.