A New Chapter Begins

A few weeks ago, one of my friends sent me this book. The book is about a little bird that does not have a mother. He walks around asking several different animals if they would be his mother and each response was something to the fact that the little bird did not look like them. He finally found Mrs. Bear, who took him into her arms and loved him like her own. She didn't care that he looked different than her and he was so happy to have a family.

This book came at exactly the right time for me. After losing our first little girl right before we were to travel to her, I was just unsure if I could go on with our adoption journey. My heart was broken into a million pieces. The book was originally bought for our little McKenna, but my friend wanted me to see the message. There was another little girl out there that needed a mother...a family....a chance at knowing that kind of love. When I finished the book, I remembered exactly why we started on this adoption journey. And I knew our journey was not over....

We would like to introduce our new little girl, Quinn Lian. She just turned 3 years old in April and is from Ganzhou City, Province of Jiangxi, China. Her Chinese name is Jin Lian. We LOVE that Lian means "lotus flower".

The Lotus Flower Symbolic Meaning: The lotus flower starts as a small flower down at the bottom of a pond in the mud and muck. It slowly grows up towards the waters surface, continually moving towards the light. Once it comes to the surface of the water, the lotus flower begins to blossom and turn into a beautiful flower.

For one little orphan whose start to life was so difficult, we can already see that she is blossoming into a beautiful flower. When reading her report written by the orphanage staff, our hearts began to melt! This is one happy little flower! We fell in love with her photos and just knew that this little girl was sent to us from heaven. Quinn's referral has given our entire family a sense of renewed HOPE and FAITH. We are so grateful that McKenna opened up our hearts and eyes to this kind of love. We feel blessed that we are being given the opportunity to be Quinn's family. We can't wait to learn more about her!

We are hoping for a very speedy LOA this time around. We do not think we will have the same sort of "LOA" wait as before; however, given our unique set of circumstances, it's hard to say. We will do all we can to get to Quinn and bring her home as fast as possible. There will be very "uneasy" feelings until we are holding her in our arms....we know we have to contend with those feelings. How could we feel any other way? We want this baby girl home!

Let the new Chapter begin.....