room crazy-Written by Amanda

Today we went to Rapid City.We got alot of differant things to put in Grace's room like stuff to put on the walls and a changing table.We definetly hit the jack pot in the stores.when she gets here she will definetly be loved and spoiled in a good way.Oh-ya I forgot,but I'm writing a song about baby Grace.I might even put a vidio of me singing the song.

Make a Smilebox greeting

Lunar New Year!

Today is the Korean Lunar New Year. The Lunar New Year is one of Korea's Biggest holidays. The Koreans focus on the family as they celebrate the beginning of the New Year. Children put on new traditional clothes called hanbok. They kneel and bow to their ancestors and elders. Family members wish each other prosperity and good fortune. Then they exchange gifts. Children receive lucky money, candy and fruit from the elders. The family spends time together and have rice-cake soup for breakfast. Children often take this day to play special New Year games. I bet our little Gracie was dressed soooper dooper cute!!

Update on Baby Grace

Today we got another medical update on baby Grace. They are so great about getting her monthly medical check ups with Holt Clinic. She is 5 1/2 months old now, and she weighs about 13 lbs. She is on the 30th percentile on our US charts. She is tiny, but growing very healthy. On her report it read that she is cooing, sucking her hand, and rolling over among other things. It is amazing how she is growing. I cried after reading the report just because we are missing out on some of the firsts. On the other hand...Im so thankful to the the foster family that is taking such good care of her in Korea. THis helps me alot to know she is in a loving home and being well taken care of and probebly spoiled! A friend just emailed me and said she was making a blanket for her! That really is touching to me to see my friends really happy and excited as we are. That made my night.

A Moms Heart!

Well all the paper work went in the mail on Friday morning. Wow was that a load of papers. Now 6 weeks to get our legal papers for her, then we can finally file the I600 form that is for immagration to bring her home! It is really sad that we have to wait hold her. We all fall in love with her more and more every single day. We went shopping this weekend, and I'd have to say Grace made out really good! Lots of great sales going on, so I picked up some cloths for her for next winter, and some for when she arrives. We found a great crib. The boys (Terry and Bay) set it up and Amanda and I put in the new bedding! I looked over and notice Bailey crying, then Amanda, then me! We were a mess! Terry walked back in the room and hugged us all! It was really emotional to see the kids miss her, and want her home just as we do, they love her soooo much. I can imagine how much they will spoil her when she gets here. Im glad this is my busy season with the dance studio (just to make time go faster), but honestly my mind is on her constantly. So much to the point IM not sleeping very well, I lay and think about her, and pray for her all night! I know I must trust God that He will take care of her and meet her every single need. It is just so hard now that we know she is our daughter to not have her home with us yet. This whole experience is surely growing us in many ways I could not have imagined. I guess each day that goes by is one step closer to getting her home! This Sunday we are going to a celebration gathering, we will meet families in the process and families who have their little ones home. Should be very fun, we are looking forward to it.
God Bless!

Big Sister's Thoughts! Wrote by Amanda

Hi I'm Amanda the new and proud big sister.This is so exciting to all of us .I can't wait to hold and cuddle little Gracie.We just set up her crib today and it looks adorable.Grace's bed set is pink and brown polka-dots.We even got Grace a Miny-Mouse teddy bear.My grandparents have already started spoiling her.We also got Grace 3 soft cuddly blakets.If your wundering who "WE" are It's Amanda,Bailey(big brother and sister),my Mommy,and my Daddy.I'm not so excited about the dipers and the long wait for her to get home,but I will try to do some of the wet dipers .Please pray for us and Grace to come home soon!

Off the Paper work goes!! Yeah!

Wow...what a week! Im not sure I even remember going to work or anything els except that God blessed us with this beautiful little angel. We have her pictures everywhere, and many many times one of us is caught staring and gazing into her eyes! We are totally in love with her. Waiting to hold her is harder than we ever imagined it would be! Just pray God gives us the strength we need and that he will bring her home in a few months. I dream of holding her on stage at our Spring Production with the dance studio. I want to show the world our little miracle! It is so neat to see our whole family espcially her grandparents getting all goofy over her. One of them has already been out shopping for her! Tonight we are up late filling out the final paper work and final payment to bring her home. Tomarrow Friday morning we will get it all notarized, then off it will go! Amazing and overwhelming how much there is to this. Many of it is stuff we already did in the beginning, and so it is all alot of repeat information and forms. You would think they would have it on file? ! We plan to get this all mailed tomarrow, Then we wait for them to get through all the paper work ...mostly immagration work. Korea will be escorting baby Grace here to the US. So now we will once again wait for that most important phone call. I dream of that day! thank you all for keeping posted on our journey. Your support means alot to our family! God Bless!

