Home Sweeeeeeet Home!

We arrived home as a family last night around 9:30pm. It feels so good to be home & back with the doggies! The dogs were so excited to see us; they looked so much bigger to us!! They were also very curious about this new little person who is taking over their room. They are showing their love by showering her with kisses on her feet, hands & nose. She doesn't seem to mind so that is a good sign!! She'll be crawling & pulling tails & ears in no time at all. Our lab, Venus, loves to sit on the bed next to the rocking chair and watch us feed Emmy. One of these days we'll get a picture of that and post it.

So, a little backstory on how this came about....Towards the end of May, one of Susan's aunts sent an email asking if we were interested in a possible domestic adoption. YES, YES, YES!! We tried not to get our hopes up too much because we didn't have all the details at first. After ongoing communication with the birth mother, we quickly realized that this was in fact the path she wanted to go. We quickly set forth getting lawyers in KY & MO, a social worker in MO and getting our homestudy updated. Yes, we had to use our current international agency for that, but it turned out OK. They also required us to take another online parenting education "class". What a crock - because we had already taken the same "class" for the international program. Oh well - water under the bridge now.....We traveled to St. Louis over 4th of July to meet the birth mother and everything went so well. It's like God hand-picked us for each other. Everything with this process went so smoothly, we couldn't have planned it better. We got the call early on 7/12 that she was in labor and we quickly finished some things up at home and headed out. (Keep in mind that she was originally due on 7/21, but was planning on inducing on 7/16). Somewhere in IL we get the call that E.K.C. was born and we were overjoyed!!!! We were able to visit birth mom & baby in the hospital and then b.m. brought E.K.C. to us at my aunt's house on 7/14 -- four days before my b'day. What a gift!!!! We have wanted this for so very long and it's still unreal that we have our little girl!!!

I hope we are able to keep up with this blog and keep you all posted on how our little girl is doing. Next up for us, adoption wise, is to terminate our contract for Ukraine and then do two post placements for E.K.C and finalize this adoption in 3 months. OH - and we will have to travel back to MO for a court hearing in a month or so. Stay tuned in, I know we'll have a lot in store for us over the next few years!!

Love to all,
S, T & E