One and 1/2 years

Today is our 18 month LID anniversary! This month the CCAA referred another 8 days - making the cutoff 1/4/06, and the current wait 27ish months. Hey, at least they are in our LID year finally!

Bragging rights to the first person to figure out the trick to this site!

Have a great Wednesday - enjoy the beautiful weather!

Happy 17 Month LID...

Isn't "happy" and "17 Month" an oxymoron?!? :-)

The last group of referrals the CCAA sent were for families logged in from Dec 20 - Dec 27, 2005. The current wait from LID to referral is approximately 26 months...and climbing.

In other news, I am sure most people have seen the news about the storms in China. For those who are unaware, China has been battered by extremely cold weather and snow in some of the warmer regions that normally do not see cold weather. This is the worst weather the region has seen in over 50 years so they are not equipped to deal with it. Unfortunatly some of the orphanages are without power and heat. Others have sick babies, are runnning out of supplies, and have had equipment break down. Half the Sky is doing all they can to help, if you'd like to help - just visit their website to learn how. Thanks.

Fifteen Months

Today is our 15 month LID anniversary. Not much has changed since our last update as far as timelines go. This month the CCAA sent referrals for LIDs from Dec 9, 2005-Dec 14, 2005. This means by next month the wait will have reached 24+ months. (blah!)

Hope everyone is doing well and having a good holiday season so far!!

FOURTEEN MONTHS!!

We've officially been logged in for fourteen months today! Hard to believe that last year we thought we'd be traveling right now and would have Anna home by Christmas...now we're more realistically looking at traveling sometime in 2009 (yes, 2009, not 2008). Unless, by some miracle, things start really speeding up. This month the CCAA referred a whopping 8 days worth of LIDs, which means the wait is now approximately 23 months.

Here is an interesting website that has a handy-dandy calculator to help you "guesstimate" (based on your LID - ours is 9/12/06) when you might receive your referral - Bright Outlooks (bright, ha!).

And, for a website that is a lot more fun than "Bright" Outlooks - check out this one of a family in China right now. No, we don't know them, it's just one of the many that we look at monthly to keep our spirits up. Anyway, they've done a great job at describing their trip and have posted some great pictures. Hope you enjoy.

Have a good week!

Lucky 13

Today is our 13 month LID anniversary! We'll probably go out for dinner tonight to celebrate. I won't rehash the wait time in this post since we just talked about it...we'll just say that the wait is long and only getting longer.

On a lighter note - has everyone been enjoying The Office this season as much as we have?! Here is one of our favorite clips from last night:



Have a great weekend - enjoy the beautiful weather!

Six Long Months...

That is how long it took the CCAA to get through referrals for families logged in November 2005! Let me repeat that...it took 6 whole months to get through one month of LIDS!! Referrals just came this week for families logged in from Nov 26-Nov 30, 2005. At least they are finally done with November!! Word on the street is that there were less dossiers received in December than in November....so hopefully they'll be able finish Dec. '05 by this coming January or February.

We found this chart which compares the number of days referred last year to this year - it really gives you a good idea how much things have slowed down since last year.

Once they finally get done referring the last of 2005, they'll be able to start on 2006 and from what we hear, there were a lot less dossiers submitted in 2006 than 2005. Hopefully that means the CCAA will be able to start referring closer to 15 days at a time.

Well, that's probably enough analysis to last you all a while!! Sorry for the dry stats, but sometimes it helps us get a clearer picture of what is going on and when we'll get to see Anna for the first time! Have a great weekend!!

ONE YEAR!!

As of today our dossier has been logged in one whole year! It's funny how your perspective changes...last summer we could hardly imagine waiting a year (remember we thought we'd be traveling this fall), now we've conquered a year and are preparing to take on another one or two.

To give you a sense of how much things have slowed down on the China adoption front, the CCAA has completed only four months of referrals in the past year. Also, September’s referrals arrived earlier this month, and they covered a measly four days worth of dossiers (November 22-25, 2005). That means the folks who just received their referrals waited a little over 21 months. There are a little over nine months of dossiers ahead of us.

On the brighter side, July 2006 LIDS are out of the review room and August 2006 LIDS are being reviewed by the CCAA right now. This means our dossier will be entering the review room in the next month or so. Hopefully, we’ll get past review in the next couple months without needing to redo any paperwork . The danger is that depending on the nature of the paperwork, having to redo stuff could mean losing your place in line by a month or more. Our dossier should be in good shape though, our agency does a very thorough review before sending it to China.

