The Beginning

Sorry it has taken so long to get this blog together. Let us catch you up as to what led us down this road of adoption.
Both of us were in our 40's when we found each other and well I had gotten "used to" the fact that I wasn't going to have biological children....an ectopic pregnacy, infertility issues, and then becoming a widow. Tim already had two grown children. That was ok, life was good, we had found each other and felt blessed to start over.
Tim began expressing a desire to adopt early on. I dismissed the idea, I had a million excuses "I'm no spring chicken"--too old to have children, it's expensive, then there is the possibility that they will say no. Tim had all but given up, he says he prayed to God to soften my heart to the possibility of adopting.
Well, late in October 2006, we went on an overnight retreat with the kids from AWANA at our church. We went to the mountains on the South Carolina-North Carolina border. It was beautiful. We all had a great time. We returned home late Saturday night. Sunday we had AWANA. While I was talking to our Children's Ministry Director, I noticed that there was this little girl about 4 years old buzzing all around us. I asked our Children's Ministry Director, "who is she, she is just adorable". I came to find out that she was her little daughter. She had been adopted from China. Our C.M.D. and I continued to talk, I found out that she was my age....she adopted....maybe I wasn't too old, maybe they wouldn't say no....Tim was elated to hear about what we had been talking about.... his prayers had been answered!
So began our journey down this road of adoption. Tim and I discussed possibilities and finally decided on Guatemala. There is a large group of families from our church who had adopted from Guatemala. We set up a meeting with our now case manager and another woman who did Home Studies--that was early November 2006. We then filled out an application for CCI (Celebrate Children International) adoption agency. The paperwork chase began!