About Our Family

El Paso, Texas, United States
We are James, Lisa, Patrick, Christian, Carson, and Ella Payne a military family serving our country via service in the U.S. Army. Jim and I have been married for 18 years and have 3 wonderful home grown sons -Patrick, Christian and Carson. We recently adopted our beautiful daughter Ella Grace Ana from Donets'k, Ukraine in September. Jim and I began our Army life together at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas and every assignment thus far has extended unique opportunities and challenges for our family to grow and learn; to become a stronger, committed, and a prepared Army family. Having recently lived abroad for six amazing years, we cannot express how thankful we are for the opportunity to have represented our great country and to discover the cultures and customs of other countries; to become close to the people and learn from them; to open our hearts and minds to the unfamiliar languages and way of life in other countries. Having now moved back to the United States, we are looking forward to discovering what new adventures await our family. Rest assured, wherever the Army sends us we will continue to serve you and our country proudly. Army life, we wouldn’t trade it!

April 28, 2008

Special Delivery


Today, at 10:34 a.m. our agency received our updated dossier documents via FEDEX. From here, they will make certain all the obligatory signatures, stamps, and seals are in order and forward them to our facilitator (V) in Ukraine. Our facilitator (V) will then have them translated; and its out with the old and in with the new documents all in time for our May 13th submission.

Another step closer!
We'd love to hear from you at

4 comments:

Stefanie and Bill said...

Hi! Doesn't it feel great to accomplish this? Stefanie

28/4/08 16:47
Sabrina said...

congrats! Things seem to be coming along smoothly.

28/4/08 16:58
junglemama said...

Woo-hoo! I'm doing the same thing this week!

28/4/08 18:27
Michelle said...

Wait until you are sitting at the SDA and see your dossier right there in front of you! It was the weirdest feeling for me. I had worked so hard and long on gathering all of the documents (several times) and sent it off to some person I never met.

I can't wait to hear your dossier is in the hands of the SDA!!!

29/4/08 07:40

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This is our "spot" we began at the beginning of our journey in May 2007, to adopt a child from Ukraine. In August 2008, we traveled to Ukraine to bring our daughter/sister Ella Grace Ana home; and on September 12, 2008 we did just that.

While our journey to bring her home is complete, our journey together is just beginning. We will continue to keep our spot here, posting as frequently as we can; and keeping you updated on our next journey in life...maybe a second adoption is in our future.

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