Happy First Birthday

Our Sweet Little Joshua,

Today is your first birthday and I feel so sad that we cannot be there to celebrate it with you.  I wonder what you are doing today.  Is the orphanage going to throw you a little party?  I sure hope they make this day very special for you.  It does give me comfort to think that at least you get to spend the day surrounded by all those you love and who have taken such good care of you the first year of your life.  I guess they really do deserve to have this special moment with you.  I shouldn’t be so selfish to wish that away from them or from you, when we will get to spend so many more birthdays with you for years to come.  

Just know we are thinking of you today and every day, but a little more today.  Your sisters want to do something to celebrate here without you.  We may light some candles for you and have a little treat or something.  We found out today that the Embassy has finished processing your I800 and now Che can get your visa appointments set up.  As soon as we find out the dates of those appointments then we will know when we will be traveling to come and get you.  It should be about 2 weeks after your appointments.  We have been thinking for awhile that it would be January 16th or 17th.  I guess we will soon find out!  We love you lots and hope that you have the best birthday ever!

Sending you lots of love and hugs and kisses on your special day!

Love,

Mommy

Getting Closer

Our Sweet Little Joshua,

This has been such a great week!  Our kitchen is finally being put back together and should be finished by the end of the week.  The package we sent you finally made it and our agency’s Liason, Che, was able to bring you the package and even took some pictures to send to us.  That was such a fun surprise to get to see new photos of you.  It looks like you enjoyed your presents and the clothes we sent seem to fit you, so I’m excited about that.  The photo above is what the baby room at your orphanage looks like.  I’m so excited to get to meet you and all of your friends at the orphanage.

We found out in November that your Visa/I800 has been approved.  It was actually approved on 11/11/11.  How’s that for a lucky day!  They called it in to the Embassy in Manila on the 22nd.  We were told that it takes 4-6 weeks for the Embassy to process it and then Che will schedule your Visa medical and interview.  Once you get through those you will get your passport about a week later, and then we will get a call telling us we can travel to pick you up.  Things seem to be moving a lot faster than we originally thought, so it looks like we might be able to get you sometime in January.  

Things are starting to feel a lot more real to me now.  Especially after seeing the photos of you holding and looking at the presents we sent you.  Knowing that you are now sleeping with the teddy bear we cuddled and looking at our faces in your little album every day makes my heart so happy.  I sure hope those photos help you to recognize us when we come so you won't get too freaked out when we carry you away from the only home you have ever known and the people who have loved and cared for you all these months.  We think about you every day and pray for you every night.  In fact, we went to a Christmas in the Park program on Sat. night and there was a man reading stories to the kids.  Your sisters really wanted to hear the story so they sat down and me and daddy stood behind them.  As I was watching over them I got this overwhelming feeling that someone was missing.  Our family is definitely not complete without you here.  We sure wish we could celebrate this Christmas season with you, but look forward to the many holidays and occasions we will get to spend with you.  We love you so much and can’t wait to see you soon. 

Love,

Mommy 

When It Rains It Pours

Our Sweet Little Joshua,

It has been a month since we first found out about you and so much has happened.  We have been very busy getting things ready for you and a lot of things have been happening to get in our way.  You must be a very special little boy for us to be receiving so much opposition.  Thankfully everything has worked out and we are not letting it get us down.  Luckily with being so busy lately it has helped time to pass by very quickly.  Your oldest sister got baptized and we had your Uncle Cameron and Aunt Aubrey in town a week before and then Grandma and Grandpa Murri were here for the next two weeks.  During that time our next door neighbor tried getting us in trouble for having things on the side of our house and then your daddy had something stolen from under his truck that he had to get put back together.  Both of these things ended up costing us little to nothing, but were still pretty stressful at the time.  Then a week and a half ago something came undone on our washing machine and we ended up with a flooded kitchen.  The damage that did was pretty bad and we had to have the entire flooring ripped out of the kitchen and dining room, and also the drywall  wicked up a lot of the water and also had to be ripped out about 2 feet up the wall.  We had to have about 15 really loud fans and dehumidifiers blowing for about a week which made the house really hot and noisy so we had to spend most of our days up in our bedroom.  Our fridge and washer and dryer were moved to our dining room, so our table had to get taken down.  They will stay that way until our kitchen gets put back together.  We just found out today that everything will not be finished until Thanksgiving.  Luckily I can still use the stove, but it has been a challenge having everything moved around and no table to eat at.  Your sisters like having picnics in the living room every night though.  Eva turned 6 and we had to have her birthday party in the garage because the house is such a wreck.  It was really cold but it turned out ok.  Thankfully our home owner’s insurance is paying for almost everything, so that means we will still have the money we need when it comes time to travel and pick you up.  Hopefully this will be the last of our trials before we come to get you.

