Focus Samantha Focus

Along with the exciting news of our travel I also received an ear infection and sinus infection and it has defintely gotten in the way of my day to day errands. Thankfully today I got some meds started in me and I pray that I will be getting better sleep from now on as well as feeling better each day. I showed my true colors today when my Mom came to pick up Kaori for a few hours so that I could sleep. I whined and cried before telling them goodbye and then went and curled up in my bed and slept just long enough to get rid of a killer headache. An hour and half later I got up and drove to  the bank to get a cashier's check printed. I took it to the nearest mailing center and they were going to charge me $50 to overnight it to CO. I wanted to mail it and just be done with it but I just could not spend that much. Reluctantly, I left with the check in hand. I drove towards my Mom's work to pick up Kaori and got ready to join our final conference call with our adoption agency. The call was scheduled for 3:00 pm. At 2:59 I parked at a gas station to take the call but at that point my stomach decided that it did not like the meds that I am taking for my ear/sinus junk and while the call begins, the final call before we leave for China beings I am sick. :( I was so bummed. I missed out on the beginning, but made it in time for the interesting parts. By 4:00, I was at the post office to overnight the check to CO. Good decision because Express Mail only cost $18.95. My mom met me there and I picked up my baby girl. We headed home and played Go Fish and Pretty Pretty Princess. So, today I got one thing checked off of my to do list before we leave in SIX days. Oh, how much stuff we have left to do. I am feeling kinda nervous about Dave's travel visa. It should arrive on the 8th and we leave on the 9th. Please GOD help it to get here on time! You guys can pray that prayer for us anytime you think about it.

10 Days From Now

It has been a whirlwind of a week! We received our Travel Approval on Thursday of last week. I was taking a nap and when I woke up I checked my email and there it was! It was very exciting! Dave was home from work so that was wonderful too! The next day we were busy packing for our weekend trip to the Riverhouse to celebrate Christmas with the Koppe family. We left the house at about 11:30. We had just gotten on the interstate and I checked my email again and saw that our US Consulate appointment date had been set! It is scheduled to be on January 23, 2013 which requires us to be in Beijing on January 10, 2013. We were like,"wow, that is only 12 days away"! We decided we needed to go back home and get Dave's travel visa application in the mail ASAP as well as do some flight research. We grabbed some Chick-fil-A, went home and got busy on the paperwork. We were able to get Dave's application overnighted to the Courier in Chicago and make contact with two travel agents. By the time we got to the Riverhouse it was 6:30 pm and we were very close to booking our flights! It was so exciting to be able to share this news with our family AFTER the little ones went to bed. We were surrounded by people who love us and love Cuyler and we were able to share our excitement with them! Fast forward to Monday and we were home to welcome 11 college kids to our home for the week who are in town for Passion. We also booked our flights. We are flying on Korean Airlines and will have a  short layover in Seoul, Korea. We leave on January 9 and arrive on January 10. We meet our son on January 14 in Henan. It still has not sunk in yet that we are going to hold our son for the very first time in just 13 days. Wow! I cannot wait to see him smile. I hope we get that opportunity fairly quickly. This week we have lots to do as we begin to pack and shop for our trip. My mind feels pretty scattered, but it will all begin to fall into place. We are so thankful for this gift of adoption and are so excited to meet Cuyler.

Next Up.....Travel Approval

This has been another exciting week! We received our travel visas (except for Dave....he works for a media company so China will not issue him a visa until our exact travel days are scheduled). But, everyone else has theirs, me, Kaori, Mom and Doug. We are excited! We also received our Article 5 this week! It was picked up from the US Consulate and sent to the CCCWA in Beijing. Now we wait for 2-4 weeks for the CCCWA to issue us our travel approval! Once we receive that we will travel in 10-21 days and finally we can count each day as a day and not only count business days! Hurray! So, things are moving along. We still have much to do before we go, a lot of shopping for gifts for officials and then needs for Cuyler. We are so excited and are enjoying these days day dreaming about what it is going to be like to meet him for the first time.

An Exciting Evening At The Harris House

On October 17, our agency requested an update on our son. Today, it came! It is awesome to see some new sweet pics of our precious baby! Awwwwww! This update will keep me going for days to come! It is wonderful to hear how he is doing and how big he is getting. We received two pictures and a short report on his personality and schedule. We also received his measurments. The most exciting news, besides the pictures of course is that he is WALKING and RUNNING! That makes us so happy to hear! He is able to play with the other kids! I was worried that he spent a lot of time alone because he could not keep up with the other kids his age because of his foot. So thankful I am wrong! We can still see where his foot is twisted a bit, but it does appear that the treatment he has been receiving has been helpful! Hallelujah! We love his haircut! Looks like he has a little mohawk and it is so cute! Finally, the other good news is that we know he has received our care packages! The sweatshirt he has on is from his Gmama and Pop! Yay!! We love to see him wearing it and it warms our hearts to know that he has been getting our packages! We will send him at least one more before we travel. Enjoy these awesome pictures of our son, Culyer!

