Happy Halloween!!!

Can anybody guess who this handsome devil is??

Here are a couple pictures of our 1998 1st prize Sumo pumpkin (back when we both worked at Bank of America).

Hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!

p.s. In case you haven't figured it out yet...that handsome lounge lizard above is my husband! He fooled quite a few people that year! :-)

Paperwork...again....

Well our I-171H is going to expire soon, so we got a packet in the mail from our agency reminding us to renew it. For anyone out there that may have forgotten - the I-171H is the piece of paper issued by the US Immigration Department when you file your I600A that gives you advanced permission to bring a foreign child into the US as an immediate relative. Unfortunately it is only valid for 18 months and ours is set to expire in January. So off we go again with the paperchase. According to the checklist from our agency, this renewal process will include getting our homestudy updated (which will probably include more paper-gathering), getting re-fingerprinted, and taking another trip to K.C. to file it all. Think we'll make a weekend of it this time!

The good news is that despite the fact that the USCIS recently raised rates on just about every immigration application out there, including the I-600A to 750.00, they have allowed for 1 free extension if you already filed an I-600A. So, except for the fee to update our homestudy, we won't have to pay for our renewed I-171H. Now we just have to hope we won't have to do it again in another 18 months!!

Happy Birthday Nathan!!

Today is our nephew's 3rd birthday! We had a great time at his party yesterday!! Here are a few pictures from the Blue's Clues Bash!

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!!

August is out of review!!

This means we are for sure in the review room! Prayers that our paperwork gets through review without having to redo anything. This is a case where "no news is good news" and hopefully the only thing we'll hear is when the CCAA updates their website saying that they have finished review of Sept. 2006 LIDs...hopefully in the next month or so!!

Have a great weekend!!

Happy Belated Moon Festival!

Oops, yesterday was the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival...and we sort of forgot, guess you could say we weren't feeling quite as "moony" as we were last October. This time last year we celebrated with our moms by enjoying some good Chinese food and some not-so-good mooncakes. We'll mark our calendars for next year and go with moon pies instead of mooncakes!!!

We're both on vacation this week and just enjoying some downtime! We went to a matinee yesterday and saw 3:10 to Yuma - it was really good! Basically we're just doing a whole lot of nothin' and loving every minute of it!!

Welcome baby Emma!!

Congrats to Kevin & Mandy who welcomed their first child into the world yesterday morning! Little Miss Emma made her debut at 9:08 in the morning, weighing 5lbs. 14oz. Our Sunday school class has gone baby crazy...it will be so much fun for all the kiddos to grow up together!

On a separate note - Programming Reminder: Survivor China premiers tonight at 7pm!

Hope you all have a great finish to the week!

Wii for Wednesday

Okay, so we don't have a Wii, but we love the song on the commercial. Here are the actual musicians behind the song. Wii love this song.

Happy Friday

Has this been a long week, or what!?! We hadn't seen much of each other this week, so last night we had a great evening at home consisting of carry-out sushi from Haruno (we're convinced we could live on the Miami Roll!!), a walk with the dogs, an ice cream run, and catching up on the last 2 weeks of Top Chef. It was nice to see each other for a change and have a relaxing evening at home!

Here's your Friday Fun Video. This is pretty much the cutest thing we've ever seen... What a little actress!

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

Aunt & Uncle Times Two!!

Introducing the newest addition to the family, Katherine Elise, who came into the world on Wednesday, September 5th. Greg's sister, Julie, gave birth to this beautiful and very healthy 9lb 4oz baby girl at 7:45 in the morning... just in time for breakfast!

Mother and baby are doing well, and are due to come home sometime on Saturday. Congratulations to Brad, Julie, and big brother Nathan!

Uncle Greg with Baby Katie

Nathan doing his best "baby crying" impression,
as he tells Aunt Laura about his new little sister

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

Happy Weekend!!!!

Here's a clip of one of our favorite SNL skits from last season. Maybe this will get your weekend started off right!



Be sure to check out the link for Joel and Misty's new blog with their exciting news!!! Also, check in on Missy and Brad - they have some exciting news as well!

Have a great weekend everybody!

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...