For me, the role of being a Mother and parent was more important than how my child entered my life, and as long as I can remember I knew I wanted to adopt my daughter.  After a lot of research and sole searching on November 11th, 2005 I submitted my application to Children's Hope International (CHI) to adopt a healthy infant girl from Vietnam.  I was accepted on November 14th, 2005 and began what has now become an amazing, sometimes heartbreaking, and mostly joyful journey.

Once I was accepted a whirlwind of activity took place.  This included being fingerprinted by the city, state and federal government, adoption classes, medical exams, financial verification, visits by social workers, writing an autobiography, getting letters of recomendations from friends and family and forms, forms and more forms that needed to be filled out and submitted to the many entities involved.

Finally all the work paid off and on March 22nd, 2006 I recived my I-171H.  This is the official document issued by the US government giving me approval to adopt a child from another country.  With receipt of the single document - yes, all those forms and work lead to a one page document - I became number 21 on the waiting list for a baby girl.

Since Vietnam has just opened to international adoption again (closed for two years) no one knew for sure how long it would take to move through the waiting list. 

So I attempted to live life as normal . . . well as normal as life can be when you are remodeling a 60 year old house, take in a stray dog, get laid off from a job you love, and find out your best friend is diagnosed with breast cancer.  

But over a  year later normal turned out to be pretty good . . .  the house is now almost completely remodeled and I love it, the dog ended up to be smarter than I am, I found a better job that will allow me more freedom and options to raise my daughter the way I would like to and, best of all, my friend is now officially cancer free.