A Journey to New Beginnings

Let me begin this blog with an explanation of where this journey truly began. This may be a little long for some of you...
John and I were married in April of 2004. He has three daughters from a previous marriage -Jennifer, Johnna and Jordyn. For the first year of our marriage we lived in a one bedroom apartment. Weekends with the girls were a bit cramped, but I would not have traded the experience for anything. We had giant slumber parties every weekend and I think the limited space forced us to put up with each other. Oh, and we can't forget little miss Ginger, our short haired Dachshund. She also participated in our slumber parties. As we wrapped up our first year, we decided a house might be more fitting for this family of five plus Ginger. We moved in April 2005 to what is now our home. I knew the girls were ecstatic about their bedrooms and a second bathroom. Ginger did not know what to do with all of the yard outside. She had only known apartment life. Talk of having a baby began to stir around this time. We were both school teachers with a nice house which was empty during the week and every other weekend. Summers were also a bit quiet half the time because we only had the girls over for one month in the summer. It was time to start thinking about bringing home a baby. We did not know at that point that we would be traveling to China to bring home our son. After a couple of years of fertility treatments, John and I began pursuing other options. We had talked previously about adopting one day. I think it was something that was always in our hearts, especially being school teachers. Now the realization of adoption was heavy on our hearts. We asked questions, researched our options and we were repeatedly led to China. God was throwing China in our face every time we turned around. Finally, we decided we should probably listen to Him. It took three years to get to this point and now we will meet our son in less than three months. As I sit here and type this initial post, there are so many high and low points that we have encountered along the way that I could be mentioning. All of which would lead to the same conclusion - God had all of this planned out all along. Our Journey to New Beginnings is a constant one and we could not ask for a better guide.