Category Archives: Family

Family Friday: Looking at Hong Kong

First I would like to thank everyone for their kind words about our adoption news. We appreciate all the conversations, texts, messages, likes, and comments that let us know y’all are behind us 100% and are continuing to pray for us. Even if our adoption story is beginning to sound a little bit like “The Girl Who Cried Adoption.” We are beyond excited with the switch to Hong Kong and have no doubt that is where God wants us and we don’t even begin to question the road he has lead us on to get there. Who said all roads were straight and without traffic jams anyway?

Today I thought it would be fun to share a little bit about Hong Kong, what the trip will look like for us, and a little bit about the matching process.

Hong Kong

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Michael Luke and I have had such a fun time learning about Hong Kong. Since this was our second to time switch countries we knew the drill for the required readings that help each couple learn about the country their next child will come from. Rather than bore you with history lesson I’ll share a few highlights.

Hong Kong is not a country but a territory of China (“One country, two systems”)
Hong Kong was once a colony of the British Empire then Japan took control with the British later resuming control and finally China taking the reins in 1997.
English and Chinese are the official languages. Which is great because I really don’t see myself learning a Chinese dialect in the next few months.
Hong Kong literally means “fragrant harbor”
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Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and therefor one of the most expensive places to live. For fun, ML and I watched some House Hunters International shows that took place in Hong Kong. Apparently is highly unusual to have a stove in your house since almost all cooking is done entirely with the wok. Which leaves the question… how do they make brownies, cake, or cobblers?
The city has an amazing skyline that puts on a light show nightly and is best viewed from a boat in the harbor. I might have to conquer my fear of boats on water for this.
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The food is supposed to be amazing! Need I say more?

What The Trip Will Look Like For Us

There’s not a lot of real concrete information on this but unlike Peru where our in country stay would have been 28 days this trip will only need to be about a week long. Some people might consider a consider this a plus but ML and I were really looking forward to being out of country so long.

Despite the visit being short I am looking forward to it… except for the almost 24 hours worth of flying and layovers that will be needed to get there. Jet Lag! I don’t even want to imagine what that is going to do to Noah. That girl likes to move! Speaking of Noah, she had her passport photos made last week and I snuck in a few candid shots.

We figured we better get a move on it since we could be traveling by the end of the year. As we find out more information you can bet that I will be back to share more about the trip.

The Matching Process

With Hong Kong you can match with a child at any point in the process or once you get to the end Hong Kong will select a child to present to you based on your child desired form. Michael Luke and I already have access to the waiting children list. So far there hasn’t been one available that meets our needs but we are hopeful that one will become available soon. If a child does become available that we feel look would be a good a fit for our family we can then request more information and put a hold on that child. If we make it through the whole dossier approval process and still haven’t matched with a child then Hong Kong will work to present you with a child that they feel will best work with your family. In that case you can then review the file, pray for God’s direction, and either accept the child or ask for another match. So for now we are hoping to match with a child off of the Waiting Children list. Both routes could lead us to Hong Kong by the end of the year though.

So there you have it. A little about Hong Kong, our trip,and the matching process. All this adoption stuff can get a little confusing… even for me. Hopefully, this helps to clear some stuff up though. Has anybody ever visited Hong Kong? Or maybe you are just a huge fan of Chinese food? I feel like I need to expand my Chinese cooking skills now.

P.S. If you have missed any of our adoption posts or can’t remember it all because we through you for a loop every time check out our Hong Kong Adoption tab at the top of the page for all our adoption posts.

P.P.S. For more cool Hong Kong pictures check out my Hong Kong Baby board on Pinterest.

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Family Friday: (Big) Adoption News

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There hasn’t been any major news in our adoption process since we sent our dossier off to Peru back at the end of February….

Until now!

Ok. So you would think at this point that we might be sharing news that we heard back from Peru or that we had requested information on a child. Something of that nature. Well actually, we are here to share with you that we are switching countries to….

You might be thinking… How did this come about? Why Hong Kong? Isn’t it a little late in the game for this? Haven’t you already switched countries before? And I am here to answer every one of them for you and any more questions you may have.

How did this come about?

A couple of weeks ago God began to work in my and Michael Luke’s hearts after talking to our social worker who had just gotten back from visiting Peru. She shared with us and the other families that are in the process of adopting from Peru that Peru has a large number of families wanting to adopt from there. Which is a blessing. Unfortunately, Peru is only physically able to place a certain number of children each year. This number is less than the number of families waiting to adopt which leads to the longer wait for a child from Peru (24-30 months). On top of the long wait our goal is to keep the birth order, meaning Noah will be the oldest, but having had the chance to view the waiting children list over the last couple of months we realized that this was going to be really hard to do since most children are two or over. With all this news we began to question God’s plans for us. Especially since the need for adoption was being met to the best of Peru’s ability. Did He want us to look somewhere else? Possibly outside of Latin America?

