swine flu

It currently looks like the swine flu outbreak will postpone our travel. We don't know how long the travel will be curtailed; it is just more of the same old, same old . . . waiting!! We will just continue to be patient and hope that the flu scare will soon recede and the China officials will allow adoption travel!

First Photo

Here is the first picture we ever saw of Mason! Sooooo cute! We knew he belonged with us!

Cast Photos

Here is Mason's first cast. He is probably two or three months old in this picture. You can see his little right foot is curved inward.

Here is Mason at about 8 or 9 months-old. His left leg has a big cast, probably the 3rd or 4th he has had. You can see his right foot has also been corrected. He can sit on his own and looks great!

Meet Mason!

This is the most recent photo we have of baby Mason. He is 11 or 12 months-old here. Too cute!!!

Our journey together

We decided to start this blog so that we could share this adoption journey with all of our dear friends and family. We so much like reading about the experiences of other adoptive parents and families, it will be fun to document our experiences. I have been intrigued with the idea of adopting a baby from China since a friend adopted a little girl years ago. I was able to see firsthand how the experience had been such a great blessing to their family. I teased Jim about having a number 5 baby over the years but with our busy life and full house nothing much ever really came of it. After a few years of having it in the back of my mind I asked Jim if adopting would ever be a possibility. We decided to think about it while he moved to Minnesota and the rest of stayed in Virginia until Kasey graduated from High School. After he had been in Minnesota for a few weeks, he called one night with a big surprise. He knew it was time to start the process of getting this caboose that had been tugging at me for so long. After that neither of us ever looked back, through literal mountains of paperwork and waiting and appointments and fingerprints and notarized documents, etc, we always knew that we had another family member to bring home. After a year of paperwork we got our log-in date of March 14, 2008. At that point we were told it would be another 2-3 years before we got our referral. We settled in for the long wait, looking at it with the attitude that 2 or 3 years were going to pass whether we were waiting for our baby or not, so we might as well just be patient and realize that eventually it would happen. We got weekly e-mails from our adoption agency and one e-mail talked about the Waiting Children list. This was a list of children that had physical issues that were looking for homes. I looked the list over and we decided to fill out a Waiting Child application to have on file. This way we could look at different files of Waiting Children and be eligible to adopt one if it looked like they were the child for our family. In the meantime I decided to go back to school, a goal that I had had for a long time. I knew this would give me something to focus on so I wouldn't worry about our long wait as well. Then one day in February we got a phone call from Stephanie, the Waiting Child coordinator. She had a file we might like to look at, so we had her send it. From the beginning we had always had the idea that we would be getting a little girl, but what a great surprise when the file was of a little boy. We fell in love with him the second we saw his picture. His health issue was club feet, but this was an easily correctable condition, and here in Minnesota are some of the best doctors and surgeons in the world. We knew he was the one for us. We needed some doctors to look over his file and consult about his condition, so we hurried and got all the formalities out of the way so we could "lock" is file and proceed with the adoption. We had to take a leap of faith when one set of doctors said his condition wasn't correctable and gave a very grim diagnosis. After a day or two of thoughts and prayers, we still felt very strongly that this was our little boy, no matter what - and very joyfully (and tearfully) locked his file. After that it was more of the same. Waiting. A few weeks after we locked his file, Stephanie called early one morning with some wonderful news. They had received a medical update with pictures and our little Mason had perfectly straight legs and feet, he had been casted multiple times and could even stand on his own at 11 months. The bleak prognosis turned out to be wrong. We are now just weeks from going to pick up our little Mason and every day is longer than the one before it. We are all busy with our crazy lives, but we all pause in front of our little guys pictures on the fridge each day, waiting for the day when we don't have to look at pictures to see our little son or brother. The other day we had to send in the passport application with his full American name and after ALOT of discussion we finally settled on Mason Levi Hansen for the name. His room is ready and our family is ready, we will update with pictures and travel plans as soon as we know.

The beginning of our journey

The countdown begins!