 

Love his hair!

Look at him standing!

 

 

Home Stretch

Last Monday we received the next piece to our big puzzle! We got our I800A Provisonal Approval from Homeland Security! Basically this form allows us to wait on another form. Haha! The other form called The NVC letter came today! Hurray! So, now all our paperwork in China will be taken to the US Consulate in China and then in about two weeks an agency rep will go to the Consulate and pick up a final form called an Article 5. Once they have that, they will forward it on to Beijing where the CCCWA is and within 2-4 weeks we will receive our travel approval! So, if things go smoothly we should receive our travel dates in 4-6 weeks! Yay! We are in the home stretch of this paperwork journey and we are VERY excited! Tomorrow I will send off our Travel Visa applications. Awesome!

I finished cleaning out Cuyler's closet today and I am taking a bunch of stuff to consign tomorrow. I counted up all of the gift cards that we have been given in honor of Cuyler and we have received $460 worth of gift cards! We are so blessed and very thankful. This will help us to buy items for him such as a carseat, whatever things he might need for physical therapy and of course diapers. Thank you to all of you who have given gifts to us. We really appreciate your generosity!

We still have a lot of fun things to look forward to before we can travel to meet our son, but I am still very ready to see him and hold him.

What's In A Name

I have been super, duper busy doing paperwork! Can I just tell you real quick:

• Signing LOA and making copies
• Filling out I800 forms
• Filling out DS230 (application for Xue's US passport)
• Filling out travel companion paperwork for Kaori, Mom and Doug
• Filling out our Travel Visa applications for all of us
• Filling out a waiver for Dave because he works for Time Inc. Gotta make sure he is not going to China to do some reporting. :)
• Filling out some big fat checks

Because we had to submit his application for a US passport, we had to decide on his name! After many attempts at discussing this topic, we finally sat down together on Sunday night and decided on our son's name. Now, there is a story behind his name. Dave and I met in Chicago. We both love Chicago and would love to live there again one day. Well, Chicago was the city we fell in love in! I lived on a picture perfect street in Wrigleyville, right next to Wrigley Field in apt. 32A. Anyway, it was during this time that we picked this name. We thought it could work well for a boy or a girl. When Kaori came along it was not the name for her. But, now our son is here and it is the perfect name for him! We have named our son......Cuyler Xue Harris! Cuyler was the name of that picture perfect street in our city of love. Our son is perfect for our family and we are his family of love!

Yay!
P.S. I painted his room today!

Wonderful Weekend

Last Thursday, I sat in my blue chair in the sunroom reading an email from our agency stating that we might have another 4-6 week wait on our LOA from China. My heart dropped. We had been waiting since July and I was feeling very ready for something to happen, either for our LOA to arrive or for an update on Xue from his orphanage. I called my Mom and just shared my heartache with her and she did her best to encourage me. Thanks Mom. I was looking forward to the weekend, because my family was gathering together for a baby shower for Xue and I wanted to be able to share something new with everyone.

Move forward to 2:00 pm Friday afternoon; Kaori and I are running errands and are on the way to gymnastics. My phone dings to let me know an email has just come in. I check it. The subject reads: "Your LOA has arrived"!!!!! Very quickly I pull over into a neighborhood and devour the email as fast as I could! I was sooooooo excited! I was cheering and praising and Kaori was stunned. She asked me what was going on and I told her we got some great news from China! She started cheering to and then said, "Mom, what is news"? I tried to explain to her that it just means we are that much close to bring her baby brother home. She knew what that meant and said, "yay, we get to see him today"! Haha! I wish! But, that is okay. I was thrilled with our news and I called Dave right away. He was working from home and quickly checked the email so that he could see too. He was excited as well. On Friday night, we went out to enjoy being together as a family and to celebrate the arrival of the LOA.

Saturday afternoon we were blessed by our families with fun times, prayer for Xue and gifts! We had a wonderful day celebrating him and being together. The weather was lovely and the company was perfect. We wish Dave's family lived closer, but we will enjoy being with them next month. We received gift cards, a ergo carrier and his bedding. It was really awesome to share the news of the LOA with everyone at the shower. I was able to surprise them with the news of its arrival and read the statement on it to everyone at one time. It was perfect!

With the arrival of the LOA, our estimated travel is within 10-14 weeks. So, that puts us in January. My prayer has been to have him home by his birthday in February and it looks like it will happen. :) I tackled our first round of paperwork Sunday night and I overnighted it this morning. So, CCAI will receive it tomorrow and we will send our second batch at the end of the week. Yay!

Enjoy these pics of the arrival of the LOA and our party for Xue. My mom and sisters planned the whole thing and it was perfect. I could not have had a better weekend!

This package came at 10:45 am on Saturday morning. Just in time for the shower!

Shower Decorations!

Our family, minus one!

Sweet Xue

(we have to email his English name ASAP, gotta decide)

We are very blessed.