Here We Go...

We got our....

Now waiting for our Consulate appointment so we can buy our tickets.  I will post our itinerary during our stay in China soon.

There is so much to do now that my mind is blowing.

We will be there to get you soon, sweet baby girl!!

LOA!!!

We have received our LOA after only a 47 day wait! This is the Letter of Acceptance from China granting us permission to adopt Keira. 47 days is really fast - I was completely surprised when I got the phone call as I knew that even 60 days was pretty quick.

Next steps are:

• Sending in the remainder of the immigration paperwork to the Dept of Homeland Security, which is specifically for Keira.
• Applying for our Visas to go to China.
• Sending our signed LOA back to China along with the paperwork for Keira's Visa to come to the US. This is referred to as Article 5.
• Once we receive the Article 5 back for her Visa then we will be granted Travel Authority.
• We then wait for a US Consulate Appointment in order to book all our travel arrangements.

We may get to travel as early as Thanksgiving, which is also our 10th Anniversary. What a great way to celebrate 10 years - bringing Keira home!!

One Step Closer

Yes we are! As you can see I have added the two photos we have of our soon-to-be daughter - Keira Marie! She will be two on August 28th and is from the Shaanxi Province. She is living in a foster home, which is a huge blessing for her and for us. The only thing we know of, regarding her health, is something on her right cornea and not much information about it. Other than that, medically and developmentally, she falls within the normal ranges. This is based only on the paperwork we received, so we won't have a complete picture until she is ours and we cannot wait to meet her!

Now we are waiting through the next long step - for the LOA. This could take a while, but I am hoping and praying for September sometime. This is not an unreasonable expectation, but it could take longer. Each of these steps seem to take forever, especially as we get closer to being able to bring Keira home.

These are part of the lyrics to one of my favorite songs right now, because I think of Keira every time I hear it:
A Thousand Years by Christina Perri

Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow

One step closer

I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

Time stands still
Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What's standing in front of me
Every breath
Every hour has come to this

One step closer

I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

It's A Match!

On Tuesday of this week, we finally received a referral and have submitted our "Letter of Intent" to adopt our daughter!!

She will be 2 at the end of August and is a total cutie! I will wait to post pictures until we get our PA (Preliminary Approval) which will take about 2 weeks. Then the long wait starts for our official Letter of Acceptance or LOA.

More info coming as soon as we get our PA!!!

Waiting.....

Waiting through all these steps is so very hard, waiting to see the little girl God has chosen for us to parent, waiting just to BE parents, waiting through all the red tape….. But being an orphan and waiting for the love of your own forever family, must be the longest wait of all.

Jen Hatmaker, an adoptive mom waiting in the Russian program sent this to a facebook friend, who is waiting for their child in the China program. Jen sums it up perfectly:

"ON THE EXCRUCIATING WAIT/DELAYS: Oh my, I can speak to this. First, forget whatever timeline you were given at the beginning. Forget you ever heard that. Put that in the trash can. Adoption will change, shift, slow down, hit snags, be weird, be difficult, take longer than you think, take longer that you can stand. This will happen. This is the normal thing. When someone gives you a timeline, say, "Thank you for that cute little sentence. Flush." Potential adopters, let me tell you this: Get your "YES" straight at the very beginning. Decide on it. Roll around in it. Put it on the table and shellack it. Because you cannot let every delay and snag derail your certainty about adoption. When you say YES, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of "your perfect plan" means you heard God wrong. There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the "show me a sign" or "this is a sign" or "this must mean God is closing a door" or "God must not be in this because it is hard," but all that is garbage. You know what's hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will.”

So our wait continues…..no match yet. I’ll keep you posted!

Are you guys still adopting?

We get this a lot. Or how’s that adoption thing going? Or when are you two getting a kid?

This might give you a clue as to how long this process takes. To be fair, we did have a few adoption starts that didn’t exactly result in an adoption finish…but I like to think that, in our case, all long and winding roads lead to China!

So here is where we are now, aka-way more information than you ever wanted to know:

Home Study completed in Nov 2011.

Home Study report finally received in Jan 2012 (delayed due to our agency merging with another agency).

I800a form submitted to US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) in late Jan 2012 – This is an “Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a (Hague) Convention Country”.

Bio-scan (fingerprinting) appointment for USCIS in Feb 2012. This is our second bio-scan, the first, as part of our home study was for the DOJ.

Received our I800a approval in Mar 2012, which is important as you cannot submit a Dossier to China without this approval included.

While waiting for the I800a approval, we were frantically gathering all the documents required for our Dossier (which is a packet of documents required to be sent to China, or any other country, in order for one to adopt). All these documents, once completed in a very precise manner, have to be either certified or notarized, depending on the document.

Then, each certified/notarized document has to be authenticated by the State it was certified/notarized in, proving that the certifier or notary was legit. Theeeeeeen, each document has to be authenticated by the Chinese Consulate in that state, that they will accept that state’s authentication. All-righty then.

We used the courier services of a wonderful lady named Janice at www.redtapesolution.com who took our whole packet up to LA and had it authenticated by both the state and the Chinese Consulate. She was an absolute wealth of information and I can’t sing her praises enough!

So if you are still with me and aren’t bored silly yet……

Next step is DTC or Dossier To China. Our agency now has the whole packet and they send it to the CCCWA in China which is the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption.

Once the CCCWA acknowledges receipt of our dossier, we get a LID or Log-In Date, which is really important because we are then available to receive a referral, in other words – be matched with our daughter!

Once we get the referral, the next step is receiving first a PA-Preliminary Approval which happens pretty quickly and then an LOA or Letter of Acceptance from the CCCWA approving our match, and this step can take anywhere between 1 to 3 months (and in some cases, 4 or 5 months).

The USCIS has to also approve the actual referral of our child, which is a second step of I800 process.

The Time Line on the left side of the blog shows these steps and I will fill in the dates, as I get them. I completely forget what the Article 5 is about, but it happens in China and has to happen before we are given our TA or Travel Authority, which gives us permission to book flights, hotels, etc. to get our daughter.

The Consulate appointment in China happens the day after we meet our daughter and at that appointment, she officially becomes part of our family!

That's enough about the process for now......thanks for hangin' in there!