God Sent Us An Angel!!! Our Baby Grace!

It's A Girl!! She is beautiful! Im overwhelmed with such gratefulness to God! I can not even think straight today or barely type. I got the call this morning at 8am just as I was dropping the kids off at school. So they were excited to hear the great news too. It's a girl!!Her birth date is August 4,2008. Remember God gave me a dream about a girl on August 30th. ...How amazing! When she was born she weighed 5lbs 5 oz. Her Korean name is Yi Gyeonge(shine) Eun (grace). She truely is our little miracle and has been loved for so long. Now of course I can not wait to hold my little one in my arms. She has such lovey eyes and the cutest button nose and the sweetest lips! I love her sooo very much. I can not imagine now waiting for her to be with us, but that is just what we have to do. God will give us the strength to do so. We will get our package of more photos and all the information about her tomarrow. We will then have to wait 6 weeks to get the legal papers from Korea. Then we will file the I600 to immagration. Once that is there it can be 2-5 months for them to travel. They escort her to Denver Colorado, and we meet there. Please join with us in prayer for our little angel that we will be holding her in 2 months! God can do all things, and I know he can move paper work!! Thanks for your support and prayers. They mean the world to us. I just had lunch with Terry who is also overwhelmed with such great emotion. I hugged him as he went back to work and I said...I look pretty good for just having a baby don't I? He laughed! We are so happy. God Bless!!

Family Memories!

Today, we just got a call from Ginger (our social worker). I saw her name on the id and about fainted. She says we should have our referral this week!! Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I think I am going to go through the roof top from such excitement!! My heart is beating rapidly and I can't put into words my feelings.!! WHEWHOOO. My next posting on here will be telling you all what we have! A boy or a girl!!

This week we will get our I600A reapplication updated! Once we have our referral we will file the I600 which allows us to bring our child home. This all takes time with Immigration, so please please pray that this process goes quickly and that God will put his hands on all our paper work that is necessary to bring our baby home. I have heard some families have had to wait longer for some reason, they are taking longer to get the paper work done. Once we know our baby, I know that wait will be one of the hardest hardest parts of this whole thing. Thank you all for your support and your faithful prayers..we couldn't do it with out you all!! Talk to you again when we have our baby photos to show you!!

Great Update

Every day many times a day I find myself just talking and praying to God about many things in life and alot for our baby. This whole experience it completly amazing to me and my family. To know that God cares about us all so very much is very comforting. His grace is amazing, and His love is never ending! To think He is bringing us our baby from clear across the world into our home is truely miraculous! He placed adoption in my heart 8 years ago, and now it will come true. One of my good friends was in town this week and we had coffee, she remembers me talking about the dream of adoption that long ago and she is so happy, and thinks it is so neat to see it finally happen.

Great news....

Tonight we finally got an update from Holt, our adoption agency. Usually it comes on the 3rd or 4th, so I was getting a bit concerned about it now being the 8th of January. So tonight it finally our update came through email. (they update us monthly on which families they are working on for a placement of a child. ) I am happy to report great news. We are so excited to say officially for sure we will be getting our referral anyday now! YIPPY.

We went out to eat with some friends tonight and I honestly could not even think about anything els but our baby. I came home and started cleaning out closets. Terry came around the corner and said "what are you doing...nesting"? Well I hadn't thought about it, but I guess I probebly am. We need to get many baby things, and will do that as soon as we get the photo of our baby girl or boy. Please keep this all in your prayers please.

Happy New Year !!

Happy New Year Everyone! How exciting to finally see 2009. I hope and pray we all are blessed with a great new year. This month will be exciting for us as we are anticipating the big call for our referral! We are all happy to change the calendar to January. Can't wait to see that little face that is sooo many miles away, but sooo close to my heart!

Wonderful Christmas

We hope you all had a great Christmas Season! Ours was Awesome! We of course are excited to look forward into 2009. The excitement is building and this morning I woke up in great anticipation of our little ones arrival. I'm excited for that calendar to say January!! This is when our referral should come. Terry and I will be "on call" all month. I don't think I will sleep!

FYI...A "referral" is when Holt will call us and tell us they have matched a baby with our family!! They will give us all of our babies information that will include baby's Korean name, weight, birth date, family information, health information and how the baby is doing with her/his foster family in Korea. They will over night all the info to us that we can look over. Photos will be immediately emailed to us, and also in our over night package. After our "referral" we will send in a I600A form that must go through immigration, this is to allow us to bring our baby to the U.S. This does take some time which is what delays travel 2-4 months.