We sent you a package last week and you should hopefully be getting that really soon.  Your sisters went to Build-A-Bear and picked out a really soft, cuddly bear for you.  They each got to kiss a heart and put it inside your bear.  We all took turns sleeping with it, so it could smell like us.  We gave it lots of hugs and kisses too to pass on to you.  We also sent a couple new outfits that I’m sure will be way too big for you, but will hopefully fit you by the time we pick you up.  There is also a photo album that you can carry around and look at pictures of us all day, so you can start to get to know what we look like and also how much we love you.  I sent some cameras for your caregivers to use to take pictures of all those at your orphanage who love you so much and your routines and other things that you will want to remember.  

We found out last week that your Legals arrived at our agency, so that means that Immigration can start working on getting your Visa processed.  This should take about a month and then another 6 weeks to get sent and processed by the US Embassy in Manila.  Then you will get to go have your medical done, so they can make sure you are healthy enough to come to the US and then you will have your Visa interview.  This could take another couple weeks and then your Visa will be issued and we will get a call that we can travel.  If everything goes smoothly we will be coming to get you some time in February or maybe even the end of January.  We still have so much to do to get our house ready for you to come and it still doesn’t quite seem real that we have a little boy waiting for us.  We pray for you every day and hope that you are happy and healthy and being well taken care of.  I did hear very good things about the orphanage you are at and about how much the caretakers there love all the children and treat them as if they were their own.  This brings a lot of comfort to me and I will be forever thankful for the women who have taken care of you and gave you love for the first year of your life.  We all already love you so much and can’t wait to finally meet you!

Love,

Mommy 

It's A Boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the past 4 years I have imagined what this day would be like and what I would write when it finally happened, but now that it is here I am so excited and so much in a daze that I can hardly think.  Just shy of 3 days until our 33 month mark of being on the waiting list we got the call yesterday.  It was the very last thing I expected to happen this week.  I was talking to my mom on the phone before I had to get Eva ready and off to school when someone showed up on call waiting.  I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer it.  My mom got a call just after and had to get off the phone with me.  I noticed I had a message so I checked it and it was Nicole, the head of the Philippine program at our agency looking to talk to me or Jason.  I had the thought that it could be our referral but at the same time I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.  My heart was beating so fast as I called her back and I think I might have said to Eva as the phone was dialing that this might be our referral.  Nicole answered right away and said she had some great news for us.  Now my heart was about to jump out of my chest and my whole body was shaking.  She said that she had a referral for us!  It was for a 9 1/2 month old baby boy named Joshua.  He is at White Cross Orphanage which is a Philippine run orphanage in the San Juan province of Manila.  He has been in the orphanage since birth.  He is a healthy, very smart, and happy little boy.  He already took his first steps at 8 months old.  His report said that he smiles a lot and is very attached to his caregivers, which means that it might be a rough start for us but that he will also become very attached to us.  He does have a medical condition called G6PD which is very common in the Philippines.  It is an enzyme deficiency that has something to do with oxidative stress interfering with Red Blood Cells and causing anemia.  We have a list of foods and medications that he will not be able to have and as long as he avoids these, he won’t have any issues and will live a normal, healthy life.  

I don’t really remember much else of what Nicole said to me after that.  I was much too excited and had so many thoughts rushing through my head that it was very hard to concentrate.  It’s a good thing she sent me all the info in an email as well.  After I got off the phone with her Eva had already figured out that we had our referral, so I told her all about it and then immediately called Jason.  I think he was just as much in shock as I was.  We really were not expecting the referral to come this soon after everything we have been through and we were not expecting to get such a young child.  I think he was excited but very stressed at the same time thinking about all the paperwork and all the money that we would be needing to pay with the acceptance of the referral.  I made Eva promise not to tell anyone else until Breanna came home from school, so we could tell her together.  I was hoping to have some good pictures of him to show her, so I could surprise her by showing them to her and then saying that was her new brother.  Unfortunately, the photos we received were a very bad scan of the originals and were too dark to really see.  We should be getting the originals by the end of the week, but I’m not sure if I can wait that long to see his precious little face.  We did end up showing her the photos we had and then told her she had a brother.  She was so excited!  She was jumping up and down around the room and kept saying I can’t believe I have a baby brother!  Both of the girls are so excited to be getting a brother.  

