The Smulders family adoption journal.

Welcome To Our Journal

Current time in China:

Hi All!
We have been married almost six years. Time flies! Its been a crazy and bumpy ride up to now and we can't wait to have this one more hurdle past us. We started the adoption process in January 2005. We weren't going to give up hope of having children in our lives. We submitted an application to Chinese Children Adoption International Agency just shortly after my birthday in January of 2005. From then on it's all been about the wait to get our baby girl from China.

The months and months of just waiting to see if you are even close to hearing news is very, very difficult. Maurice and I choose to go about life as normal. We decided to keep to ourselves and just let things happen. In about December of 2006 we got news that our agency was finally predicting a date of April, 2007 for us to receive a referral. That got us in gear. The year and a half of wondering and anxious waiting is about to end. Actually, we believe that by the time we come home from China we will have invested two and a half years to adopt our daughter. That is a long pregnancy! We are just grateful to know now that the referral is just around the corner. A month or two now seems like nothing. Just to know we are the next in line or the next after the next in line means the world to us. It doesn't matter when, it just matters that it will happen. So we wait it out with the rest. Sometimes we wait patiently, sometimes not.

We want to thank everyone who's played a part in this journey. There are no words to express our gratitude. None. You have made our dream come true.

Onward to MeiLena. We hope this site provides a link to our journey so everyone can celebrate with us. We will be updating this journal all throughout our trip and also when we return home.