About Berkeley.....

First off Berkeley is not her real name that's her name on Reece's Rainbow I do know her real name and we plan to keep it unless she wants to change it but I'm not going to post it publicly until after we are legally allowed to! 

I first saw her photo over 3 years ago, it's the one of her in a knit hat leaning against a fence wearing a peach colored jacket. We were just starting our adventure of adoption and I would spend hours looking at the photo listings on Reece's Rainbow, Rainbow Kids and the State of Texas' websites. We wanted a girl close to Ashlyn's age who was around 6 at the time. First we decided foster to adopt was the best route for us but a few months later decided we wanted an infant so we changed course and a started with a domestic adoption agency and in just a few short months had our handsome son Kaeden. Ashlyn still longed for a sibling close to her age since she is 7.5 years older than Kaeden so again we turned to the foster care system and started the process to adopt through them. We took all the classes and did all the prep work even had the first home study but never could get the agency to come out for the final visit after the fire Marshall had come and given us a passing report. We emailed and left voicemails for over a month every day with several different people and never got a response. During the process with them we found out they had a private adoption program for infants so we decided to do both the infant program and the adoption from foster care, well since we never could get the foster care side to finish our paperwork when we were contacted about an infant we of course jumped at the chance and that's how we got our Savannah Banana! 

During those years I had never stopped looking at the photo listings but I always thought I could never adopt internationally the travel while exciting was scary and the money!!! Wow crazy expensive but mostly it was all the unknowns that made me say no. I've written before about how we were led to her country through another RR family to host Masha last summer. Of course Masha led us to our boys and now Berkeley. 

After the heartache of having to leave Masha behind adding another child was the LAST thing on our minds, my only thoughts were getting the boys home and trying to come back for her. To be honest even though at this time it's impossible I still haven't given up hope of her coming to the US someday. In our hearts she is our daughter and always will be. 

While we were still there Berkeley was gifted $10,000 toward her adoption fees from another child's grant who's country is no longer open to Americans for adoption. I also had advocated for this child and even twice before we were so close to committing to adopting her but things always came up. Anyways when I found out Berkeley was getting that grant I mentioned it to Jared casually (ok hintingly) I had mentioned her several times in the previous months that if she was in region we were going to I wanted to bring her home too or if she had a full grant that would cover extra expenses I wanted to adopt her. He asked me how I would feel if someone else committed to her....I answered honestly "it'd hurt" so we talked about her and prayed about it and decided the $10,000 was a sign that she was meant to be ours:) So here we are plugging along trying to go get her home.