Now we have a mountain of paperwork to fill out and then the wait begins for immigration to get his Visa so we can bring him home.  This part of the process has been taking around 5 months, so it won’t be until Feb. or March that we will travel to the Philippines to pick him up.  This means we will miss his first birthday, but we will be able to send him a package and also pictures of us so he can start to get to know us.  I also learned that we might get to stay at his orphanage while we are in the Philippines.  I don’t really know what else to say other than how happy and thankful I am that the wait is finally over and how lucky we are to be blessed with this sweet little boy that will soon be joining our family.  I can’t wait for the day that I can hold him and squeeze him and love him all over!

Here are some pictures Breanna and Eva colored of Joshua that we used to surprise the grandparents:

The first Breanna drew of Jason with Breanna and Joshua(she said she didn’t have enough room to draw the whole family).  We showed these first in an email and then followed up with this one:

Thirty Two Months

I realize the month is already half over now but I wanted to make sure to get at least something up for our 32 month mark.  This summer has been a rough one for me.  I had a sinus infection for most of the summer and just found out it is because I am allergic to dust mites and candida/yeast, so we have been spending a lot of time lately cleaning the house and also changing my diet.  We also made the decision to give up Chase, which we are still in the process of.  We are hoping that not having him in the house will lesson the dust mite population and we found a great potential new home for him.  His new home will be living with a police officer and his family and working for the Boeing or Seattle Police K-9 Explosive Detection Unit.  He will basically spend all day finding things and getting rewarded with treats.  He will be spoiled and loved and get to do what he loves most.  It is going to be sad to say goodbye, but I know that everything happens for a reason.  I’m sure I will write more about this in my next post.  

As for our adoption news:  We did find out that ICAB is working really hard to have all applicants from 2008 matched by the end of the year, so at least we now have an end in site.  I am still keeping my fingers crossed for the end of October which is only a month away now.  It’s starting to get pretty exciting!  It makes my heart so happy to think that the wait may finally be over soon.  After such a crummy summer we need to have a very happy fall.  This is a pretty busy time of year for us with Breanna’s baptism coming up and then Eva’s birthday and Halloween and Jason’s birthday just after.  That will be enough to keep us busy and make the time pass much more quickly.

Thirty One Months

I don’t know how we made it to 31 months already.  I think I just slept the whole month of July away.  I kind of did, in a way.  I have been really sick and have not been able to do much for the last few weeks.  I was having difficulty breathing, dizziness, weakness and some panic attacks.  I went to a couple different doctors who ran a bunch of tests on me and were not able to figure it out.  One thought it might be my thyroid and put me on some thyroid hormones which ended up giving me a really scary hyperthyroid reaction and I almost ended up in the emergency room.  Thanks to a blessing I calmed down and was able to think clearly the next day, enough to come to the conclusion that what I actually had was a severe sinus infection.  Since then I have begun feeling much better, due to my own home remedy treatments.  Now that I am thinking more clearly and can actually sit up for more than 10 minutes at a time, I thought today would be a good day for an update.

There is still not a lot to report, unfortunately.  There was one referral last month for a couple from New Zealand who waited 33.5 months.  There was also a family who ended up pulling out of the program because they adopted a 2 year old filipino boy who’s family disrupted the adoption after only having him for a few months.  Now, as far as those I know from the philippine adoption yahoo group, there is only one other family in front of us in line.  They were approved just a week before us, so once they get their referral then we can really get excited.  When that will be, I have no idea now since there is no one else in front of us in line to compare it to.  At this point my guess is still that we will have our referral by the end of October.  It is pretty exciting to think that we could be getting our referral in the next couple months.  I am trying to stay optimistic about it, but at the same time it still feels like it is never going to happen.  This month is going to be very busy as will Sept. so I’m sure time will fly by and Oct. will be here very fast along with our referral hopefully.

