Yes, the Walsh Family is Officially Crazy

Well...the Walshes are at it again... For those of you who haven't heard...we have jumped back into the adoption scene.  Are we crazy?  Yes, we are convinced that we are.  As a family we have been praying for close to a year about this and in August we finally surrendered to, what we are convinced, God wants us to do.  In October 11th, 2010, over three years ago, Meili was placed in our arms for the very first time, and our family has been blessed in so many ways we can't even begin to describe.

Once again we are adopting from China, a little girl, between the ages of 12-36 months.  She will be classified on the correctable medical conditions list. We have actually just had our homestudy approved 2 days ago and next week we will mail it to Holt (our adoption agency) and then the process of matching can begin.  We could actually know who she is possibly in the next month.   We are asking all of our friends and family to be in prayer. Specifically for Holt International as they are working to match us with a child who is a great match for our family.  Also for this little girl who we don't know yet (but God knows her...) that whoever is caring for her now will love her and protect her and that she will even now feel loved.  We expect that this process will take anywhere between 6-12 months.

We are in the process of fund raising in order to pull this thing off.  Our kids are helping run a weekly snack shack at our home school co-op, and Michelle had a garage sale from some donated items from friends a couple of weeks ago.  The total cost of this adoption will probably be close to $30,000 which includes all the hoops to jump through here in the states, the adoption agency, the orphanage fee, and 2 weeks travel to China.  Now that our homestudy is complete, we are able to apply for some adoption grants. We are hoping to raise $25,000 from adoption grants, snack sales, special Walsh designed T-shirt sales, and anything else we can think of in the next 6-12 months!  Our church has set up a designated account for those of you who are led to partner with us... any and every financial gift is greatly appreciated.  You can make a tax deductible donation through a secure website called www.adopttogether.org.  Click the link below to go to that page. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and pray for us.  We ask for the sake of everyone tagged on here that you respond via message or on our wall rather than to this note so people don't get a lot of notifications.  We will share more information as it comes.  Thank you all for the support that we have had with Meili...that has meant the world to us.  By the way, she is convinced we need to name her new baby sister Mulan! 

Love from the Walshes!