Happy August!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! Carson finished up his swim lessons without a tear! There were quite a few nights during the two weeks that seemed like pure torture for both of us, but he finally turned the corner with only 3 lessons to go. He even mustered up enough courage to jump off the diving board on his own, of course, with his instructor there to catch him. He was so proud of himself! Brandon seems to have become quite the American Idol fan this year. He was very impressed with Taylor, the winner, and picked him out from the very beginning to win the whole thing. He is very defensive over his beloved American Idol and would even get into "arguements" with his Nana over who is better, Elliott or Taylor. It was very cute. Taylor's fans took on the name of Soul Patrol and Brandon had to have a shirt with that printed on it. I took a picture of Brandon and Carson, who also loves Taylor (even though I believe it's only because his "brudder" does), in their Soul Patrol shirts and I will try to post it later today.

Anyway, on to the adoption subject. Our SW (social worker) called us yesterday and, even though we have not gotten official preapproval from China, she seems to believe that everything is going to go as planned. She therefore is going to send our dossier on to the federal level this week to be "sealed", as this has already been done on the state level. This is apparently a very tedious process in itself as many at the federal level of government have to sign off on our paperwork and will take about four weeks to complete. At the end of the four weeks, we hope to have our preapproval from China along with our passports in order to send our dossier on to China. We are working towards a DTC (Dossier To China) date of September 15th. Then, the our work will be done and the real waiting will begin.

Please pray for us that all will go smoothly and we will obtain positive preapproval from China. I will post another update as soon as I hear something from our SW. Have a great week!

Update!

Wow! What a busy couple of months it has been. Summer is so much fun! Brandon is playing T-Ball for the first time and he is really enjoying it. I think Todd is enjoying it every bit as much as Brandon is! Carson turned 3 in May and he is finally old enough to take swim lessons. He is taking them at the Community Center in Hopewell and I don't really think he is too happy about it. He cries and tries to cling to the instructor every time it's his turn to be in the water but he continues to go back every day without much fuss. He is my little trooper!

On the adoption topic, we have had yet another glitch in the process. The agency we are using for the China leg of our adoption lost our paperwork last month. They were supposed to have sent it out to China last month for preapproval due to my cancer history and if they had done it when they were supposed to, we would know by now whether or not China will make us wait another couple of years to adopt from their country. They were, as you can imagine, VERY apologetic for the mistake and vowed to have the documents translated into Chinese and sent to China yesterday. We should know China's verdict in about 2-3 weeks. So, PLEASE keep praying for us!

While we are discussing prayer, there is a baby in China right now who we are feeling led to pray for. Her name is Lin. She was left behind by a family recently who changed their mind about adopting her once they got to China. We don't know the full story, obviously, but what we do know is that this baby needs prayer. She is sick, though not severely by US medical standards, and they have pledged to take care of her until she is healthy and then put her back in the "adoption pool" at a later time, but we still feel led to pray for her. I am receiving periodic updates on her and I will post any new information I get about her here.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued prayers!

Call To Prayer!

We have had a bump in the road to Abigail. Our social worker called me earlier this week stating what I had heard as a rumor on the internet as being fact. China is thinking about creating a rule that a person must be 3 to 5 years in remission in order to adopt from their country. Needless to say, I was very upset. Our social worker, Lisa, had a plan for us. She asked us to get a letter from my oncologist with a laundry list of statements in it and they would translate it, send it to China, and get preapproval for us to adopt. She didn't seem to think it would be a problem but we have an invisible "timeline" that we need to beat because noone seems to know when this rule will come into effect. She also said that once we are officially in the process with Harrah's (the agency that will be handling the China part of our adoption), we will be grandfathered in should China make the rule after we are in with Harrah's. PLEASE PRAY! I am now experiencing a bit of hesitancy on the part of my oncologist and cannot get his office staff to give me a truthful answer as to when the letter will be ready. Please pray that my oncologist will get this letter done ASAP so that we can get it to China. Also, please pray that China will NOT deny us our adoption! We are praying hard ourselves and we know that with your help, God will hear our petition and cause the hearts of China's officials to be softened toward us and give us the daughter that we are in love with already. Thank you for reading and for keeping us in your prayers. God bless.

Home Study Is FINISHED!!

Hello friends!! I know it's been a while since I updated the blog. Life seems to go too fast! We had our third and final home study visit with our social worker on Friday, the 28th and all seems to be going well. She is waiting for the last couple of documents from us so she can write up our home study report and get that behind us and we are now starting on our "China paperwork"...also called our "dossier". It seems like a mountain of paperwork and I am really feeling the pressure right now to get it done. I know that it will all be worth it in the end and I keep reminding myself of the end result of our labors. However, it still doesn't really seem "real" yet. Sometimes I think about travelling to China and the day that we will finally meet Abigail face-to-face and it just seems like a dream. I have a hard time realizing that it is a dream that will eventually come true for us. The road is long but God is faithful and I know it will happen in His timing, not ours. I will try to post more when I get another chance. Please keep us in your prayers as we begin tackling this mountain of paperwork!! Thank you!

Quick Update!

