It is finally here! Our flight to Jayden!!

It is finally here! We woke up around 6 o'clock this morning.  We finished up some last minute packing, and then headed for the airport. We already missed the kids so much.  This is one of the hardest parts of the trip is just leaving our kids. We know they are in wonderful, capable hands, but it is still very difficult. 

When we got to Louisville airport, we had a surprise. Our flight had been canceled. The lady at the counter of Delta readily booked the flight for later today. Instead of going through Detroit like we originally planned, we will be traveling to Atlanta, Georgia, then flying to Washington. From Washington, we will be headed to Beijing, China. We should get to Beijing tomorrow which is March 27th around 10 PM. It's all good in the neighborhood!!

Because of flight changes, we waited at Louisville Airport for about four hours. We were definitely ready to board the plane. We got into Atlanta with no time to waste and then boarded another plane outbound to Seattle, Washington. We ran to make our next flight from Seattle to Beijing. We finally arrived in Beijing at 10:20 PM. The flights were all pretty smooth with very little turbulence. 

We got to the Hotel and just now settling in. I miss Brittany, justin, and Gianna more than I could ever put into words. It's very hard being half way around the world without them. Mom and Dad sends loads of love and kisses!!

Tomorrow will be a busy day with several tours.  One more day closer to our little Jayden. 😄

Last day to FMLA!

Wow, it seems as if time has flown by quickly. Today, Friday, is my last day of work here at Conifer for a while. My coworkers decided that it would be a good idea to wear our adoption rocks T-shirts. They truly are some of the most amazing, awesome people on the face of this earth! We decided to go eat lunch at Cunningham's. Yum, Yum!! Towards the end of my workday, I got a really big surprise from several people that gave me some money towards our trip to China. God is so good to Joel and I. We are so blessed to be part of our circle of friends, family, work, and church.  We are so ready to pick up our baby boy!

Conference call day!!!

March 20, 2014, we had our conference call with CCAI. We found out that there are 8 to 10 additional families going to Henan with us. There are three children from the county of Zinyang that are going to be adopted on this trip which includes our son, Jayden.  It is incredible to think that next week at this time, we will be in Beijing, China. The conference call basically went over our itinerary for the trip. We learned that we will be flying into Beijing, China for about four days. We will get to tour the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Tinneman Square and another famous site. On Sunday, March 30th, we will be boarding a plane for Henan, which is Jayden's province. Gotcha day is scheduled for March 31. This basically means that we will be able to finally hold our son for the first time!!! Once we have Jayden, we will need to travel the following day to his city, Xinyang. It appears that we will be traveling by a bullet train which will take 3 1/2 hours to get there. We will be signing paperwork and then making the trip back to the capital city of Henan. From Henan, we will be going to Guangzhou.  This is where we will be obtaining Jayden's passport. It should be ready for us to pick up. From Guangzhou, we will be flying back to Beijing to home on April 12, 2014! The total trip will be 16 days. I cannot wait to get Jayden home so that he can meet his forever family and get comfortable as quick as possible. We talked about Jayden to Gianna and Justin every day!!!  We are all ready for his arrival!

A Note From Dad

Donna is far better at articulating our journeys than I would ever be able to.   She will continue to handle this for us;   I do want to share a few thoughts.  

Donna and I have had our tragedies and challenges just as many others have had to face.   I believe that many folks that have faced similar circumstances, often never have the opportunity to see why God puts them on a path that includes these tragedies and challenges. 

I feel  blessed be able to get a small glimpse of why God only  gave us a short time with Sean and the blessing of Justin with his special needs.   Without these challenges,  I feel certain I would have been content with a wife, two kids and a dog.   

Instead we have a wonderful, beautiful bundle of energy with Gianna and are now a few short weeks away from bringing Jayden home to his forever family.    When we started this journey for our family,   I never imagined bringing Gianna home, would also lead to a short 13 months to bringing Jayden home as well.

This would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many folks.  

I want to thank all those that have supported us in so many ways as we grow our family.    The generosity has far exceeded anything we could have expected.     Again,  Thank You !!!

Jayden's Baby Shower 3/15

Today was such an exciting day!!!  Some of my awesome friends threw a surprise baby shower for Jayden!  It was so good to see such special ladies and their kiddos. Our meal consisted of an awesome salad, spaghetti, garlic bread, cookies to die for, and chocolate cake that was incredible! The food was just delightful!  Each gift we received was so thoughtful. We are the luckiest family in the world to have such sweet, beautiful friends. Thank you my dear friends for making this such a memorable day!

Henan Province Map

Justin and Jayden's new room!

While Justin and Brittany we're staying at grandma and grandpa's house, Joel and I decided to remake Justin room.  We shopped and found a bunk bed set and which we made into two twin beds. We worked all day taking furniture and toys out of Justin's room in order to reconfigure that space and get the two twin beds in the room.  Did I mention how much Gianna helped? She was right under our feet all day long. When Justin returned home and look at his and Jaden's new room, he was more concerned as to why we moved his bookshelf. We definitely got a good laugh out of Justin expressions. A couple months past and we decided that the room needed some personal touches, like homemade pictures. Joel, Brittany and I worked on these painted pictures a couple of days. We had so much fun painting these pictures. Justin's picture has the fruits of the Spirit. While Jayden's picture, has encouraging words. I can't wait for Jayden to see his new room. I hope he really likes it.

