First Blog ever!!

Here we are, the first blog ever from the McQuilkin family!! I am very excited to be writing all of this down, because my head is constantly being overwhelmed with information. There is so much I would love to tell all of our family and friends about the wonderful process of adoption that our family is adventuring through!! So, this is easier than giving every living person a detailed update, every time they ask me a simple question. To tell you the truth, I probably tell people way to much. I can't help it, I am just so excited. I am excited that Kent and I are both equally partnered in our passion and love for the wonderful idea of adoption. Our worlds and our lives have changed so much since we have decided to adopt. The blessings are flowing more freely everyday. They are simple blessings, such as knowing my children have a roof over their heads and beds to sleep in. Things I never thought of on an everyday basis, prior to my eyes being opened. I think so many of us (myself included), don't know how to deal with the thought that other people in this world do not live as comfortably as we do as Americans. I still have thoughts of overwhelming under achievement if that makes since. In a world so big, I feel so small and my efforts feel so small.

You know what has been my comfort lately? Knowing that I can do something. I have found something that I feel I am pretty good at. I love being a mother. We have plenty of room for another child and tons of love to go around. So here we are, our journey of adoption. It is the craziest feeling. Kent and I both feel almost exactly like we did when I was pregnant with the other kids. We are in a constant state of change, everyone knows our family is not complete. The kids don't understand why adoption takes so long. They also don't understand why we can only help one orphan, not all of them. It is a huge concept for me to wrap my brain around, much less 6 and 7 year olds.

So here goes, we mailed our home study to immigrations two weeks ago, and we are waiting to hear back from them. When we get that back, we will have it state certified and then mail it to our agency. From then on it is out of our hands. I already feel so helpless, everyone that has compiled a dossier knows that allot of putting together a dossier is not exactly in your control. The rest of our documents for our dossier are already state certified and anxiously awaiting their final counterpart from CIS, so that our love filled dossier can be finally sent to Ethiopia. We will finally get on the waiting list once this has all happened.

We are very excited. Once all of this mailing is completed, maybe Emma will finally be able to comprehend that her sister is not going to arrive in a fed-ex envelope. Although I have tried to explain to her that each envelope we send brings us one step closer to her sister.