I know that after we get our Referral, and we have to wait 2-4 months to hold our baby this will be ultimatly the hardest thing to do. The wait will be very very hard. We will spend it getting ready for the baby, getting the room ready and buying all the new baby things. I have no baby things left at all. I really pray the arrival does not take long and our baby is home before May. Please also join me in that prayer! It would mean the World to me!!

Trust

Merry Christmas to you and your Family!! Great News! We just got an update from Korea program. They placed alot of families this last month. They placed children with families for November and December 07, and will begin processing families this month for January 08. This is us! So looks like we should get our referral in January 09 as long as things keep moving as they have!! Our baby has alot of people that already care. This truely means the world to us! Adoption for us it is the same feeling as being pregnant! Just a longer pregnancy!! haha. We knew we were not done having children. Some may find it difficult to understand adoption, or are maybe even scared of it. But for us, it is something that God placed in our hearts 8 years ago. I truely believe that some people are meant to adopt and some are not. This is really truely something that God must place on your heart. It is Him that is in control and Him that we must trust in!! I remember this bible verse : "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean NOT on your own understanding" Proverbs 3:5
I believe that God wants every child to have a family, and it is our job to open our heart and homes and give love, comfort and security to a child who needs a family!

John 15: 16-17, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love eachother.

Please pray that once we get our referral that our baby comes home quickly! We are really excited to meet face to face!

False Alarm

Our Family! Today the phone rang, Terry saw on the Caller ID that it was our social worker for the adoption with Holt. His heart skipped a beat thinking it may be a referral. (It was fun to get excited like that ) Turns out she was just checking in with us, and letting us know all is on track. Should have a referral in January. I guess we will both be on call and waiting for the phone to ring. I can't imagine how exciting it will be that whole month for our family! They just brought two babies here, and one was a boy and one a girl. All of our paper work and imigration has been done, so there should be no delays with the travel as we have heard with other families. This is great news. It would be a dream come true to hold that baby on stage at our spring show. Happy Thanksgiving to you all. So much to be Thanksful For ...Thank you God for guiding us and carrying us through this process! Thank you to those of you who have shown us such continued support and encouragement. We are thankful for you! We know that this Thanksgiving and Christmas our baby is in the arms of it's foster family. Can't wait till we are the ones holding our little one!! Photo above is my Grandmas 80th Birthday! She is so excited about our baby, and is our number one cheerleader!!

Snow BLizzard

Our update this month from Holt has not shown much progress. We were hoping for a referral before Christmas. But that was a little wishful thinking. Oh well I can dream right? I never imagined in my wildest dreams that this process would be so long. Some days it seems as if we have been waiting forever. But we also know that God has the perfect time. We can't wait to meet our little one and to introduce her/him to Bay and Amanda! They are excited and pretty anxious as well. We may try to get in a vacation sometime this winter. Someplace warm would be great. The family time would be incredible for us. Today we had a snow day, the town has stopped with the November Blizzard. No school, and no work. I treasure days like these, home nestled in with the kids, games and cookies baking !!

Fall Beauty

Here we are October already! The leaves are changing color on the trees and it looks beautiful outside!! The cool crisp air feels so refreshing. We are all in the swing of the fall schedule. Each new season means we are closer to a referral. Korea update was on track. Looking like 3-4 months to go!!Here is us having fun dressing up! Happy Fall to you all.

Sweet Dreams

This morning I woke up from a very happy dream. Here was the dream I believe God gave to me , just as he gave me dreams in the last trimester of my births.

Here is my dream.....Terry and I were in the airport waiting for our baby. Suddenly we look up and the escort is holding our baby. I am overcome with emotion and go to my knees with gratefulness! Terry was video taping, and also very emotional. I got up from my knees holding my face and looking at our baby with total love, gratefullness to God, and eagerness to know her. I say her because in my dream the baby seemed to be a girl. Lots of hair, cute, and big eyes. Her size to me was around 8 or 9 months old.

I wanted to post this because I realy wonder if our baby has just been born or will be born very soon. With the time lines our referral will come by January. That would make our baby 4 months old which is the typical age they are at time of referral. Wouldn't it be amaing if God gave me that dream on the birth of our baby?? I guess we will have to wait and see. No matter if we have a boy or a girl, Im thankful for this dream, it has given me excitement and hope during a long long wait.