LOA

Woo hoo! It is finally here. It is finally that day we received our LOA! Basically, the LOA or letter of acceptance from China means that you are able to adopt one of their precious children. We were expecting the wait time to receive our LOA to be much shorter than what it actually was. We ended up waiting around 56 days to obtain this letter. As soon as we received this document, we signed it and send it back as quickly as we could. We quickly gathered the rest of the documents needed for CCAI and got those mailed off as well. This document makes us one step closer to bringing home our beautiful, handsome Jayden.

More Pictures!

Today was filled with an awesome surprise. In an email, we received a couple more pictures of our Jayden. Also, was a document with updated information on Jayden. It is so amazing to see the difference from his first, initial pictures that was sent versus these new pictures. He has grown so much. We simply cannot wait to wrap our arms around little Jayden and bring him home.

Travel Approval

Our travel approval has arrived!! What an absolute surprise! We were really expecting to wait another week or two before receiving our travel approval. This simply means that China has approved for us to come over and get Jayden to bring him home. We turned around and emailed our adoption agency back requesting the quickest consulate appointment from China, which is April 11, 2014. The next day, we heard back from our adoption agency. They confirmed for us that we got the consulate appointment that we chose. We quickly emailed our travel agent to book our flights. Within a day, our travel agent got back with us with some awesome flights. We will be flying on Delta for the largest course of our flights. We are just so excited that we can't hardly see straight. We just cannot wait to get Jayden and our arms and love on him.

Christmas Concert

Another event that my coworkers came up with to help with our adoption is to put on a Christmas concert. We are truly blessed to have two awesome coworkers that play guitars. Dana reserved her church in order to be able to have the Christmas concert there.

Surprise!!!!!!!

One Friday morning, I walked into work thinking it would be the normal, usual Friday. Boy was I wrong! I came back from getting water and noticed that all of my coworkers were gathered in the training room that I work out of. They each had a beautiful smile on their face and held a piece of paper in their hand. Teresa yelled out that they wanted to help with the adoption. They each held up their paper one by one, saying that they wanted to help us. Tears automatically flowed down my face. I was so amazed at these beautiful people that I call friends would want to help us in our journey to bring Jayden home. We are so incredibly blessed with the people that we work with our church our family. It is amazing! The first thing my coworkers did was hold a 'jean day'. This is basically where all employees can wear jeans to help fund the adoption. They also sold cookbooks for us which proved to be quite lucrative.

Toys for Jayden

Now that we know that we have a precious, beautiful little boy, it is time to go out and gather up some items to send to him, the orphanage workers, and the other kids.  We bought things like blankets, toys, clothes, and other essential items that we figured they would all need. Of course, what would a package be like if we didn't have chocolate in it! We also included a camera in hopes that the orphanage workers would take pictures for us. Joel got the packages together, and got them to the post office. Gianna and Justin seemed very curious about all of the toys and clothes and as to why we were boxing them up.

Introducing…

Introducing…

Our adoption agency told us that  we would have to wait 3 to 6 months for a match.  After being logged in to China's adoption for about a month, we received an unexpected phone call.  It was about 6 PM on a Monday night.  Tony, from our adoption agency, was on the other end of the phone line.  Tony told me that our adoption agency had a match for us.  He mentioned that the match was a little boy that was 2 1/2 years old and that his birthday is May 1, 2011.  Tony went on to tell me that this little boy's name was Yang Shuai.  Shuai means handsome king.  Tony said that Yang Shuai was healthy and he has had his cleft lip repaired.  The orphanage shared all of  Shuai's medical records. He still needs to have his palette repaired. The orphanage workers cause him Shuai Shuai. 

Tony went on to tell me that Shuai lives in Xinyang, Henan.  Apparently, one of the orphanage directors saw little Shuai in a flower bed which was close to a train station in Xinyang. The orphanage director took little Shuai to the orphanage and he has been there since.  Tony asked me if I would like to see a picture of little Shuai. Excitedly, I said yes.  I remember thinking to myself how beautiful this little boy was.  The first thing I did was get on the phone and tell Joel about the awesome  news I just heard.

Once we were able to print off little Shuai's medical records, we sent a copy of the medical records and pictures To our pediatrician. The pediatrician looked over all of the documents and emailed us telling us that it was fine to move forward with the adoption.  That evening, we emailed our adoption agency and let them know that we were interested in being matched with little Shuai.

How awesome it is to know that one day we will be able to travel to China and pick up our little boy to bring home to his loving family.  We just couldn't wait to tell our family and friends of our good news. God is so good to us and we give him all the glory.  

We decided to change his name to Jayden Erik Shuai Mangas!!!!!

LID!!!

LID!!!!!

We were notified that our log in date (LID)  was September 11, 2013!  This is a very significant  date because it marks the day that China received our dossier.  This just puts us one step closer to bringing home a beautiful child from China.  We can finally take a deep breath from all of the paperwork we had to complete for our dossier now that China has everything they need.