Thirty Months

Not a lot to report on the adoption front.  I think there was one referral that I heard of since last month and they waited 31.5 months.  It seems like every month that goes by, another month is added to the wait which kind of makes it seem like we are never going to catch up.  At this point I am guessing our referral will come by the end of October, or at least that is the date I am setting my mind on so I don’t get discouraged for now.  It will come when it will come and not a moment sooner.  We must be getting somewhat closer because our adoption agency contacted us to arrange a time to talk with us about what to expect when we get our referral and answer any questions we have.  That will take place tomorrow morning at 6:30am - the only time both me and Jason will be home together to talk with them.  

We found out some bad news this past month.  Our agency is raising their fees again and let us know that for anyone who has not gotten a referral by the end of June they would have to pay an additional $3000.  They already raised their fees by $1000 last year, so this was really frustrating to both Jason and I.  Not a thing we can do about it though, so we just keep moving forward and hope we get our referral before they decide they need to raise it again.  It really does seem unfair that they are allowed to increase fees by such a large percent when we are already paying so much and have been waiting so long and have so much invested in it that it would be near impossible to pull out now.  I guess it just is what it is and we just have to put our trust in the Lord that we will be able to afford it when the time comes.

Twenty Nine Months

I’m not quite sure what happened to month twenty-eight, I guess we have just been super busy and not much has been going on as far as our adoption goes.  We are still waiting for our home study to finally be finished being updated, but we did go to Seattle and get our fingerprints done for the USCIS update.  We also did end up getting a letter from them telling us that we have 45 days to submit our updated home study in order to have our immigration paperwork renewed.  I don’t think this will be a problem since we are just a week or two away now from having it all completed.  We really like our new social worker.  She is super nice.  We had a really nice visit with her last month and look forward to finalizing our adoption with her when the time comes.  

We haven’t really heard much about anything that’s going on with referrals other than that they seem to be moving really slow.  I heard today that they are still working on referrals from the 3rd quarter of 2008.  There was one new referral that I heard of since my last update and they waited almost 31 months.  There are several more families that I know of that have been waiting just over 31 months.  I am still hoping that our time will be very soon, unfortunately though it is looking more and more like it will be closer to our 3 year mark.  Because of this we have decided to go ahead and use Jason’s vacation days instead of holding onto them just in case we have to travel to the Philippines this year.  We have been told by our agency that the wait time to travel after referral is increasing to a minimum of 5 months where it use to be 3 months.  This means we would have to get our referral by the end of this month or beginning of next month to have a chance of traveling this year which does not look likely.  We aren’t planning anything big for this summer, just a few family campouts and some backpacking for just me and Jason.

I have to say that lately this wait has really started to take its toll on me.  I am the type of person that likes to plan everything and know everything ahead of time, so having no idea when we might even possibly get a referral is driving me absolutely crazy.  I am trying so hard to be patient, but I just want to see my baby’s face and know who they are and when I will get to hold them in my arms.  There are days that it doesn’t feel real to me anymore because it has been so long.  I have been getting the question quite a bit from friends and neighbors about if we are still adopting.  I guess it’s my fault since I optimistically told everyone that we should have our referral by this spring or summer.  It really stinks to think that it might be another year until we have our child home with us.  I’m just thankful that we are going to have a really busy summer to help keep our minds off of it.  Hopefully we will continue to stay that busy for as long as it will take to finally get our referral.  All I can do is just trust that the Lord knows what He is doing and keep pressing forward with faith that all will work out for the best and our little one will one day join us when the time is finally right.

Twenty Seven Months

Well, we have now reached twenty seven months.  I was just thinking last week that 27 months is the same as 3 pregnancies.  It seems like such a long time, but I know of people that have waited much longer to be first time parents and I feel very blessed to have two little ones already to help keep my mind off the wait.  We are still in the process of updating our home study.  Our USCIS fingerprints expire next week and we are not even close to finishing our update.  We still have not even been assigned a new social worker.  We were told to finish all the updated paperwork, send it in and then we would be given a social worker who would do the home visit and finish the home study.  We sent in our updates a week and a half ago and are still waiting.  I was getting really anxious because I don’t want to end up paying the refiling fee, an extra $350 or so, for letting our fingerprints expire so I asked the person we have been working with at All God’s Children if we could expedite this as much as possible.  I think she realized this was not going to happen, so she told me that we might be able to send in our I-800a extension form with our old home study and they would then tell us we had 45 days to get them our new one without having to refile.  I’m not totally convinced that this will work, but what else can we do.  I’m kind of wishing we would have just payed the extra money to keep Joann and switch to her new agency, because I know she would have rushed to finish in time.  It makes me really nervous to know our fingerprints will be expired when we are so close to getting a referral.  If by some strange miracle we did get a referral this month and our fingerprints were expired, we would not be able to accept the referral.  This is not very likely but is a possibility, so I am just praying we can get this all finished so I can relax a bit.

