On the mend

It hit Anna first early last week, then me and now Greg. We have had the most terrible round of "junk" that we can either one remember having. We're still blowing noses, we still can't smell, taste or hear, but I think we're getting better.

We still have a lot to do to get ready to leave next Thursday, so I'm thankful we're on the upswing of this. Our bags are about half way packed,the house is about half way clean, and the laundry is about half way done. Progress! I'll post more about our itinerary in China in a couple of days.

For those of you that have asked, we have decided to leave Anna here. It was one of the hardest decisions we have had to make, but we finally feel at peace with it. Anna is looking forward to sleepovers at Nana's house and with her cousins. She is also very excited that we have made her in charge (or "on charge" as she says) of making signs and getting balloons for Isaiah at the airport. And she is happy that she gets to be the first one to hug him at the airport. Anna has 2 wonderful grandma's and an awesome aunt and uncle and super fun cousins, so we know we're leaving her in good hands. Thank you all for helping us!!

Here is a pic of our super awesome Big Sister. She is so excited for her baby brother to come home. We couldn't be more proud of her, she is a special little girl!!

Have tickets, will travel!

Tickets have been purchased, itinerary is set ... packing and to-do list need a little help though!

We were lucky enough to get another picture of Isaiah earlier this week. Two weeks from today we'll be on a plane to meet this little sweetie! This was taken Feb 20th!

Better pack the hair brush and hair gel ... baby boy has some hair!

I'll post more about our itinerary soon.

TA!!!!

It came today!! I was in the middle of Walgreens when I got the call and it was all I could do not to scream. Of course, I ran to the car to call Greg ... then I screamed!   :-)

More details to come ... but it looks like we'll be leaving March 8th (3 weeks from today!!) and meeting Isaiah on March 12th - the day he turns 15 months old!

Praise the Lord!

Video!!

We were able to get a short video of Isaiah that was taken last October!! 

Seriously, could he be any cuter!!  Come on TA!! Prayers that we get our travel approval next week!!

Where are we going?

Our route to China will start in Chicago again. We'll fly from Chicago to Hong Kong, then Hong Kong to Changsha, Hunan. On the way home we'll most likely take the train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Chicago, then one more quick flight home!

Hunan is located in the south central part of the Chinese mainland, and has long been known for its natural beauty. Hunan is surrounded by mountains on the east, west, and south, and by the Yangtze River on the north ... it's mixture of mountains and water makes it among the most beautiful provinces in China. For thousands of years, Hunan has been a major center of Chinese agriculture, growing rice, tea, and oranges.

Our first week will be spent in Changsha, Hunan. Changsha is located in the northeast part of Hunan. It's the capital city of Hunan as well as it political, economic and cultural center. Similar to Kunming, Yunnan (where we were with Anna), Changsha has a subtropical climate year round as well. Changsha's population is 6.13 million.

We will meet Isaiah in Changsha, however he is actually in Hengyang which, by high-speed train, is about 30 mins south of Changsha. Hengyang is the second largest city in Hunan with a population of over seven million.

Hengyang is located in the middle reaches of Xiangjiang River and to the south of Mt. Hengshan in Hunan Province. It is a historically significant city renowned as the 'Bright Pearl in Southern China.' It is also known as 'Wild Goose City' because flocks of wild geese flying south for the winter have been known to stop there to rest.  

We are fairly certain that we will be allowed to travel to Hengyang to visit Isaiah's SWI and meet some of the wonderful people with ICC that have taken care of him. Speaking of ICC - please take a minute to check out their website and learn about all the wonderful things they are doing. If would like to help support them and the children they care for, please check out their donation options here. 

The second week of our journey will be spent in Guangzhou (Canton), just like last time - this is where all families spend their 2nd week in China and where our US Consulate appt. will take place. We are anxious to visit Guangzhou again as last time much of the area where most adoptive families stay was under construction and we didn't get to see a lot of the architecture. Guangzhou is the largest and most flourishing industrial and foreign trade center in south China. The population in Guangzhou is about 12.7 million! The climate is humid and flowers bloom all year round; hence its name as the City of Flowers.

