Our family is getting a new member.

I found out today that I'm going to be a great aunt! My first niece Kayla is having a baby. It just seems like yesterday she came into the world, one of the prettiest baby's I've ever seen. I was pregnant with Adam when Kayla was born, they are 6 months to the day apart in age.
Yes she is young, but she has a big family who will support and love her. Babies are miracles no matter what. Sometimes the unexspected gifts are the greatest gifts of all.

Our family is adding a new member and I'm not talking about Leah

I found out today that I'm going to be a great aunt! My first niece Kayla is having a baby. It just seems like yesterday she came into the world, one of the prettiest baby's I've ever seen. I was pregnant with Adam when Kayla was born, they are 6 months to the day apart in age.
Yes she is young, but she has a big family who will support and love her. Babies are miracles no matter what. Sometimes the unexspected gifts are the greatest gifts of all.

Thanks USCIS

Just wanted to thank the person at the USCIS who dropped the ball and left our approval sitting on their desk and for just mailing it out to the NVC office yesterday. We know several people who got their I800 approval the same day as us and are now already cabled to China.
Now I have to wait for our package to arrive at NVC and beg them to enter it into their system and approve it and cable it ASAP.

Visa's have arrived

Today we got our Visa's allowing us to enter into China!
Now will this be the week we get our Cabled letter, so we can be waiting on Article 5? We want to be waiting for TA so badly. We hope by the middle of September we will be offically waiting for TA.

Adam went to the doctor today for a recheck on his lung. All is good, he can return to work on light duty for two more weeks. I sure hope it doesn't come back, once it happens the first time you have a 50% chance of it happening again.

Leah's room is done

We just love the way it all turned out. Scott did a great job. I know she is going to love.

The China Hotel- Marriott, Guangzhou China

This will be our home for 16 days while staying in China to bring Leah home. We are very excited to be staying in one place the entire trip. Her province is in the southern part of China, so we will be enjoying Miami type weather in November or December which is great. To save on money we have decided not to travel to Beijing this time, it will help save on cost, it will be cold there and since we have seen it before we opted out this time.

I-800 is APPROVED

Today our I800 was approved by the USCIS office! We are so happy to be so close to the end. It will take a few days and then we will be working on the NVC Cable and then finally the long awaited TA Travel Announcement, we are very close now..
And now we move to:

Will this be the week?

We are waiting for our approval of the I800 from the USCIS. Once we receive it, then it will be NVC Cabled to the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China. After this we will be waiting on the Article 5 letter. These two letters only take a few weeks to get and then we are officially waiting on our Travel Announcement to arrive, inviting us to China to bring home Ms. Leah Grace.
We are getting closer with each passing day.
Scott is working on painting her room this week and Jenna and I will decorate it this weekend.
Come on USCIS and approve our I800, pretty please.

Jenna and her best friend

Jenna and Braxton are the cutest thing you have ever seen. They are truly like a old married couple. He out weighs her by about 25 pounds,but is so gentle with her and lets her boss him around. He doesn't take being bossed from anyone, except for his Jenna. They can't go a day without playing together. They argue sometimes, but they truly do love each other. They say they are going to get married, I believe they just may really do that one day.

Will we ever get our kids healthy?

Well it's August 21st at almost 1:00am, we have been at the ER with Adam again tonight. After a long and stressful 4 hours he was sent home. He thought his left lung was collapsing this time. He started complaining of the other lung while we were at the hospital last week for his right lung, they check it then and said it was fine. Today he said it was hurting more and he thought it may be collapsing so we went to the ER to have it looked at. Thankfully both lungs are both up and they said they pain could be from stress, or from the way he has to sleep because of the hole in his right rib cage, or the things his body has been through this past week. We are happy to be going to bed in our own beds tonight
Friday was teh 3rd day of school for Jenna and we already got a call from school that she was having chest pains. Of course I had to go up and check in on her and write down all her complaints for the cardiologists. Right now he is having us keep a log of everything.
I hope I get to work this week and maybe get some over time money as we are needing it for Leah's adoption and medical bills.
I have had so many things going on lately, I'm stressed out to say the least.
We are trying to start on fixing Leah's room in the mist of all this stress. We got the paint this weekend and I think we may try to start painting tomorrow. We hope maybe this week we will get our I800 approval, that would be great news.

