We are out of Review!!!

Finally, Sept '06 LIDs are out of the Review Room! This is the first milestone we've had in a long, long time.

We started the process to update our paperwork this week. Our social worker came over Tuesday night for dinner and to update our homestudy. Next Thursday we have to get our local (state level) fingerprints redone. Once we get those back and get a new copy of our homestudy, we can schedule our appointment to get refingerprinted (federal level) in K.C. sometime during the beginning of January.

Hope you all have a relaxing weekend!

Name That Bird

I happened to glance outside yesterday afternoon and saw this bird sitting on our fence. Unfortunately, it flew away to quick for me to snap more than one picture. We've been searching the internet to figure out what it is...what do you all think??

Thanks!

A couple weeks ago my friend Marlana threw me a "Renew Your Enthusiasm" shower at Mille's. I was able to catch up with a group of girls I went to high school with and it was so much fun! Thanks girls for a great time and some great presents that did help lift our spirits as we continue to wait for Anna. Here is a picture of the thoughtful gifts everyone gave us:

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Follow-up

Good news regarding the story we shared in the last post. This is taken from the website of their agency:

Bethany Christian Services are pleased to announce the Sheldon family has received their visas and are returning home from China this weekend. “We will continue to work with the family to make sure all their needs are met,” said John VanValkenburg, Public Relations Specialist for Bethany Christian Services. “This has been a difficult situation for the Sheldon family and Bethany would like to thank everyone for their prayers and support for this family, including the efforts of Michigan Congressmen, Vern Ehlers and Mike Rogers.”

Due to these special circumstances, Bethany is accepting contributions to support the family until December 31, 2007. Checks can be made payable to Bethany Christian Services and please indicate the Sheldon family on the memo line. Checks can be sent to Bethany's Donor Records at 901 Eastern Ave NE, PO Box 294 Grand Rapids Michigan 49501. Bethany Christian Services will give all donations to the family for their “Hope for Hannah” fund.

Help needed for a family in China

I'm posting this from another blog:

Earlier this week I came to you asking for prayer for a fellow adoptive mom in China now picking up her daughter. Her husband had been traveling with her and died suddenly due to complications of his diabetes. I just received the following information from a family traveling with them in China and we need all the help we can get to bring this mom and baby home. Here is the message...

The US Consulate in Guangzhou has denied Sandi Sheldon permission to proceed with the adoption of Hannah. They want her to fill out a new I-171 and are making no guarantees after that. Sandi, of course does not want to leave China and leave Hannah here because she has no where to go. Sandi needs our help desperately! Please start a massive campaign of calling to her US Congressman and US Senator and urge them to intervene on Sandi's behalf. We have discussed this with Sandi and she wants our help. Please pressure these elected officials to contact the State Department and straighten this out. Sandi should not be denied Hannah's adoption because her husband passed away unexpectedly. The adoption has been finalized here in China. Sandi's congressman is Mike Rogers. His Washington office number is 202 225 4872. His Michigan office number is 517 702 8000, he also has a toll free number 1-877-333-MIKE. Sandi's US Senator is Debbie Stabenow. Her Washington DC number is 202 224 4822 and her Michigan office number is 517 203 1760.

Please call the numbers listed if you can and say a prayer for this family. Thank you!

***UPDATE: Apparently the U.S. reps office has received over 1000 calls and is working on this situation, also Sec. of State Rice's office has been contacted and is well aware of the situation. This family is thanking everyone for their phone calls and is now asking them to stop so these offices can focus on addressing the issue.

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!

A congrats and a picture

First of all - Congratulations to our friends Joel and Misty who found out last week that they'll be having a little girl!! You have to check out their blog for the latest pictures of Garrett ...he's such a little cutie!

B - Here is the cutest picture of our niece and nephew from Halloween night. Nathan was a magician ("Nate the Great") and Katie was Raggedy Ann. They were super cute (as you can see)!!

And 4 - Hope you all have a great week! ;-)

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!!