We are starting to get really excited to experience China again! It's hard to believe that we are be just over a month away from going!

Article 5 pick up today!!

As of today we are officially waiting for our Travel Approval. Our Article 5 is to be picked up from the Consulate in China today and dropped of at the CCCWA where they will issue our TA. Right now it's been taking an average of 22 days for TA's to be issued.

Once we have our TA our agency will be able to  schedule our Consulate Appointment and we can purchase our plane tickets!! My best guess is that we'll either leave March 8th or 15th. We're praying for March 8th as that would put us meeting Isaiah the day he turns 15mths.

We've been busy busy lately preparing for his arrival. His room is almost complete, travel shopping is well underway, suitcases are ready to be packed, meals are being frozen. Still lots to do, but we are making good progress!

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

We sent for another update a couple weeks ago on Isaiah. We woke to an email yesterday morning with answers to our questions and 4 new pictures!

We were able to send 10 questions and finally had success in getting them answered. They described his personality as outgoing, but did say he will cry if strangers hold him. It sounds like he still loves to eat as they mentioned it several times. :-) They said he also like his pacifier. They gave us updated measurements on him as well ... he is 16.5lbs and about 26.5" tall. Anna, at that his age, weighed about 1 1/2lbs more and was 1 1/2" taller. So, that gives us a better idea of what size clothes to buy.

Here are a couple of the pictures they sent. We have been told it is pretty cold there and there is not much heat ... he's as bundled up as the kid on Christmas Story!

Article 5 Submitted!

I started emailing the NVC late Monday night and by noon yesterday we had our pdf in our inbox and our agency had it forwarded to their in China contact within the hour! She dropped off our paperwork to the US Embassy in Guangzhou today!

The normal turnaround time for her to pick it up is 2 weeks, however with the Chinese New Year closing everything down the week of Jan 23rd, that will push our pick-up date to Feb 2nd.

Once our Article 5 is picked up, we are officially waiting for TRAVEL APPROVAL! My best guess is that we'll have our TA by the end of Feb and travel the 2nd or 3rd week of March. So.much.to.do.  - better stop typing and start doing....

p.s. Our sweet boy is 13 months old today.  I'm thinking we'll meet him either the day he turns 15 months or the week after.

Forever Family Day

Two years ago today we were sitting in a small cold room at the Civil Affairs office in Kunming, China. We were sitting with our backs to the door completing some paperwork as we heard the sounds of people entering the room. We knew when we turned around we would see the little girl we had been praying and dreaming about for so long.

The anticipation of that moment was huge - we were so anxious that we didn't sleep the night before. The moment we met Anna is so vivid in our minds, even today ... it will never be forgotten ... that sweet, smiling face all bundled up in a big pink fleece jacket. It brings tears to my eyes thinking about it now. She literally took our breath away. I remember Greg and I had no words. We just kept looking at each other, tearing up and shaking our heads in amazement of the moment.

Our lives were forever changed two years ago today. We are so blessed to have Anna as our daughter. It's hard to believe that she is already 3 years old ... she is a sweet, smart, energetic, funny, beautiful little girl.

Here are some of the first pictures we took just minutes after we met her.

Tonight we will celebrate with Chinese food and looking at pictures and video from that day. Anna is always asking for us to tell her a story of when she was a baby, she loves when we tell her about this day.

I800 Approved!!

I couldn't take it any longer, so I broke down and called the USCIS office to check on our case status ... they said our I800 was approved yesterday!! This means our approval will now be sent to the National Visa Center (NVC) and then be cabled to the US embassy in Guangzhou, China.

Next week I can start calling the NVC to see if we've been cabled yet. As soon as they cable our file, we can request they email us a pdf letter stating our petition has been forwarded to the Embassy. Our agency needs this NVC letter in order to proceed, so this is an important step! All of this should happen in about 12 or so days.