Greg has class tonight, but we're planning on some serious sushi eating tomorrow night to celebrate reaching the 1 year mark. Yes, we know sushi isn't Chinese, but we extend our celebration dining to all kinds of Asian cuisine. :-) Hope you all have a great week.

Love,

Greg and Laura

Blog much??

Nope, not lately. Guess you could say we've hit a blogging slump in the last couple weeks.

A few weeks ago we got a call from our social worker at AAI. She was basically calling to check in on us (as she does monthly) to see how we're coping with the wait and to also "share some information" about the wait with us. Somehow we knew that "sharing information" wasn't going to be anything great. Turns out it really wasn't anything we hadn't already heard from the RQ website, but somehow it took the wind out of our sail a little more to hear it from our social worker.

Ming, the China coordinator for AAI was in China and was able to have a 3 hour conversation with the director of the CCAA. Here are some of the highlights (lowlights) from that conversation: there is currently a backlog of 30,000 dossiers in China; the wait will for sure climb to 3 years; they hope to get through Dec. '05 LIDs by this Dec. (so the wait will probably be up to 2 years by Dec); the number of dossiers received in 2006 appears to be less than in 2005; the CCAA is only receiving 500-800 child files a month from orphanages. That may sound like a lot, but not when compared to the huge numbers of waiting children. So, obviously this relatively low number of children being referred is not due to a lack of children, but due to a lack of orphanage directors wanting to prepare paperwork for all the children that wait (we've gone over this in the past).

Most of this was not new news, it was just the first time we'd heard it all at one time, from one source. What does this mean for us?? Well, we've almost been waiting 12 months and we are trying to hold out hope that we might somehow travel by the end of next year...not sure if that'll happen, not at this rate.

Our social worker talked to us about some of the different tracks other families in our agency are taking. I guess some families are just pulling out of the program altogether, some are doing a concurrent adoption (in another country), some are switching to the special needs program, and others (like us) just continue to wait.

It's hard for us to know what we should do. I guess you could say we might be at a point of no return as far as a change of plans. We know in our hearts that we have a daughter in China, and we have every intention of sticking it out until she's home. But things have now come to a sloth-like crawl, and it's hard to think about waiting another 2+ years before we have our first child in our arms. So what do we do, if anything, in the meantime?

In case you were wondering, we have considered a concurrent adoption. Our hesitation is that we're far enough into our current adoption that there are certain things we have to keep in mind... "Rules" about the age difference of the children, and the relative length of time in the home, etc. What if we start another adoption and there's a speed up in China? What if we hit a snag in the other country? To add to that concern are the conflicting stories we keep hearing about whether or not China would even allow a concurrent adoption. Of course, there are also things you have to consider financially. Any of these factors could put things in jeopardy, and we're not sure if we're willing to risk things not working out. We have too much invested emotionally.

We knew going into this that the world of international adoption could be volatile. We were willing to accept that. Now we're getting a pretty heavy dose of that reality, as all who wait on China face unprecedented developments and delays. China, the country once known for it's stability in the adoption process, is becoming somewhat of a black hole for waiting children and families.

We say all that to say this... We try to stay up, but our red thread is stretching beyond what we thought possible. It's very disheartening at times. Lately, there hasn't been much to feel encouraged about with respect to the adoption. But we try to stay positive, take it day by day, and along the way look for guidance.

We continue to pray that something will change and the process will somehow speed up, we pray for all the waiting children and all the waiting families.

Love,
Greg and Laura

Eleven Schmeleven

Today marks our 11 month LID anniversary. Wow, can't believe we've been waiting that long already...in a way it's actually gone fast, lets hope the next 11+ go just as quickly!

The last group of referrals were sent out at the beginning of August and were given to families logged in through November 21, 2005. This puts the current wait to just over 20 months.

Tonight we'll go out for our monthly LID anniversary dinner and enjoy some tasty Asian cuisine, maybe catch a movie.

Staying positive with humor...

Double-Digits

We've been logged in 10 months today! Ten down, how many to go?? That's the big question!

Just how many months left and why the heck is it taking so long - those are probably our two most asked questions lately. While there isn't really a cut and dry answer to this, we'll do our best to try and explain it.