I did find out some interesting things about the wait.  I was thinking of all sorts of questions, so we decided to talk with our placing agency over the phone.  I found out, after she spoke with their liaison in the Philippines, that there are 151 families still waiting world wide who were approved in 2008 (this was as of the beginning of March).  They couldn’t tell me the average number of matches they complete each month, but by looking at past statistics, it appears that they do 40-50 a month.  I was also told that they typically like to complete one year before moving on to the next year.  This means, since we are at the end of 2008, that we should be matched around June or July.  The end of March there were 4 referrals that I heard of on the yahoo group for non-filipinos.  All of these were from approval dates of October 2008.  This also got me really excited because we are just a couple months behind them.  I have heard from several people on the Yahoo Philippine Adoption group that are from other countries, and they know of families that have waited or are currently waiting 33-36 months.  Our agency told us that they do not think we will have to wait beyond 36 months and that so far none of their families have had to wait longer than 29 months(I’m sure this will change though).  At least, I am hoping, that because we are at the end of 2008 and they are getting closer to finishing matching through the end of that year, that we will not have to wait that long and it will be around June or July.  My guess is still July, but Jason thinks it will be closer to December.  Since there is a big possibility that it could be this summer, that would mean we would travel before the end of the year.  Not knowing for sure kind of messes up any plans for this summer, because Jason has to save all his vacation days just in case we do get a referral by August.  If we haven’t gotten a referral by then we will be able to use his vacation time to do something fun, but unfortunately by then summer will be over and the kids will be going back to school.  I guess we will just have to take a big Christmas vacation trip or something.  For now we will just have to plan some fun weekend camping trips or something like that and do a lot of fun local things.

Well hopefully next month I will be able to say that our home study update is finished and our immigration fingerprints have been done.  It seems kind of funny that we have to do all this rushing around just so we can sit back and wait another 3-6 months.  Oh, well at least I can be assured that this is the last time we have to do this and it will all be over soon.  Then after we have our little one in our arms, we will soon forget all about the wait and all the trials along the way.

Twenty Six Months

I have decided, since we are getting so close to the end, that I would start posting every month from now until we get our referral.  I don’t really have a lot of new information to share.  We do get an update from our agency every month to let us know what’s been going on in the Philippines program.  There were no new referrals last month, which doesn’t surprise me.  I haven’t heard of any from the Philippine adoption yahoo group I am on either for the last couple of months.  There are quite a few families in the group who were approved in Oct. of 2008, just a couple months before us, so I am anxious to see when they will start getting their referrals.  Once I see them start getting theirs, I think reality will finally hit that our turn will be coming soon.  

The newsletter we got from our agency also said that wait times have changed to 18-24 months for filipino families and 24-30 months for non-filipinos.  This was not a surprise either and fits right into the timeframe we have been preparing ourselves for.  We hit 30 months the end of June so if I had to guess when we would be getting our referral, as long as the timeframe doesn’t shift again, I would guess the beginning of July.  I should just be glad that we are in the Philippine program and not China right now.  I just heard that their referrals are taking over 4 years which is why they are no long accepting new applicants for awhile.  

