How it all started....

Welcome to our new blog! We thought we'd set up a site for all of our friends, family, co-workers and anyone else interested in the life of our little Ursula to be able to follow along with her journey to her new home here in the US, as well as all the milestones she'll be reaching in the years to come. Some of you may already know the beginning of our story, but for those who do not, I'll start there. After a long 2 1/2 years and 4 miscarriages, we came to the conclusion that a "homegrown" family wasn't meant to be. We decided to explore adoption and went to a local agency for an introductory meeting. We had done a little research on the different options and had decided that international adoption was the choice for us. We narrowed down the countries to 2...China and Guatemala. I was set on Guatemala and Steve on China. So, to make a long story short, even though I "knew" our daughter was waiting for us in Guatemala, I reluctantly went along with Steve's preference and we submitted our application to enter the China program. The next few weeks brought on a flurry of activity...a home study with a social worker who came to our house to make sure we'll provide a safe and loving home for a child, we compiled a dossier consisting of personal autobiographies, bank records, net worth, employee verifications, physicals, name affidavits, personal references, fingerprint records, passport photos, photos of us and our house, oh, and we had to get everything notarized, certified and authenticated, whew! So finally, after all of that, our paperwork was sent to China and "logged in" June 13th, 2007. By this time, the wait time for the program had increased from the original 12-18 months to 18-24 and based upon reports would only get longer and realistically we would possibly get a referral in 2-3 years! Yikes! On August 12th, after searching the website precious.org, I came across a photo that would change my life. I've been on the website many times before, but that day I came face to face with my daughter! Check out the pics and I'll pick up here next time....