VISAS ARRIVED!!!

The Chinese Government has approved us to enter their country. Now all we need is our TRAVEL APPROVAL FROM THE CCAA to arrive. Once we get TA our agency will call and make an appointment with the consulate. After an appointment is confirmed we can work backwards to set our travel dates and make travel arrangements....YEAH!!! ITS FINALLY GOING TO HAPPEN!!!

We have really been struggling at work. We are so distracted and preoccupied thinking about Xiao Lang. We are constantly wondering what she's doing at different times of the day, is she napping, did she sleep well last night, is she running errands with her foster mom in the baby seat on foster mom's bike....and on, and on, and on.......


It is so hard to see pictures of your child and not be able to hold her and care for her. We only pray that she is being watched over and loved and cared for as if she was the foster mom's only child until we can bring her home.
WO AI NI XIAO LANG!!!!!

AWAITING VISAS

WE ARE ON TOP OF THE GREAT WALL, IN OUR MINDS ANYWAY!!
We applied for our CHINA VISA one week ago and expect to receive them by next week. Our adoption coordinator had us put April 12th as a tentative entry date into China. We are still waiting for our travel approval. Once we receive that our agency will then request our consulate appointment in Guangzhou, for Xiao Lang's American Visa. When we have a confirmed consulate appointment then we can work backwards with making travel plans. Its going to depend on whether our agency will let us travel during the trade fair mid-end of April, if not, the earliest we will travel will be the first week or two of May. This is probably more likely the date we will travel even though I would love to be able to Xiao Lang in our arms at 9 months old I am not sure its going to be possible.

WHERE IS ELYSA XIAOLANG?

SHE'S IN JIANGXI PROVINCE (southeast china)......


FENGCHENG SWI IN JIANGXI PROVINCE


VISITORS ROOM IN THE ORPHANAGE


VERANDA WHERE THE BABIES SIT,CLOTHES DRYING


BABIES OUT ON VERANDA IN WALKERS WITH AYI'S (caregivers)


BABY CRIBS AND CAREGIVER


FOSTER MOM CARING FOR BABIES IN HER HOME

Elysa is staying with one of the wonderful foster moms who put their hearts out there to take very good care of Elysa and many other babies like her. They are beautiful angels who take loving care of the babies and do all they can to foster the baby to grow and develop to become well adjusted, attached children. Elysa has reportedly been in foster care from day two, and is very well attached to her foster family. This is good for her development, but it will be very hard on Elysa and her foster mom and family to let each other go. They both will grieve and we will grieve for Elysa and the family, but we will also be filled with joy to have her as our daughter.

OFFICIAL CCAA ONLINE NOTIFICATION!

We are starting to come down off of "CLOUD 9" and back to reality of now making lists of the things we have to get done between now and our TA (travel approval). There is a very slim possibility that we could get our TA and CA (consulate appt) by mid-April but the problem lies...in the trade fair mid-end of April in Beijing that leads to prices of everything tripling and offices being closed. So most likely we will travel the first of May. Needless to say Fred and I continue to remain anxious and excited about all the changes that are about to take place in our lives. Our mind races and is completely pre-occupied everyday with thinking of Elysa. We had a wonderful weekend at the beach and went shopping for some smaller clothing for Elysa since everything I had bought up to now was 18-24months.

We received our first congratulations card from our best friends in KS. They even thought of our pets and congratulated them on a new sister. It was so great to receive such a sweet, thoughtful note from Ladybug and the Ford Family. They have truly been an inspiration to us and have been supportive throughout this adoption process and we pray that we can be as good of parents as they have become with their sweet boy, freddy. We can't wait until they come visit us again and meet Elysa!

MEET OUR LITTLE BUTTERFLY!!!!!!

8 MONTHS OLD THIS WEEK
(in all the excitement our coordinator had transposed two digits in her DOB, so she is actually a month younger than we initially thought)

PLEASE MEET.....ELYSA XIAO LANG




OUR DAUGHTER'S GIVEN CHINESE NAME IS: Xiao Lang....she is from Jiangxi Province....So we will be traveling to Nanchang to meet her (the capital of Jiangxi Province) We will be posting much more info about her province and other stuff in the near future. Also, we will know more info after translation is complete on Friday.

Elysa's Stats:
Appears as if she's been in Foster Care since the day after her birth
Birth wt July 2006: 6.6#

DEC. 2006wt: 14#
length: 61.6cm
head circ: 40.1cm
chest: 40cm

She is a deep sleeper (we'll find out!).
Holds head up while on her stomach.
Rolls from supine to prone position.
Grasps toys near hand.
Uses thumb and index fingers deftly.
Locates direction of sound and voice.
Holds block in each hand at the same time.
Looks for dropped toy.
Visually follows moving toys.
Follows you with moving head from side to side.
Laughs Aloud....yeah, i like this one....
Distinguishes between acquaintances and strangers.
Knows name and turns when called.
Responds to facial expression of adults
Active. Quick in reaction.
Fond of listening to music and playing w/toys.
Having a ready smile. Sometimes inpatient..hehehe
Close to caretaker.

Wow, what a day this has been....We are still floating on "cloud 9"!!! I received a phone call at work this morning at 0930. I immediately called my husband and he thought for sure something was wrong as I was "blubbering" and incoherent for a few seconds...dh,"are those happy tears", dw,"yes, we got her".....After both of us finished the "have to do" things at work we were both able to leave at noonish and go to our agency and sign the acceptance letter so it can get sent off asap. The sooner its sent the sooner we get a travel approval and can go meet her. We were able to sit and talk with our coordinator and gather more info of what we needed to do between now and our tentative plan of travel the first part of May.

