Wow, This Was Easy!

After a bit of encouragement from friends, families, and others waiting to bring their children home, I am taking the plunge to document our story and share our excitement with you. I was surprised to see how easy it was to get started, but quickly became stumped when I started to try to edit. Of course, that was right away! But, after I finally figured the editing out, I was quickly encouraged to continue. Now that I have started, I hope you enjoy reading about our experience leading up to and the actual trip to bring our little girl, Olivia Kantika, home!

For those who don't know us well, primarily other waiting families, we live in Shreveport, LA. We moved here in Nov of 2006 when my husband, Brian, transferred jobs. We came from OK, where all of our family lives, after having spent 4 years working in Malaysia (just south of Thailand). Living there was a significant factor in our choosing Thailand from which to adopt our little girl. We have a son, Ian, who is 6 years old and also adopted. He is a very special boy- giving us so much happiness and at the same time challenging us too! He is completely blind, and has other significant delays, in addition to autistic characteristics. For the last 6 years he has been the highlight of our lives. However, soon, that attention will have to be shared. It will be quite a change for all of us, but we are so excited to bring another child, Olivia, into our family!

I'm happy to say our adoption process has gone smoothly so far. We first began in the summer of '05, but when we found we would be moving to LA, we put things on hold until we could get settled here. We soon located a local agency to begin our homestudy, submitted our application to Holt Children's Services in August of '06, and our dossier went to Thailand in October. Finally, we received that all important phone call in June telling us we had a little girl just waiting for us! Still, as I think about that afternoon and the phone call, my stomach does flip-flops. I can only imagine what it will be doing when we board the plane for Thailand to finally meet Olivia and bring her home!

Well, I have now spent a good portion of my morning working on this, so I think that's enough for now. I can see this blogging can become a time consuming activity, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I think I will writing it. If we're lucky and I can figure it out, the next step will be to post pictures of our family, including those we have of Olivia. I also hope to receive responses from you, especially those we have lost contact with or don't hear from often. We are always interested to hear how you are doing and what is going on in your lives.

Take care. . . Leah