Another evening waiting for Ashley. Never did we think it would take this long to bring our child home. We now have the pictures and know her name which makes it both better and worse. Finally we can put a face to our precious child, and now we know her name, where she was found, and how she has developed over the last 17 months of her life. It is so hard to know that your child is in an orphanage and you cannot hold her, you cannot comfort her, you cannot tell her that you love her.
Monday we will be shipping a package to the orphanage for her, we hope that the items make it to her. There is no guarantee. It has pictures of the two of us and some disposable cameras so they can take more pictures of her. (If you know us you know how we are about pictures.) It has a few small toys and a blanket with her name on it, one that we had slept with so maybe she will bond with us quicker when we go and pick her up.
The next few weeks will be tough but well worth it and we have waited 18 months so we can handle a few weeks.
Good night and God Bless you all.

This is a map of southern China and the Guangdong Province. Ashley was born in a small city called Xinyi and it is marked on the map with the red pushpin labeled 1.

Ashley's given name is Xin Hongzan.

ASHLEY RENEE

God has worked in a mysterious way

To provide a life for Ashley Renee.

She comes from the other side of the World

To join our family of all girls.

Her Asian birth as all can see

Shows that the world is one family.

God loves us all and in his plan

He has a place for mortal man.

What is this plan we can not say

He only knows that is his way.

But peace on Earth is what we pray

For all mankind and Ashley Renee.

Papa Bill Crabtree

On March 1st 2005 Billie and I decided to adopt another child into our family. Even though we had two beautiful grown daughters and two awesome granddaughters at the time. Our daughters had been on their own for several years and we had always loved having children in our home. We still have 20 years before normal retirement age and we thought it would be a good thing to bring a child out of an orphanage and into a loving home. Some people may think that we are trying to replace our children at home and that is just silly. As you have more children you are adding to them not replacing them. No one would tell us that we we gave birth to our second child that we were replacing the first one, but that our family was growing. The same thing is happening now, our family is growing again and this child will be a wonderful addition to our wonderful family.
Little did we know how long this would take and the amount paper work that we would compile through this process. My wife has put together a notebook with all of the documents and it has grown to over 6" thick in the last 18 months.
We are very thankful and blessed to have the support of our family and friends through this long process and cannot wait to share the event of finally bringing Ashley home.

We are a bit behind on getting this blog started so we will try to catch you up over the next several days with what has been going on through the process. The important thing right now is that on 9/25/2006 we finally received our referral from China.

May God bless you all as He has blessed us.

We are truly "Better than We Deserve" thanks to the Lord.

Ashley Renee