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!