First, here is what we do know - the current wait has gone up to 20 months. The most recent group of referrals were for families that were logged in between 11/8/05 and 11/14/05 (our LID is 9/12/06). The wait has gradually increased a little every month for over a year now. The word from most agencies is that the wait will likely hit the two year mark by this December. There are many reasons for this increase (we like to call it "the perfect storm"), but what it comes down to is there aren't enough children who are "paper ready". To be clear, there are still plenty of children needing homes, just not enough that have their paperwork ready for adoption. Another bit of speculation is that with the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China would like the rest of the world to think that there has been a decrease in baby abandonment in their country.

There are many more things that could be influencing the wait, but these are the two with the most validity. "Why does it take so long?" is a difficult question to answer briefly because of the complexity of the issues involved, but our "in a nutshell" response might be that China just isn't doing a very good job of keeping up with the number of families waiting to be matched with a child... plain and simple. So, if you'd like to delve deeper into the China adoption rumor world, check out this link. This is a site that we frequent daily to keep up on all the latest and greatest.

There was a time when we thought we'd be traveling to China late this fall, now we are hoping to see Anna's sweet face by the end of next year. Our continued prayer is that there is a speed up in the process and that all the waiting children and families can be united sooner than they thought.

We are heading out tomorrow afternoon for a weekend of camping. Hope you all have a great weekend - enjoy the beautiful weather!

Love,
Greg and Laura

Preparing for Rain

When it came to thinking about the nursery, when to start became a subject of much debate. To be honest, at first it was a little hard to feel too enthusiastic about getting the nursery ready when we began to see what was happening with the wait times. One thing's for sure, we didn't want to have a completed nursery and be staring at it for a year or more with no Anna. We heard varying opinions from people who had endured a lengthy wait with an adoption. Some people said to work on the nursery now... others advised that we wait. And there were definitely those times when we didn't want to even think about it -- just let the room sit as it was until we could at least see a speck of light at the end of the tunnel.

Then we recalled a scene from a little movie that came out last year called 'Facing the Giants'. They didn't exactly roll out the red carpet for this one, so many of you may not have heard of it. It was actually made by a church in Georgia. Our understanding is that the writing, directing, acting, film editing, even the camera-work were all done by members of this one church. If you haven't seen it, we recommend that you check it out on video. The acting probably won't win any Oscars, but it delivers a very powerful and inspiring message.

The main character is a high school football coach who is feeling like nothing is going his way. In this pivotal scene of the movie, the coach is sitting in his office when he is visited by a somewhat mysterious character, Mr. Bridges, who walks the hallways of the Christian school, praying for the students as he touches each of their lockers. Knowing that Coach Taylor is feeling dejected, he decides to tell him a parable about two farmers who both pray for rain. One just prays and waits for the rain hopefully, the other not only prays and waits for it, but he also prepares his fields to receive the rain. The question he posed to the coach..."Which farmer are you?".

So, which one is truly trusting God? We realized that we weren't demonstrating that kind of faith with the adoption. Faith isn't frantically tilling your fields when you see the rain clouds rolling in. True faith is working the soil even though you're in the middle of a drought and there's no relief in sight. So we decided that even though the forecast isn't favorable for that packet to arrive on our doorstep anytime soon, it was time to start preparing for Anna.

Even so, we didn't want to go gangbusters with the nursery and end up twiddling our thumbs for two, maybe three years... so we're pacing ourselves.

It's been a little while ago that we picked out the bedding, which was a gift from Laura's mom and grandma. We decided that this would most likely establish the theme for our room, so we thought it might be a good place to start. We knew we wanted something cheerful, and ended up finding just the thing with brightly colored flowers and flies of the butter and dragon variety. :)

The bedding provided our color pallet for the walls. It might be hard to see in the picture below but our main color is a subtle green called Soft Reflection. To mix it up a bit we painted one of the walls a pale yellow (Blazing Star) and added a touch of pink (Cotton Candy) in the little cubby-like entryway to the room.

One of our favorite things about the nursery is the furniture that we're using. The dresser and bookcase in the pictures below were Laura's when she was a baby, and we were very happy when Laura's mom suggested that we use them for Anna's room. The pieces need a little work, so we plan on refinishing them and found some knobs to give the dresser a little update. We picked up a pair of lamps and a new light fixture to tie in the brushed nickel knobs on the dresser.










