Adoption Update

Welcome to our new blog! We developed this blog so it would be a little easier for all of you to follow along with us on the rest of our adoption journey. Hope you enjoy it! I know many of you are just as anxious as we are to have our little girl home and may be wondering "What is the hold up?" Believe me, this has been the most difficult wait of our lives and although we may appear patient, there have been many definite times of total impatience on our part. We continue to trust that God's timing is perfect and we will have our little girl at just the perfect moment! With that said, here is what has been happening since November.....

Our hope was to travel around Christmas, but that would not come to pass. Day after day we had hoped for the arrival of our Letter of Approval from the China Center of Adoption Affairs. Well, the so called average wait of 100 days came and went as did our little girl's 2nd birthday on January 3rd. Oh how we had hoped to celebrate this birthday with her! We just didn't want to miss out on any more of her life! Finally on January 21, 2008, with a wait of 150 days, we got the call from our adoption agency that our Letter of Approval had arrived. They Fedexed it overnight to us, we signed it and checked the box that yes we indeed accept the referral of Lu Na Qun, overnighted it back to our agency, and they overnighted it back to China. Finally, we think things are starting to move forward.

Now, we have an average wait of 15 to 20 days for China to send our final paperwork, the Travel Approval, which gives us permission to travel to China to adopt our daughter. Well, we already know how the averages work for us, they don't! And we have only got 17 to 18 days until the Chinese New Year at which time the China Center of Adoption Affairs takes one full week off for their vacation and celebrations. ANOTHER POSSIBLE DELAY...UGH! You guessed it, no Travel Approval before the Chinese New Year. So, here we are today, Day 37 of our wait for Travel Approval and nothing yet. However, we did receive a message yesterday from our adoption agency that approvals were sent out on Monday from China and they are expecting them any day now, so we will let you know just as soon as it is here!

Once we receive the Travel Approval, our agency will call the U.S. Consulate in China to schedule an appointment for us that will take place at the very end of our trip to China. This appointment is where Jaida will receive her visa, medical checkup, and swearing in ceremony. So, once we receive the date of this appointment, we back our trip up about 12 days and set up all of our travel arrangements. We are really hoping to be leaving somewhere around March 7th, if we can get the consulate appointment date that we want. We are definitely ready to go!

Please keep a copy of our blog address for your reference as you will be able to view it daily while we are in China to follow us on this trip of a lifetime! We will be able to post from China to this blog and will have daily updates and pictures! We also hope to hear from you as you can leave comments on each post we have!