About to Share Our Hearts, Our Love...

With only five days left until we leave for the journey of a lifetime, we have been busy, busy bees preparing for our trip and preparing our home for our new little one!  Getting Amelia's room ready, shopping for clothes, hairbowes and all that fun girly stuff--and preparing our home, has all made it feel so real!  Although many days, it's still so surreal that after 5 years of waiting, we are now only 5 days away from leaving for China and 9 days away from meeting our daughter!!  As part of the preparations, we have been putting the final touches on Amelia's room.  The decor probably looks familiar to many of you since we still had everything saved from 2008 when we did up a girls nursery, thinking we were getting a girl from Kazakhstan at the same time as Liam.  Luckily everything worked in this house and the colors of pink, brown and green await our little sweet cakes...

Besides getting ready for Amelia, we have been cherishing time with Liam during our final days as a family of only three!  Amazing how just saying that brings tears to my eyes.  There is no denying how anxious and excited I am to bring home our second child, but I never thought I would feel this emotional about savoring time with my "baby" boy.  Friends have always told me the mixed emotions you may have when you realize you will soon have to share your love, your heart, your time-with someone else outside of that one little human being that has been the center of your universe and the essence of your heart for so long.  Although we've had to wait a lot longer to grow our family than we would have originally chosen, we now realize what a blessing it has been.  For 3 years now, Liam has been the center of our every day and we have just been so blessed to have had so much time to dedicate all of our being to loving him every day.

I thought I'd share some pictures of some of the special times we have cherished with Liam these last few weeks.  We spent a couple days in Lake Geneva, WI and had such a great time...

We also spent a weekend in Michigan taking Liam to his first Detroit Tigers Game and his first University of Michigan, Wolverines football game.  The weekend was a complete blast, even despite the severe thunderstorms in Ann Arbor, the fact that we got drenched and had to evacuate Michigan's stadium due to tornado watches...BUT, we still loved every minute of it!  Plus, the Wolverines won even though the game was called early, so that made for a very happy hubby!  After that weekend, Liam has become our little Wolverine and after begging Ben for a whole, well, 20 seconds, to be a Wolverine for Halloween, his proud Dada said yes - how could any Michigan alum say no to that--regardless of how much the costume cost! :)

We have also enjoyed watching our boy grow into such a little athlete.  He loves going to the range with Daddy, playing football in the backyard and his favorite lately has been t-ball.  The boy just LOVES sports!

So although we are cherishing time with our boy, we know whole heartedly that our hearts are beyond ready to be shared with another little precious human being...with our sweet Amelia!  We just can't wait to have a daughter and finally a baby sister for Liam!  Liam is so excited as well.  He has asked for so long now "Mama, why don't I have a sister or brother like my friends have"?  He's really at the perfect age and he's beyond ready to have a sibling.  We know Liam will be such a great big brother with his kind nature, his fun-loving personality, his HUGE, sensitive heart, and his way of making us all laugh like crazy.  Liam, I'm sure, will be Amelia's favorite person in the world.  We talk about Amelia all the time and Liam says he wants to help push Amelia in the stroller, he wants to read her books, sing her songs, and show her all his toys.  When Liam is being bad, we threaten him by telling him he's going to have "diaper duty" and he doesn't like that one bit.  We pray about Amelia all the time together and when Liam prays for her, he says "Dear God, please keep Amelia healthy, keep her safe, and keep her strong."  Ugh, praying together has become a sob fest for mommy!  The other day Liam said, "Mama, if Amelia cries when we get her, I want to give her a present to cheer her up."  Oh, my heart melted.  So sweet!  I just can't wait to see him take on his big brother role!

Liam WILL be coming on the trip to China with us.  It was such a hard decision as we know it will be difficult either way, but we ultimately just could not imagine being away from Liam for 3 weeks.  Plus, we know how amazing it will be to have him be part of our first 3 weeks of bonding with Amelia, and as a family, we will have the experience of a lifetime! 

So as we pray every day and thank God for the family that we are today, we also pray with all our hearts for sweet Amelia Mei who is waiting in Nanyang, China, who is about to be poured with the love of three huge hearts...three hearts that cannot wait to share their love!!!