We went several months ago to start looking at cribs (a gift from Greg's mom) and found one that we really liked. This is something that we haven't quite pulled the trigger on yet, but we are ready to buy and maybe just leave it in the box for a little while before it gets put together... looking at an empty crib for too long might be more than we can take!

Of course the closet is already pretty full with clothes for lil' miss thang as well.

Anyway, thought you guys might want to have a sneak peek at the nursery. We will send out periodic updates as construction continues.

Love,
Greg and Laura

Making the Turn... (sort of)

Today is our 9 month LID anniversary! Can't believe we've hit the 9 month mark. This time last year the wait was about 10 months... unfortunately the current wait is 19 months and climbing. The CCAA has just made referrals for families logged in through Nov. 7, 2005. We spoke with our agency coordinator last week...she was still hopeful that we might get our referral by the end of next year... we hope so too!! All we can really do is continue to faithfully wait and pray for that day.

Hope you all have a great week!

8 is Enough

Today is our 8 month LID anniversary! We're almost to the double digit mark! The next group of referrals should be sent in the next few weeks, so we'll update the wait time then.

Have a great weekend everybody!!

Bottom of the 7th...

"The Mick"

Another month under our belts! And a fast one, at that!! Now for your monthly referral update:

While we've waited another month, the wait for referrals has also increased by another month. Unfortunately the CCAA only matched 2 days worth of LIDs this time around, they have now referred babies to families whose log in dates are through October 26, 2005. These families waited approximately 17 months for their referral.

Seems like forever away, but we know we'll get there when we're supposed to. So, hang in there with us... It looks like we're headed for extra innings.

Greg & Laura

Not Gold Medal Gymnasts

Six months now we've been logged in... waiting for the day that packet comes in the mail and we are matched with the little girl in our dreams. We're resting easy, because it'll still be a while...

Doing the math, the most recent recipients of their referral packets had waited a cool 16 months(it was 10-12 when we were first logged in). Like an incredible growing monster (ok, maybe a bit dramatic), in the last month the wait has increased by another 2 weeks. As we've mentioned before, what we're up against is a backlog created by a flood of applicants when the wait time was very short (only six months in the Fall of '05).

Just to be clear, there is in no way a shortage of orphaned children in China as we've heard people say... just a shortage of children who are "paper ready". Bureaucracy (the REAL monster) rearing it's ugly head, and meanwhile children and families wait to be united. There is also speculation that the upcoming Olympics, which are in Beijing in 2008, are playing a role in the slowdown. Hard to imagine, but if this trend continues we may be flirting with the '08 Summer Games. With Beijing already being one of the world's most populous cities, I don't believe we want any part of that madness.

Your prayers are appreciated.

Greg & Laura (not gold medal gymnasts)

Another Month Down

Well, we are now five months into our wait. Timeframes for referrals have continued to creep up and are currently at about 15 1/2 months. Looking back at the past year, it seems that the wait has increased by about 2 weeks a month. We hope this begins to level off soon, but we will continue to be patient and know that it will happen in God's time.

We have added a few new items to our "Words of Inspiration" link...one that we really like by Ralph Waldo Emerson says:

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

"4" What It's Worth...

... we've been logged in four months today.

Fun Fact:
The fortune cookie actually originated in San Francisco. And if you happen to be in Springfield and find yourself dining at a little place called Tasia, don't ask for one because they'll laugh at you. Apparently they like to keep it pretty authentic. :-\

Brought to you by the number 3...

Another month of waiting under our belt - we've been logged in 3 months now. Just yesterday we found out the CCAA had it's annual meeting last week and apparently will be implementing some new guidelines in 2007. Our agency told us that we shouldn't be effected since we're already logged in. One not-so-great piece of information that we heard through the grapevine is that referral times won't be shortening any time soon, in fact we've heard they are going to continue to hang around the 14-16 month timeframe. Needless to say, we are pretty disappointed by this bit of news. AAI is sending a detailed letter to their clients with all the new guidelines, so we'll know more when we receive it...but as mentioned we should be "grandfathered in". Now, if only we could make the referral times speed up...

2 Down... too many to go.

Today marks our 2 month LID anniversary. Just kidding when we said 2 months ago that it would be 12 months... it's 12 months from now. Yes, the wait has continued to grow to 14 months, so... 2 down, 12 to go. There are still rumors out there that there might be a speed up, but for now it looks like we're on the slow boat to China.