Something to share

Noah is currently being supported by True Children's Home.

Here is a picture of his 3rd birthday party.

It makes my heart hurt...it really was one of those times when I inhaled very quickly when I saw his picture in their newsletter. My heart skipped a beat...

A day off of school...what to do?

You know, there are days I am as bad as the kids...

It is a snow day here in Northern Colorado.

No school WOO HOO!!!!

What does a teacher do when there is no school? Laundry...dishes...cleans rooms...etc etc etc!

AND gets an email from her agency that states we are DTC (Dossier to China) TODAY!!!!!!!

Today is a very momentous occassion!

Should we try to guess when we will be traveling, then we can look back and see howclose (or how far away we are...)

Ok, DTC today - Janaury 26, 2009
Arrival in China? Let's guess January 30, 2009
LID? I think the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) is closed next week also for Chinese New Year, so I will guess that our LID (Logged in Date) will be February 9, 2009
LOA - Letter of Acceptance - CCAA will send a letter that makes sure we are still wanting to adopt Noah, then we send it back. These have been taking about 90 days...May 10, 2009
Then about 2 weeks later we get the TA - Travel Approval telling us when we can travel - let's go with May 25, 2009
Then we would travel about two weeks later...June 8th? Could that we the day we get Noah? Let's see how close that is.

How long is that from today? 119 days...I think I will put a stipulation in here that states:
We cannot be liable for any dates that are not accurate and
ALL DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE!!!

Another update

The little 13 year old girl - she found her family!!! Yeah!! It was not us..too bad. But the main thing here is that another child has found their family!

Our paperwork should be on its way to China today. We said yes to Noah back in February of '08, and we are DTC in January of '09...

GOOD GRIEF!!! With Kaycee, it was 9 months... start to finish! Post Hague adoptions are the pits.

BUT can you believe it? We should be able to start our countdown here soon. Of course we have to get through Chinese New Year...:)

Oh well. At least it is totally out of our hands now. (It always has been out of our hands, as in it has been in God's hands; however, now the paperwork is really out of our hands now.)

God speed, dossier...safe travels!

Update...

After sending our dossier to our agency, there were two items missing. Actually one item wasn't missing, but Leonard's doctor had marked him as having Hep B. China would have said NO!!! if that would have gone to them. So it was a good thing our agency was on the lookout for things.

So it was back to getting paperwork done, notarized, and certified...then overnighted to our agency AGAIN, and I am thinking this is it.

We should know tomorrow.

But...you know all of the delays we have had.

Little stops along the way. All the while I knew God was at work for some reason.

I may have found the reason.

I hate to even think it. I hate to even dream it. I hate to even write it.

My sister in law- a mom to four kiddos from Eastern Europe reads a lot of adoption blogs. She found one today.

It talked about 4 older kids that will be turning 14 in the next few months. When that happens in China, they are no longer adoptable. At all. They then head for a life of who knows what.

One little girl has to be adopted by July or else.

She loves crafts. She loves knitting. She loves clothes.

Could she be the reason?

How many miracles would have to take place in order for her to become my daughter?

Let's start with the first miracle...my husband! ABSOLUTELY NO MORE KIDS has been stated more than once.

I brought it up to him this afternoon. He didn't say no.

Then let's go to China, the CCAA. They require that all adoptions have at least one year in between them. However, for the older, harder to place, they are willing to give many waivers to families.

I have asked a couple of different people who are much more experienced with Chinese adoption. They have stated that if I could possibly get our I797 (Immigration approval) changed to have two adopted, and have our homestudy amended so that it states we can be approved for two kids, there would be a chance we could adopt two at a time....which was TOTALLY unheard of until just this last year.

No I won't think about it. No I won't dream about it. But I am on my knees praying about it. Praying God will remove this thought from my mind and this feeling in my heart. Maybe her family has already found her. I so very much hope so!!!!

Long ago pictures

Have you seen that commercial for Walgreens? The one where all of those people are standing around from different events: a wedding, fishing, football game, riding a pony, etc.

And someone else pops in...and all of the people get mad?

"Not another one," says the bride.

Then beep, beep, beep, and all of the people look worried. "Someone's going to be deleted."

"Not me," says the fisherman, "I was deleted last time." The pop, the fisherman is deleted.

I have 6 cards for my camera. And believe me, these are not the small ones. They hold somewhere between 200 to 400 pictures EACH!!!

Guess what I have on each of these cards? You guessed it....I had to delete two pictures so I could take the picture of our dossier.

Anyway, here are some from LAST SUMMER!!!! We took a day trip to Wyoming to see a train...

Anyone know what this is?

For those of you from the adoption community...you know what this is. This is all of the blood, sweat, tears, worry and frustration all scattered on my bed. (Actually it really isn't all of it...the homestudy is already at our agency.)

For those of you not from the adoption community, this is our dossier. It has our birth certificates, marriage certificate, two background checks each, a letter of adoption, employment and salary letters for both of us, physicals for each, and the ever elusive I797 (letter from the US government stating we can adopt a foreign orphan.)

All of them are notarized.

All of them are state certified.

Tomorrow they will all be in the mail to our agency to be sent to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated.

Then translated.

Then sent to China.

Then the wait starts ALL over again.

But at least once it is there, it is only a matter of months before Noah is home.

In the mean time, we need to...

get passports for Jacob and Nathan...(they are traveling with me)

Leonard will take 6 credits,

I will take 9 credits,

I will be teaching 6 credits at Aims,

I need to take one of my PLACE tests for my masters,

watch about 20 more basketball games,

about 10 baseball games,

go to about 10 track meets,

have 8th grade graduation,

Leonard will be in Las Vegas for a week,

and possibly take a family vacation to Pennsylvania at the end of May.

Hhmm, I think we will be busy. Hopefully this will help the time go fast! :)