One happy baby

We were surprised again with pictures from the Home of God's Love a couple days ago. This one included a special message:

"Dear Dad and Mom, How are you doing? I am a really good baby. I like to sit and play with toys and watch the other babies. I sleep really well and hardly ever get fussy.

I am really good at smiling and laughing for my friends. They think I am really cute. I know you already pray for me but could you pray that I will have a bigger appetite so I will eat more? The people that take care of me think I am too skinny. I don’t have any problems I just don’t like to drink very much! I can’t wait to meet you.

I love you lots and lots,

Grace"


















Here she is looking like Mommy...














And here is her Daddy face:













We only have one step left in our part of the paperwork process... going to the Taiwan office in Kansas City. After that, we send the documents to Taiwan and it will be just a matter of how fast everything goes through the court system there. We are still hoping to get her in late April or early May.

We had our first baby shower today, and received tons of great stuff for Gracie. Once again, we were reminded of what great friends and family we have! We love that you are all going through this journey with us.

Keep praying for Gracie (especially for her appetite) and that these last few steps will go smoothly for us.

Pictures from the Pagels

We got a bunch of new pictures of Grace last week from some friends of ours, Scott and Angie Pagel (that's Angie in the first picture). They are missionaries in Taiwan. They were visiting the Home of God's Love last month and took tons of pictures of Gracie for us! They also took some video, which we are excited to see!

It's so great to see pictures of Gracie interacting with people... eating, sleeping, smiling. She looks so happy! Of course, we can't wait to hold her ourselves...




































Wow, she's beautiful!

That's a picture of us behind her there!



There has been some progress in the paperwork department. Last week, we went up to Kansas City and turned in papers to the immigration office (and got fingerprinted again, this time for the FBI) which was a major step. Everything went very smoothly. We just received some of our paperwork from Taiwan that has been translated into Chinese, which means we can complete another step in our part of the adoption process. DeAun (Seth's sister) and I will be traveling to get the translated documents certified by the Secretary of State next Thursday (doing a little shopping on the side as a treat for making the trip to Springfield). Then we should only have to make one more trip up to Kansas City to go to the Taiwan office and the paperwork should pretty much be done on our part. After we get all this done, we mail all the completed documents to Taiwan so they can start the court process there.

We're still hoping it will be late March or early April before we get to go to Taiwan and get her. It might be later but we are trying to think positive; things have went fairly fast so far. Of course we'll let you all know for sure when the time comes!

We appreciate all your prayers and support...
Laura (and Seth)