We found out some big news last week when it came time to start our immigration and home study update.  Our social worker, JoAnn, is no longer working for AGCI but is now with another agency.  What this meant for us is that we could either continue with her at her new agency but would have to pay an extra $300 for the application fee, or we could stick with AGCI and get a new social worker.  We weren’t sure at the time if they even had another social worker in our area, they are based in Portland, but fortunately they have one in Seattle that will be able to work with us.  We decided to stay with AGCI and get a new social worker, so we are really hoping things go well with our new one.  We only have until April to get all of our updates done, so we are in a bit of a time crunch as it is, and now with a new social worker we are feeling a little anxious about being able to get it all done in time.  If things are not done in time, we have to start all over again instead of just doing an update.  We are doing everything we can on our end to get things done, so hopefully it will all work out.  We all have doctor appointments this week for our medical update and Tues. we went to the police station to get our fingerprints done for our FBI background checks.  We already sent in the WA State Child Abuse Clearances, so I think now we only have a couple minor things left to do.  The biggest thing will be the home visit from the social worker which can’t take place until everything else is complete.  I am also hoping we will be able to submit some new family photos for our dossier in the Philippines because our family has changed quite a bit in the last 3.5 years(I think that’s how old the picture is that they have in their file).  Eva was only 2 and Breanna was 4.  I don’t really have any recent family photos of us, so that might be another thing we need to get done.  Hopefully the weather will start getting warmer so we can get some nice outdoor photos.  

Well, I think that is about it for this post.  I’m hoping my next post will be more exciting or at least I’ll have good news that we finished our home study update without any more glitches.  Wish us luck!  This is going to be a busy month!

Two Year Mark

The end of December we reached our two year mark of being officially approved by ICAB and placed on the waiting list for a referral.  I wish I had some good news to share about being close to the end or at least closer.  Unfortunately it seems that every time we feel we are finally close the timeline gets extended more and more.  The most recent referral that I heard about was in October and the couple had been waiting almost 30 months.  I was hoping that they were an exception and that everyone else would be getting referrals sooner, but I know a lot of families who are at 27 months and still waiting.  I also heard yesterday that ICAB has said that there are still 10 families with approvals from the summer of 2008 that are still waiting and that they will need to match at least half of those before they start allowing files from Sept.-Dec. of 2008 to be looked at.  They said that this should happen sometime around March.  What this means for us is that our referral will not be coming until March at the earliest, but that is not likely.  It will most likely be sometime this summer and that is if the timeline does not increase anymore than it already has.  It is very frustrating and I know a lot of families that want to pull out of the program.  The Philippines has placed some more restrictions so that there will be a lot less new applicants but that is not going to affect our timeline any since we are so much farther ahead.  

I knew when it took us a year to complete our home study and all the problems we had that this was not going to be easy and that the wait would be long and hard, but I had no idea it was going to be this long.  By the time we get our child it will be 4 years from the time we started this adoption process.  I remember being told at the beginning of this process that China adoptions were taking about 3 years and I couldn’t imagine waiting that long and how hard that would be.  Little did I know that we would end up waiting even longer.  I guess I’m at the point now where I just try not to think about it, even though there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it, and try to distract myself with other things to make time go by faster.  It has been nice to have this time to focus on the two kids I already have and to spend more time and attention on them, because once this adoption happens I know the new child will demand a lot of our attention.  It has also allowed our girls to grow up and mature a little more before the new one comes along.  This will help a lot especially with all of the difficulties we have had with Eva.  She would not have been ready before now to have a new sibling.  I feel she is so much more independent and her anxiety has decreased a lot this year(she is actually going to Primary on her own now with no problems-she even volunteered last week and got up in front of everyone to do something, which is huge for her).  Plus, I was spending a lot of time dealing with her special diet and I feel that I finally have that under control.  I also feel like I am a lot more organized now and am really starting to get this mom thing down finally and finding balance in my life.  I think we still have more to work on to prepare for this new child, but it sounds like we have time.

There are some days where it all starts to seem so distant and I feel so disconnected from it.  If I at least had a picture or knew their name it would make it all so much easier, but I guess that’s where faith comes in and patience is learned.  I find myself often going back to the dream I had 2 1/2 years ago.  I try to remember how I felt, the overwhelming peace and love, for this child that I had never met and did not know.  I get a small glimpse of it every now and then and that helps me to keep pushing on.  I understand now why that dream was given to me.  The Lord knew how long and hard this was going to be and He wanted me to get a taste of how sweet the reward was going to be in the end, so I would know that no matter how hard it was that it would all be worth it one day.  He has a perfect plan for us and our little one and I know that His hands have been in this entire process to make sure that we end up with the child that is meant to be part of our family.  I have no doubt about that.  I look forward to the day we finally have that picture and a name and then the day we finally get to meet and hold our little one for the first time.  That will be the sweetest reward for such a difficult journey.