Tyanna Turns 16!

May 1, 2010

Last year, Tyanna asked for a little sister for her birthday.




We were accepted to Lifeline on her special day. We had hoped we could have delivered Gabriella by today, but it looks like the wait is a bit longer.

Wonder what she wants for her 16th birthday... a car seems a little more reasonable this year... and, much less emotional.

We are still waiting for our I800A.

And, Her Name will be Called: "God is My Strength"

While Jason was at work, and I was on my way to get the kids from school, Jason texted me and asked us to begin thinking about a name for our baby.

It became a wonderful topic of conversation for the kids and I as we drove home from school. I told the kids that I wanted a really long Princess name, that when shortened, would still be cool. I also wanted a name that wasn't everyone else's name (at least in our country). A handful of names were mentioned, but when someone said "Gabriella", Kai, Tyanna and I said, this was definitely the name. Kai and I decided that we would call her Briella; Tyanna said she would call her Brie. Wow... that was easy. We were all convinced that God had given us that name.

BUT, then we got another text from Jason. He said, "I don't care what her name is, as long as it means "strength." I knew it was probably because we had decided to adopt from the SN (Special Needs) program from China. And, whomever we adopted, would need strength. I have to be honest though, when he said he wanted her name to mean "strength", we were devastated. We were so sure that Gabriella was going to be our daughter's/sister's name... now what were we going to do?

Within a few minutes, we arrived home. We all ran upstairs to the computers and started googling the name and meaning of "Gabriella." To our delight and hysteria, we found that the name Gabriella means "God is my strength." God had already pre-ordained the name of our littlest Princess. He is so good to us.

It's time!

Daddy made the announcement that he was ready to adopt. His heart was telling him that maybe it WAS possible to love someone you don’t even know. Jason, Tyanna and I researched frantically, for HOURS, even days, on the internet.

After 5 days, we had almost all given up. Why is it that in the year 2009, we can't find anything on the web? We were trying to find answers to simple questions: What countries are allowing adoptions? How do you adopt? What agency would we use? How much does it cost to do something like this? Etc. The interesting thing is, we never found a well organized website with information. None of the websites we visited seemed right for us.

But, towards the end of the week, God miraculously brought someone into our life that told us about an agency in Alabama... we don't even know where Alabama is. As soon as we clicked on the website, we knew that we knew, that this was divinely orchestrated.

We immediately chose Lifeline Children's Services. We hoped and prayed they would choose to work with us.

Somehow, I got it in my head that we should be matched with our daughter and in her country by Christmas 2009... six months from the time we decided to adopt. I was very optimistic.

We still hadn't determined where we would adopt from: America, Romania, Russia, Guatemala, Uzbekastan, or China? Would we do the adoption through the Washington State foster care system or through an adoption agency? We were e-mailing everyone we knew, that either adopted or knew of someone who adopted. Which agency would we use? What was their experience?

Within the week, Lifeline had accepted us into their program. It was Tyanna’s 15th birthday, May 1, 2009.