I am so excited! I talked with our social worker last week and we have set up our first home study appointment for February 16th. I also registered us for our first workshop on February 2nd. We are both excited about finally beginning our journey! Also, our first fundraiser was a huge success!! Hugs and kisses to everyone who came!!! We had so much fun! Most of the ladies who came worked on their scrapbooks but one brought her knitting and worked on that. We had good conversation, a lot of laughs, and ate a lot of good food! (Thanks Lorene for the eclair cake!! Yummy!!) My niece, Kelly Anne, worked on her very first scrapbook and she outdid all of us "scrapbook veterans". She completed....are you ready for this......NINETEEN PAGES! (They were 12x12 size pages, too!) What a record! She has set the bar very high for the next craft day in March!! I felt like I needed to present her with a prize or something!! Needless to say, I was very proud of her! I will give another update soon!! Goodnight!!

We Have Been Assigned A Social Worker!!

Our agency called us Monday afternoon to let us know that they have assigned us a social worker who will be calling us in a few days to set up our first home study appointment!!! I am SO EXCITED!! The agency told us in orientation to expect a wait of a week to two weeks before being assigned a social worker once our application was received. We just mailed in our application last Tuesday, the 10th, and we heard from them in less than a week! I'll just take that as another sign that we are walking down the right path. I will post again as soon as we schedule our first appointment!! Yay!!

My newest idea!

Hello! I just wanted to let everyone know my newest idea to raise funds for our adoption. I just signed up to sell Avon. It's a fun way for me to make a little extra money to contribute towards our Abby Fund. If you are interested, please email me at Matisse1124@hotmail.com and I will get the most recent book to you for you to look through. Or, you could go to their website at www.avon.com, look around at the products, and email me at the above address if you would like to order something. I will place my first order this Wednesday (the 18th) night and I do not collect any money until the product comes in. I appreciate you visiting our site! God bless!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. To follow up on the last post, Kelly did make it home just in time for Christmas...such an answer to prayer! Brandon and Carson seemed to really enjoy themselves. Brandon was so excited that he couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve. It was 2:30 a.m. when we finally decided to break out the Benadryl. LOL! Poor little guy. I thought he would sleep at least until 8 or 8:30. Nope! He was up and crawling into our bed at 7:40 a.m. on Christmas morning. He was so excited that he couldn't stand himself any longer. He ended up confessing that he had snuck downstairs and peeked into the living room and saw one of his gifts. About two weeks before Christmas, while watching the Polar Express DVD, he proclaimed that he wanted the Polar Express train and he was going to ask Santa for it. That became the one gift that he consistently asked for. So, as you may be able to guess, "Santa" was able to find it on ebay after calling all local stores that sell Lionel trains only to find them sold out. Thank goodness! I would've been heartbroken for him if Santa had not found it. It was such a "big gift" that Santa decided to give it to both Brandon and Carson but I don't think Brandon minds sharing it with his baby brother. It's a really neat train, too. It has a headlight, a whistle, and a smokestack that has real smoke puffing out of it! They were so excited on Christmas morning!

I wanted to take a couple of paragraphs and answer some questions that we have been receiving from friends and family about our adoption. The whole process will take us about 18 to 20 mos to complete. Babies from China are typically around 10 to 13 mos in age when they are brought home, so Abigail won't be an infant but will still be considered a baby. I have had questions asked about the adoption process so I thought I would try to briefly explain it here. The first thing to do is to decide on an adoption agency and apply to their China program. We have just mailed in our application and are currently waiting for a call from our assigned social worker so we can start the home study process. The home study will consist of three visits with our social worker, one in our home and two in her office. Apparently, each visit lasts about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. After we start our home study, it's my impression that we can start gathering documents for our "dossier". This is basically a packet of paperwork that is sent to China. It includes things such as intense background checks, Homeland Security approval, fingerprinting, and various other documents such as copies of our marriage certificate, deed to our house, etc. It is very time-consuming to complete the dossier as it will take us about 4 to 6 months to gather everything up. All of the paperwork also needs to be notarized and also needs to be "stamped" by the US Government.

After the dossier is complete, it is sent by our agency over to China for review (our Date To China or DTC for short). China will then enter all of our information into their central computer (our Log In Date or LID for short) and we will wait for review. When it is time, our dossier will go into review and China will go through the papers with a fine tooth comb and then approve us for adoption. We will then wait for our referral. Our file will then move to the "referral room" where we will be matched with our daughter. Apparently, China examines every little detail about your family and goes to great lengths to match up just the right baby with the right family. Once they match a baby to us, they will send all papers and pictures of her to our agency who will then contact us with the news of our referral. The referrals usually go out at the end of every month with the families being contacted by their agencies around the beginning of each month. They have currently completed referrals for those families whose LIDs (see above) were in April of 2005. So, the current wait time once your dossier is locked into their computer is about 9 months.

So, you can see why the process will take as long as it does. We know without a doubt that we are meant to bring our daughter home from China so that will make the waiting a little easier. Please feel free to leave any comments you wish to make here on the website. All you have to do is click on the word "comments" below any of my posts and this will take you to the page where you type in your comments. We would love to hear from all of you as we would like to know who is visiting the site!!! God bless!!!