Letter of Acceptance from China!!!

We recieved our Letter of Acceptance from China yesterday!  We were very excited to have passed this first little hurdle of paperwork!  Now on to the next - US Immigration stuff now!  We can now post pictures of Ezekiel - here's our cutie!

Happy 1st Birthday, baby boy!

Yesterday was Zeke's 1st birthday.  It was weird to not be able to celebrate it with him.  We couldn't even send him a card or anything.  (We will be permitted to send him a care package once some paperwork is completed.)  We are still waiting for our preapproval which is the first document that we need to move forward.  We began working on gathering some pictures that we want to send to him to introduce ourselves to him. 
In the meantime all we can do is pray!  Pray that he is healthy, warm, well fed, and being cared for.  Pray that our paperwork will be completed quickly.  And just trust that God knows the best time for us to be united.  It's not easy to wait since the girls ask every day "when will you go get Zeke?"

Hugs from Mommy!  We love you! 

People are wondering about fundraisers/donations...

Some of you have been asking if we are going to be having any fundraisers coming up.  We have the Just Love Coffee fundraiser going on indefinitely.  (Go to www.justlovecoffee.com/thegouldeys and you can order coffee anytime and the proceeds go to our fund.) 

We also have an adoption fund account set up at Univest Bank in Franconia.  If you want to donate anonymously then you can go to the Franconia office and ask them to deposit it in the Gouldey adoption fund.  If you prefer to just mail the check to us you can do that too and we will see that it gets deposited into the account. 

Thank you for your support!  We greatly appreciate it! 

The Name!

We decided on a name:  Ezekiel Bruce.  We had hoped to use his Chinese name for his middle name but his name was a surname.  It seemed weird to keep a name that meant nothing.  We had been thinking of the name Ezekiel for some time because it means "Strength of God".  We decided to use Bruce for his middle name in honor of his Dad and Poppop!  So there you have it - Ezekiel Bruce Gouldey!!!!

For unto us a son is born!

Merry Christmas!  I hope you all had a great Christmas! 
We recieved a special phone call on Christmas eve.  It was our matching coordinator calling us with another potential match!  We weren't sure if we should get excited since we had been on this rollercoaster before.  When we saw the picture of the little boy we did get excited!  There was something different this time - it just felt more right!  If that makes any sense!  We contacted CHOP adopt and on Christmas day they replied and set us up for a phone consult for the following evening.  The review went really well and the doctor gave us a good report!  This boy seemed to be pretty healthy despite his small hole in his ventricle.  If it doesn't close on it's own by 2 years he will need surgery but the doctor thought it would be pretty basic surgery.  He will be turning 1 on Jan. 22nd. 

So we accepted the referral and sent in our letter of intent!  What an awesome Christmas present!  I will post pictures once we are permitted to!  Please keep praying for him.  (We hope to announce a name soon - we are still finalizing it!)

Another referral we had to decline

We recieved another referral on Monday night.  This months shared list of children was released and our matching coordinator found us a child that met our criteria.  We looked it over and got excited thinking this little guy might possibly be our son.  We had to wait until Wed night for the phone consult with the doctor from CHOP.  She found many concerns and said this appeared to be a high risk referral.  We didn't need to hear much after that.  We are sad to have to decline yet another referral.  It feels horrible to reject these children but we can only handle so much. 
We are praying for patience and for God's timing.  He knows best!  It's hard to wait though....

A Hard Decision

We recieved an unexpected phone call on Sat. from the matching coordinator.  She said she found a boy who met our criteria!  He had been on the list for some time so we didn't need to have our dossier logged in to see his file.  We were very surprised because we thought our dossier had to be logged in before we could be matched.  We reviewed his file and emailed it to CHOP Adopt for review.  We weren't sure what to think!  We were not prepared mentally to be matched so quickly!  We couldn't consult with the doctor until Monday at 8:30 pm.  The doctor informed us of some things that we didn't notice on the chart and explained in better detail what was probably going on medically with this child.  We did not feel at peace with proceeding with the referral so we had to decline this little boy.

It was hard to say no.  He needed a family but he was going to be more medically complex than what we felt we could handle.  It was an emotional 72 hours (that is all the time they give you to decide).  Afterwards I felt as if I had another miscarriage but feel better about it today. 

This afternoon we found out that our dossier is now logged in.  We will be eligible for any children on the next shared list now!  That is good news!  We could get matched again very quickly!  Please pray with us that we would get a clear vision of who our son is so we would know without a doubt that it is him when we recieve his referral.