Where have I been?

Adam is in the hospital with a collapsed lung. We got admitted on Sunday morning and maybe on Wednesday we can go home. We are both tired and ready to go. The other two kids have been staying with our best friends and we are so thankful for them. Rodney has helped us in so many ways over the years, when Scott doesn't have vacation time at work he offers to pay his day salary so he can take off to be with his family. He slept with Jenna and let her talk to him all night when she was scared about being away from us. He is a great guy and I don't know what we would do without the Patterson family, they are more then best friends, they are our family and we alway can count on their help during times like these. Crystal comes at all hours of the day or night and since she is a nurse will always check my kids out and give me advice or medical care. We are so thankful for them.

On the adoption end, we are waiting on our Visas to come and our i800 approval could be next week. Then we will be waiting on Travel Announcement (TA) to arrive, just need to get these kids well and get some health things going on with me taken care of.

Insurance vs. doctors, insurance wins.......

Eight surgeons and cardiologist had a meeting along with people from our insurance to discuss Jenna's heart. Six of the eight doctors agree it would be best to do surgery now before she gets sicker.
But they really don't have a lot of say in the matter, our insurance company has the final call. The insurance company has their own doctors, nurses and medical policies lined up and it is their opinion that Jenna's life is not in danger at this time. Her leaks and narrowing numbers have to be at a certain level for insurance to cover the proecure and her vitals are really good, so at this time they will not pay for surgery for her.
So we have to sit and wait, wait for her to get sicker. This is hard for me to process and accept. And while she waits, she will be on restrictions, no dance, no playing outside in extreme heat and no going to China!
This last thing just crushed her. She cried for over a hour about it, she wanted to go so bad. We promised her that once she gets all fixed one day that we will take her and Leah back to China for vacation. My parents have also decided not to go to China with us. They feel it will be best to stay behind and be there for Jenna and Alex. Jenna has never stayed the night away from us, let alone 16 days so it will be tough on her and us.

The winner of the movie and dinner card is....

Doug Embry, congrats you won the $50.00 movie and dinner card. Take your wife out and enjoy..
Dr. Villafane called today to check on Jenna and we got to talk about how we felt about the test that were done and what we hope will be done next. They will meet today at 6:00, so he will call this evening or tomorrow morning. I will keep you posted.

Much needed updates

Sorry for the long over due post. Jenna is on the mend, her leg is sore and very bruised. They did not have success getting arteries to open up on Thursday, to much scar tissue and to thick. They will conference with surgeons on Tuesday and come up with a plan for her. We were all disappointed but just praying they fix her soon. On one good note, we got LOA on Thursday, so we have been moved to Travel department at our agency.. Thanks for the prayers

Win a two night stay in Gatlinburg TN

Are you looking for a cheap weekend get away? We are now selling chances for a two night stay in a log cabin in Gatlinburg TN. It's a 2 bedroom cabin. You just need gas and spending money. This is our big raffle to try and raise a lot of money for our adoption. The IRS is still giving us issues about our tax return and we are needing to come up with other ways for money to complete Leah's adoption. Chances are $10.00 each. We will draw the winner Sept 11th. If you can help sale chances please let me know. Contact me to buy chances. Please we need your help.

Todays doctor consultation

Today Jenna had her consultation with Dr. Leaha who will be performing her catheterization test on Thursday. He was a very nice man and spent quite a bit of time with us.
We did learn that as of now they know she has two problems going on with her heart, the leaking pulmonary valve and narrowing arteries. He stated that there could be more problems once they get into the heart, but we will have to wait and see. If they find more problems she will have to have open heart surgery, if nothing else is found there is a possibility that they may be able to treat her with stints. The stints last for a few years until she really starts to grow some.
Also when they weighed her today she weighed in at 30 pounds again (the same weight for the past year and half) when she weighed in at 34 pounds about 3 weeks ago she must have been retaining fluid again.
We will go to Kosair Thursday morning at 9:00am, if they do stints she will spend the night.
We appreciate everyone's prayers.

Love this old picture, she is loved by so many.