After we have our NVC letter, our agency forwards is to their in-China rep. Our in-China rep will take the NVC letter to the US Embassy in Guangzhou along with our LOA and Isaiah's visa application. About two weeks later our rep will go back and pick up our Article 5 letter (which basically says everything is in order for us to adopt Isaiah).

Once our Article 5 is picked up from the consulate, it will be delivered directly to the CCCWA for Travel Approval!! The current average from Article 5 to TA is about 17 days.

We're looking at about 47 days until our TA ... however, the Chinese New Year will factor in to that as things will be closed for about a week in China at the end of this month.

Once our TA arrives, we could leave in 1-2 weeks, depending on when our agency can get our Consulate Appointment! So, we should be looking to board that plane early to mid-March! No wonder we are feeling this urgency to get things ready ... March will be here SO fast!

The list making has already started and the shopping is soon to follow!

Nothing starts your day better than ....

New pictures!! Yesterday we received pictures of Isaiah's birthday celebration and this morning we woke to some surprise pics from ICC's Christmas celebration.

Most of the birthday photos we received were pretty blurry, but the ones from Christmas were very clear!

Here is our little man with his birthday cake. We were told he had 32 babies and toddlers at his party!

These are the ones we received this morning ... they were taken just yesterday! This was the Christmas celebration on the ICC baby floor. They said Isaiah had a great time. If you look closely (i.e. zoom in and inspect every inch of him, like we do!), you can see 2 little teeth coming through!

We can hardly wait to get this sweetie in our arms! Come on March!

LOA!!!!

We woke to a wonderful email this morning from our agency - our LOA is on the way!! Day 62 - right at average!! We have several more steps to complete before we get our Travel Approval, if we continue to track with the average, we should be looking at getting our TA in early March and traveling mid-March or so. There are several holidays between now and then that might slow things slightly, but hopefully not by much!!

A great way to end the week!!

Happy Birthday sweet girl!!

Happy Birthday to our big 3 year old!! Here are a couple pictures of our big girl.

Happy Birthday sweet boy!

Today is Isaiah's 1st birthday. We actually celebrated last night, since China is 14 hours ahead of us. We went out for Chinese food, then came back and had a small cake and sang happy birthday him. We recorded it for him, just like we did for Anna on her 1st birthday.

There is a family in China right now that should be visiting Isaiah's SWI tomorrow. We are hopeful they will able to take pictures.

Here is the birthday care package we sent to him last week -  thanks to Aunt Julie, Uncle Brad and cousins for the cars, books and outfit & thanks to Nana and Grammie for the cake. We are also hopeful the SWI will send pictures of his party soon.

We are now really in the realm of possibility to get our LOA. I'm actually praying that we may even see it this week ... but we're trying not to get our hopes us (ha!). Today is day 59 of our LOA wait and the average wait people have had in the last month is 62 days ... not that I'm obsessing over this chart or anything!!

"In Process"

It's a small step, but any step is a step closer to our baby boy! Yesterday was day 47 of our wait for our LOA.

The process of getting our LOA goes in a couple of steps - 1st is dossier translation, which is where we were for 47 days and 2nd is "in process", which is where we are now! That means our dossier is now out of transation and basically just waiting for approval.

Currently the average wait for LOA is about 70 days ... our agency said last night that they expect it in the next month. Our prayer is to have our LOA by Christmas. That will put us on track for travel in March if all of the remaining steps keep with their average.

Last night we ordered Isaiah his birthday care package. He will turn 1 on Dec 12th. We should get pictures of him celebrating with the cake we sent. There is also another family getting ready to leave next week to bring their daughter home from Isaiah's SWI ... she is going to try to take pictures and maybe video for us while she is there!!

Last weekend we found Anna in Isaiah's room (which is a work in progress), she said she wanted to sleep next to "baby brother". She talks about him all the time and everytime we are shopping somewhere, she wants to buy 2 of everything - one for her and one for "baby brother".