Madi and Daniel's brother

So, on the heels of an unbelievable showering of love from our friends and family, we have a confession to make. We feel terrible that we've been withholding this information from our friends and our loyal blog following, but we needed to. Truth is--we were scared.

Remember the post a few weeks back when we didn't get matched, and we felt okay with holding out for the reward of God's plan? That was on a Tuesday (I think) that I posted, and on the following Saturday, October 23rd, out of the clear blue sky, we received a totally unexpected call from our adoption agency about a little baby boy. Our world was spinning. We had questions to ask. We had reality to process. Daniel wasn't coming back, and we needed to make sure we were ready to move forward.

Anyway, we're finally ready to reveal that we've submitted a letter of intent to adopt another little boy. He turned one on September 16th, Grandma Pauline's birthday! He is in an orphanage in Shanghai, which is an added bonus since we'll get to see another part of China. We are still waiting for our letter of acceptance, but it seems that things are progressing normally.

This sweet little guy has a small hole in his heart. We'd like to think of this small hole as a reminder of his big brother, Daniel, who is looking over him. His condition is much less serious than Daniel's was and will "likely" correct itself. At the very worst, he would need to undergo a catheter procedure somewhere down the road. Other than this small heart defect, there are no other serious issues facing him--nothing that a little love, nourishment and Juice Plus can't handle:)

We haven't quite settled on his name yet. We have several ideas. Let's call it "the war of the Grandpa's" right now. We are still working this out and promise to let you know as soon as we can commit to whether he's Charles or Stanley:)

Please forgive us for not sharing this exciting news earlier. The last thing we wanted to do was bring our friends down a road that might close again. We needed to take time to work things through, and now we feel certain that God is paving this road for us to forge ahead at full speed.

Thank you for sharing our joy. Thank you for always being there for us. We are so excited to take everyone on another journey. We hope you'll enjoy the ride...