Three Years Today

Today officially marks the three year wait time that we have been waiting for our second child. Three years ago today we began the process to adopt another child from Japan and as of today, we have been approved by China to adopt our son. God's plan is always different from mine, but I am learning to trust him and trust his timing. The journey of adoption is good at teaching you that! We are so thankful for our son and just cannot wait to be with him as a family of four!

Information Overload!

Well, my last post was on July 9th and today it is the 20th! We have had information coming at us sooooo quickly that I can hardly keep up, which is unusual for me because I am pretty on top of all this paperwork stuff. But, I'll just get right to it.....WE HAVE A PRECIOUS SON!!!!!!!! On Friday, July 13, 2012 we accepted Xue into our family. We were ready to do it on Monday, but felt we owed him the full process of studying his file and learning as much as possible about him as we could. We also ended our journey with Japan on Friday. It went smoothly and we are forever thankful to the people who work that program. We felt peaceful about that decision as well, which I am thankful for because eight months ago I was pretty scared.

In a matter of two weeks:
- our dossier was received in China (estimated wait time 11 days)
- we got our long awaited LID from China
- we received news of our son :)
- we met with doctors to discuss treatment options
- we accepted the referral :)
- we submitted our first round of paperwork to China including our Letter of Intent
(the estimated wait time to hear back from our letter of intent was one month)
- we received pre-approval from China! this means that they have accepted our letter of intent to adopt Xue and we are matched with him!
(estimated wait time on the pre-approval was one month)
- mailed in second round of paperwork to CCAI

So, what could have as long as two months or more, took just two weeks! What a blessing!


Okay, are you ready for it? A picture of our little boy? Take a deep breath because he is super cute!

Awwwwwwww! We love him and cannot wait to hold him!

Holy Cow, That Was Fast!

We got word today that our dossier has been logged with the CCCWA! It was logged today,  July 11, 2012! This process was supposed to take three weeks and it only took TWO DAYS for our dossier to be reviewed! God is good! He knows something we don't know! So, now that we have our LID, we feel more comfortable matching with a child. We have been praying for years for our second child and we feel the excitement brewing as things are moving along so quickly. We still have a long ways to go as our dossier must go through critical review at the CCCWA and each document must be translated into English. This process is estimated to take three months. But, you never know!

A Sweet Story

So, we want to tell you a sweet story. It begins with a colonoscopy. On Monday afternoon, I had a colonoscopy to make sure everything was fine considering my family history. Everything is fine. My Mom was with me and she watched Kaori while the procedure took place. Then she brought me home. I wanted to rest, but Kaori was needing her Mama, so I sat up with her and my Mom instead of taking a nap. Kaori just would not let me rest. Well, we were sitting on the futon in the sunroom and the house phone rang. We never answer that phone because no one calls it. When it rang, Kaori shouted, "stop ringing phone"! It made me laugh. My Mom got up to get it, but I told her not to worry about it. Well, she went anyway. The answering machine picked up, yes we still have an answering machine, and it was the Waiting Child Department at CCAI. Mom grabbed the phone and brought it to me. I answered and told her very quickly to call my Mom's cell, because this phone was going to die. I gave her the number and right away the phone battery died. She called Mom's cell phone. I was nervous and excited to answer. She began to tell me of a baby born on February 25, 2011. Instantly, that date jumped out at me! It was on February 25, 2008 that we got the phone call about Kaori and it is a date embedded in my brain. She continued to tell me information of this baby and I gave my Mom a thumbs up sign. My Mom was nervous and giddy as she sat there on the futon listening to my responses. We were both smiling. I agreed to have a look at this file. That was it. We hung up the phone and then told Mom that she was emailing the file right away. I was so excited! I called Dave at work and shocked him with this news! I wanted to tell him and see if he wanted me to wait until he got home before I opened the file. I was hoping he would say it was okay if I went ahead and looked. How could I wait? He said to go right ahead! Mom and I went downstairs and took some deep breaths and then checked the email. My inbox had one email in it and it was THE FILE! We opened it. As soon as I saw him, I felt it. That feeling you are supposed to feel when you see your child for the first time. He was the one. He is the baby that we have been praying for for over three years. There was no hesitation, no question, I felt in my soul that he is my child. We looked through all the documents and discovered his name is Dang He Xue. (Dong Who Shoo) Kaori was here the whole time, but she was pretty oblivious to the action. We devoured all the information that was included in his file. His birthdate, his height, weight, how he spends his days, what he is eating and some basic health information. Well, he was easy to fall in love with and I did...right away. It still does not feel real. When Dave got home from work, he looked at his pictures first thing. We both smiled and agreed on how cute he is! Later that night, we looked through the file again and just felt so positive and peaceful. Then came Tuesday!

Dossier is on Its Way To China!

We received an email today letting us know that our dossier has passed inspection in the Colorado office and has been mailed to China! It was supposed to take 11 days to complete the process in Colorado, but it only took 4, as it just arrived on Tuesday, July 3rd! So, as of today, July 6 our dossier is going to China! We are getting excited! Once it arrives in China, it has to go through an initial review before it is logged. Once it is logged, we will get an email saying that our dossier has officially been logged with the CCCWA and we have our LID (log in date) which is the coveted number that everyone works towards! The estimated time frame for this process is three weeks, so we hope to hear something by August.