We would like to extend a warm, loving, special thank you to our daughter's biological parents for conceiving and giving birth to the most beautiful little girl we know. Unfortunately, they had to make one of the hardest decision in their lives that will bring us great joy and for that we will always honor them and be grateful.

We would also like to extend a warm thank you to the People's Republic of China for blessing us with the most perfect daughter for our family. We would also like to give a very big loving, warm thank you to Elysa's foster mom. We are greatly indebted to her for loving our daughter as her own and taking such great care of her until we can bring her home.

And we would like to thank our employers for being so flexible and supportive and in letting us take time today to relish in the great news!

Finally we want to thank all of our family, friends and co-workers for being so supportive in this long process.

We are about to bring home our
"LITTLE BUTTERFLY, JIANGXI JEWEL"!!!

WHAT A DAY OF EMOTIONS!

Fred and I feel like this poor frog being eaten alive...





We have had one emotional day and we are both dreadfully exhausted. The day started off with extreme excitement and anxiety that we may possibly be seeing and hearing about our daughter today...to fear that maybe we were skipped for some reason, even though we were never asked for more info in the review room or were questioned about anything....to flat out disappointment and frustration that we have waited this long what's another day or month if that is what is meant to be.

After hanging on by a thread and waiting all day, we tried to phone our agency to find out if we even "made the cut" or not, evidently they were in meetings all day....sooooo, hopefully that is a good sign....We sent an email tonight asking if they could just tell us if our referral is coming or is actually here in the NW, no need for details I can wait on that I just need to know if we are in or out....WHY? because we are absolutely going insane, and I don't want to ask one of the docs at work to admit me to 7th floor because I can't take the pressure any longer. Hopefully we will hear a yay or nay tomorrow.

RUMOR UPDATE!!

A DELIVERY COULD HAPPEN VERY, VERY SOON:



The unofficial, official cutoff date is 10/24/05!!!! If this is true, we made the cut and will soon see our baby's precious face.........WOOHOO!!!! It is very hard to believe we could be traveling to meet our baby in the very near future! This has been a very, long grueling wait but one that will dissolve as soon as we see her face. Seeing Jackson in the below picture is exactly how we feel, "waiting for someone to say LET'S GO".

RUMORS, RUMORS, RUMORS.....!!!

ATTENTION: THE STORK MAY BE IN FLIGHT?


The rumors out on the china adoption web sites are saying that packages were mailed the end of last week, and the adoption agencies should be getting them tomorrow. Some of the packages are travel approvals (TA's) and others are Referrals. No one knows the cut off date for the referrals at this point. Speculation is that the cut off is 10/21/05. YEP, that's our date. No one knows if that's inclusive, exclusive or partial. That could mean either we're in this group, or bumped to the next.....What is known is that referrals include 10/19/05 but not 10/27/05, in between those dates no one knows until CCAA updates their website or we get a call from our agency. Can anyone say ANXIOUS!!!!!

ADOPTION TIMELINE!

10/04 Applied for passports
12/05 JOH adoption info meeting
1/05 JOH adoption application completed
2/05 Began Paperchase of gathering many, many official documents such as marriage license, birth certificates, FBI background checks, employment letters, financial statements, law enforcement background checks, physicals, INS application, fingerprints, official letter request to adopt, homestudy of 3 visits and then all these papers have to be notarized and sent off for authenticity of notary before can sent to our agency, translated and mailed to china. Needless to say this all took several months.

7/05 First Fingerprints done

8/05 USCIS I171 Approved
8/05 Mandatory Adoption Class
9/8/05 Dossier translated and sent to China

CCAA office views



CCAA office entry


CCAA plaque


10/21/05 Dossier Log in at China


5/06 Deborah Gray Adoption Conference
6/06 Out of Review Room and moving to matching room..


6/06 Baby Care Class and CPR
9/06 2nd Fingerprints done
12/06 Service Plan deemed completed via JOH
1/07 USCIS application updated
1/07homestudy updated
2/07 USCIS I171 Re-approved and updated

2/1/07 Referrals sent through 10/13/05


ALL THIS MEANS... WE ARE FINALLY BEING MATCHED!!





Somewhere in china is our little girl who we are destined to be with very, very soon and she is being matched with our family as she was always meant to be....



CHINESE PROVERB
An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never break.
CHINESE LEGEND
There is an ancient Chinese belief which states that when a child is born that child's soul is connected to all those people present and future who will play a part of that child's life. As each birthday passes, those threads shorten and tighten bringing closer those people who are fated to be together.

CHINA FAMILES MEETING THEIR CHILDREN!

Warning: This video should not be watched without tissues available. It was made by, Holt International, a large adoption agency documenting "gotcha" moments of parents seeing their children for the first time. It's such a joyous occassion but yet the children are so scared. This is an inside glimpse of what all parents and children experience on this special day!

REFERRALS WILL ARRIVE SOON!!

Rumor has it we should be receiving referrals within the next few weeks as they usually follow closely by travel approvals. The latest travel approvals are arriving in European countries and will soon be arriving in the states....DEEP BREATHE!!

We are so ready to see our babies precious face for the first time we can hardly wait!