Update from Holt

We finally got our monthly email update from Holt this week. Im always scared to read them incase there will be some kind of delay. Usually they will work on a month of families at a time, but this last month they placed children with almost 3 months of families. If they can keep going with this speed we are looking at 3-6 months for placement (referral). This was a great email. We pray there are no hold ups. When this is finally reality I think I will faint!!

New Thoughts

Terry with his parents Bill and Janice.


Lately my heart has been sooper heavy with new feelings and thoughts. I have had a much higher level of concern for our babies birth mother. The other night I watched a movie called Juno (not a movie I recommend). It was about a very young girl that planned to give her baby up for adoption. The end of the show she gave birth, she did not want to see her baby at all. She just layed in the hospital bed and sobbed. The next day.. I was watching "A baby story" , and it showed a woman giving birth, the baby was layed on the womans belly, and her and her husband were filled with joy. Both these shows brought me into another level of concern for our baby and the birth mother. I know somewhere on the other side of the world there is a woman who is the birth mother of our child who is about to give birth probebly sometime in june or july. She is probebly in some kind of turmoil right now knowing that she will give up her new born baby. The grief she must feel is unimaginable to me. Also on the other hand there is our child...born on the other side of the world who will not be held by a mommy and daddy for many months after it's birth. This makes me sooo sad. When we had our children, it was the most joyous time in life. We would both cry with tears of Gratefullness to God. With our sweet little angel who will be born in Korea, this baby will not be in the arms of one that will love him/her like we will until we meet later..this is very hard for me to think about,...but untill then I have to trust that God will hold our baby right away, I have to trust that He will provide everything that our baby will need and more until we can. Adoption is a truely amazing experience! God's Great Plan!

The Smell Of Spring!

The smell of spring brings so many exciting things. We just went through a busy time in life preparing for our Spring Dance Show we do every year. It was a huge success despite the blizzard that through us off and caused us to postpone to the next day. But all went great. The smell of spring also reminds us that we are going through another season...one which will get us even closer to the day we meet our baby face to face. It has been a very long process and seems to be a long wait. We now have to update several things because it has been a year. We also need to change our china Imigration to Korea yet. WE got a reminder call this week to do that right away. When they get to our name in the pile that has to be changed or they will skip over us. So this week that is my goal to get these things all updated and changed. I have been thinking about the baby so much, as if Im pregnant! It still seems like a ways away, but I know this summer will keep us busy and time will go fast. We are hoping for a referal by Thanksgiving. Until then we all will just keep doing some fun things for this spring and summer time. I love my summers...with the kids and we can just enjoy and play!

Yeah We are In!!

Yeah , Today we got our letter from Korea. We are officially in the Korea "pile" of waiting parents!! We were just talking about this last night, and prayed that God would bring that letter to us quickly. After I got home from the studio, Terry had just read it. What a happy moment for our family. Now Finally..it is really happening. Now we can really start counting down each month. Today is a happy day for the Storff Family. I went to a baby shower this weekend. It sure gave me and excitement for our baby. There were several pregnant mommies there. Very different feeling for me since I too feel "pregnant" in a sense. But on the outside no one really knows....and sometimes they forget just because of that I think. I suddenly realized to that we really have nothing baby anymore. Over the years it all has been sold or given away to other families. We are also still in prayer and know that God will provide the finances for us to bring our baby home debt free. This is so very important for our family.

January 23rd Update

This week we had to get a few more pictures to the Korea program. We needed pics of each of us individually and a photo of the baby room which is still pink (hint hint). We will be painting it a light beige color sometime soon though. We are praying that we are in the waiting list in Korea by February 1st. Then from there 8-10 months for referral of our baby girl/boy!! We continue to pray for our baby's health, that she/he is protected with God's angels every second. And prayer for the birth mommy. I can't imagine what she is going through as she decides to give her baby up for adoption. I do know that our home is full of love and waiting to snuggle and spoil a new addition to our family. I think Grandpa W is getting anxious to spoil another baby grandchild too.

A New Beginning

Our last update on a very long wait time for our China adoption, it just seems to get even longer. With thoughtful prayer, we have made the final decision to change programs and adopt a baby from Korea. We are so excited for this wonderful journey. We will be able to start our 8-10 month count until he or she is brought home. We are feeling so blessed at how God has really worked through this whole thing. We feel completly at peace about this decision. We are so grateful for our friends who joined together in prayer with us. For me, it is amazing how I love our baby already, and we have not even met. Will we be buying tutu's or hotwheels? Now we look forward to getting ready to welcome our new little one home.