The Family Working to Bring Cliffy Home

First off let me thank you for all you did to bring awareness to Reece’s Rainbow and Cliff. And to everyone who donated money and prayed for Cliff, there are not enough words to express my gratitude. Please bear with me on this post- I only began blogging a few weeks ago and I am not quite adept at posting and adding pictures.

You are probably wondering a little bit about who we are. Well my name is Lisa and my husband’s name is Dave. We have been married for 3 years.This is a picture of us. I absolutely hate most if not all of any pictures that I am in but my husband never takes a bad picture :)

Prior to our marriage, I was married and had 3 boys from that relationship. The only thing I will say about my previous marriage is I got 3 wonderful sons from it. They mean the world to me.

Trevor is my almost 22 year old who has a sense of humor to die for and thinks he is just a ladies man. Last September he joined the Navy and is currently stationed in Hawaii. Let’s just say I am so proud of him and that I miss him every day.

Cody just turned 18 and will be graduating from High School this year. He is just over 6′ and weighs about 275 and is just the softest, sweetest, teddy bear you will ever meet. He wakes up in the best mood and is the kind of kid who will just say I love you out of the blue.

Ryan just turned 14 and is your typical argumentative teen. He argues over whether his hair needs to be cut (it does) down to whether his glasses need cleaning (they usually do ). He is getting confirmed this year from his parochial school and loves the big brother role.

When Dave and I got married, we discussed having a child. Dave had no children of his own and I had a tubal after Ryan. We had IVF in early 2008. I am going to share a little detail on this because it is part of what ultimately led us to RR and Cliff. We ended up at our retrieval with 1 egg (chalk that up to age but we won’t get into that) and that lone egg made it 5 days and we ended up pregnant. In the middle of my pregnancy my blood work came back a high probability of Down syndrome. Before I could even have amnio I was encouraged to abort. When amnio confirmed our diagnosis again I was encouraged to abort. That was not an option so I did what any other mother wanting the best care for her unborn child. I switched doctors and a few months later Jacob entered the world. I believe everything happens for a reason. It was no accident that one egg made it and that one egg even with an extra 21 chromosome thrived and grew into a wonderful little boy. That experience with my son brought me into a community of other parents of children with that extra special something. That community showed me the world of how our children are treated in other countries. I was made aware through them of RR. We always say that Jacob is truly a one of a kind egg :)

So here we are. What led us to RR and ultimately Cliff. We saw his picture when he was first put on RR site. I was drawn to him instantly. For a year we talked about adopting from RR and kept saying if we have the money.. if we have the money. Well Cliff and so many other kids are living on borrowed time. And my husband and I had relied on our faith to bring Jacob into this world we realized it was that faith that saw Jacob through our pregnancy and it would be our faith to bring Cliff home as well. During one of my many sifting through blogs, I ran across Jeannett”s post on being Cliff’s Christmas warrior. I read her first post and cried. I realized she was talking about my son and how he was alone and that just was not an option. I prayed over and over.. I knew he was fortunate enough to have a large grant due to the efforts of Jeannett and everyone that donated but could I come up with the rest in time? I wanted some sign.. I finally realized the biggest sign was looking around my life and picturing how it was missing something special and that was Cliff. So here we are making our way through the home study process. It is long and seems daunting but the end result is so worth it all. I am hoping everyone follows a long in our journey and can rejoice with us in bringing him home. I will never let him celebrate another birthday alone.

Please be certain of this- we love him with all our hearts and will bring him home!