The more we prayed and talked about it the more we sensed Him leading us to Hong Kong.

Why Hong Kong?

Hong Kong was appealing to us for several reasons. One is that the process is expected to be much quicker. Even switching over from where we are, the remainder of the process could take as little as nine months. That means we could be bringing home our little one by the end of the year! Two, even though the number of children available is less than in Peru, the number that fit within our age range is already larger than we had seen on the Peru waiting child list. Three, there is a need for adoption in Hong Kong and we honestly sense that is where God is leading us.

Isn’t it a little late in the game for this?

Not really. We are actually at a great place to switch countries… any further and it might have been a problem. We will have to reapply to U.S. immigration to adopt a child from Hong Kong instead of Peru but that shouldn’t take very long. We also have to submit our dossier to Hong Kong now but we actually just got to that part in the Peru process last month. Thankfully, the Hong Kong program is a little more streamlined and tends to run a little faster. So from the time our dossier is submitted to hopefully our dossier being approved should be around three months. We were looking at six months minimum with Peru. And with the possibility of matching with a child so much sooner it really could speed things up in the long run instead of set us back.

Haven’t you already switched countries before?

Yes. Originally, our intentions were to adopt from Colombia but we encountered a bump in the road that lead us to switch to Peru while still in the home study process. At the time Peru looked like the best fit for us even though we knew the selection of children that fit within our age range would be small. Also at the time we switched Hong Kong wasn’t one of the countries that our agency, Lifeline Children’s Services, partnered with.

We are excited with the move to Hong Kong and look forward to the rest of the journey God has planned for us! The nice part of adoption is that no matter where your child comes from, domestically or internationally, there is one less orphan.

I realize this is a lot but I wanted to bring you all up to speed on how the adoption process is going and where we are in the process. If you have any questions please feel free to ask me and I will do my best to answer them. Thanks for sharing this journey with us and as always we continually appreciate your prayers as we seek to bring our little one home.

P.S. Next Friday I’ll be back to share more about Hong Kong in general, what the trip will look like for us, and a few other bits of information about the process.

P.P.S. For easy reference all our adoption posts are grouped together on our Hong Kong Adoption page accessible at the top of the page.

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Say Goodbye to Colds Forever

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Note: We haven’t ignored or forgotten you. The kitchen renovation is still in progress. ML hopes to complete the tile installation this weekend! Which means hopefully I’ll have pictures to share soon.

A couple years ago I discovered that I could completely eliminate my migraines just by altering my diet (more on that here). After experiencing complete freedom, and saying “adios” to migraine medication Michael Luke and I embarked on a quest to find out just how much healing power God has given food.

One of our discoveries is the combination of honey and cinnamon used to fight colds. I’ll admit at first I was a little skeptical… something so sweet and good can fight a cold? But we have been using this mixture all winter anytime we felt a cold coming on and it has worked! After just a few doses most symptoms of the cold are gone and thankfully you never get that “shoot me now” feeling because of your sinuses being too compacted.

So why does it work?

Simply put… honey is antibacterial and cinnamon is antimicrobial. Although I wouldn’t suggest using the mixture as a hand sanitizer because things could get sticky! But if you ingest it for cold fighting purposes it works like little soldiers and kills those pesky germs. Yay!

The Formula

1 Tablespoon Honey
1/4 Teaspoon cinnamon

Mix together and repeat every four hours. (There isn’t anything magical about every four hours. I just came up with that time period so that we were able to get several doses in during the day.) Michael Luke prefers his spread on top of bread. Noah and I like ours straight up.

The honey and cinnamon yummy goodness is way better than cold medicine or sucking on a million cough drops all day long. Noah even looks forward to taking hers… which is more than I can say for some of her cold medicine.

I must add that I have not been able to completely eliminate Noah’s colds yet. First off I don’t give here a full dosage every four hours because I don’t want her hyped up on sugar and because she is only sixteen months old. Second it’s hard for me to know when her colds first start coming on. Which means most of the time we don’t start the regime until the cold has begun to set in. Regardless though I believe it helps the cold not to turn in to the big ugly monster that it could be.

When we first realized how well this concoction works we wondered why we had never heard of it before but the more we thought about it the more it made sense. A simple mixture of honey and cinnamon is not profitable to the drug companies or the doctors… OTC medicine is. :)

Sometimes I don’t know why I put God in a box. Why is it not possible that colds can be fought with the goodness he made for us…. honey and cinnamon. Isn’t He amazing?

Because I’m not a health nut or scientist check out this cool article that shares even more of honey and cinnamon’s healing power.