New Pictures!

Although this is our first adoption, I can't imagine having a better adoption case worker than Ming! Those of you who know me, know that I am not a patient person but Ming is very patient and understanding. She also goes out of her way in my opinion to provide us with updates - hence the title! We have new pictures of our son, just received today! In one he is holding the Gecko we sent over in a care package - you can see the typical boy pose - Great...a stuffed animal :) We love him so much!! Thanks for following our journey!

Abbreviations, who knew?

As an educator, I am fairly well versed in the variety of abbreviations and acronyms in the world - we are surrounded by them. I have to admit, however, that the world of adoption is inundated with them. In an attempt to make this blog easier, I am going to list the ones we have figured out in case we use them. First we were PA - preliminary approval, then we were DTC - dossier to China for which we had to provide a LOI - letter of intent. Now we are waiting on our LOA - letter of acceptance so that we can get our TA - travel approval which all starts from our LID - log in date. Make sense? :)
And that's just the ones we have figured out.

The worst day ever...and how quickly things can change

First - the home study. It was actually a fairly easy process. We met with Elizabeth three times, once here and twice in Atlanta. It was very laid back and I had cleaned feverishly for nothing - really, you don't understand, I cleaned the top of the cabinets - you can't even SEE the top of the cabinets. It rained horribly the day she came to the house and she got lost. We were really concerned that the Atlanta city girl would have issues with the farm, animals, and essentially living in the middle of nowhere, but she LOVED it! Thought it was great for raising kids and felt Samuel was a great kid - of course :) So, the interviews/visits were not bad. What was bad was the PAPERWORK!! Copies of this, that, and the other and clearences to make sure we are not mass murderers or child molesters. Speaking of...the reason I entitled this entry the worst day ever is for that last portion - child molester. Not that we are, but you have to get clearance checks to prove it. Walker county was not very helpful so when we received a call from Ming on April 30th we thought our world was crashing.

Simon was an agency referral based on a camp AAI hosted in October of 2008. Only AAI could handle his adoption. The bad thing is that this is time sensitive and on April 30th Ming called to advise us that China had begun to pull back the referrals and we had to get everything in by Friday or we would loose him. WHAT!!?? Our homestudy wasn't complete because Elizabeth had not received our clearance from Walker Co. yet - they had had it for 6 wks. We began racing to make phone calls and beg and plead for it to be completed. Elizabeth was wonderful trying to help us get everything together. We had to have pictures made - mine are LOVELY because I had been crying to much. We also had to write a letter of intent (LOI) to adopt Simon explaining to the Chinese government why we wanted to adopt and how we would preserve his heritage. Done...still nothing from Walker County, so, on Friday, after having a nervous breakdown, my Asst Principal comes in with one of our teachers who used to work for DFCS. She makes a few calls and provides me with a number of a supervisor for the whole area. Called - they were out until Monday, so I have another nervous breakdown with his secretary. God LOVE this woman. She made it her personal crusade to get this taken care of and within 2 hours, Elizabeth had the letter and we were good to go. God is good!!

So, after we averted that catastrophy, our paperwork was sent to China. Now we were just waiting for a prelimary approval so that we could proceed with the adoption. On May 14th we received the best email ever. Not only were we approved, we received updated pictures and measurements of our son. We were so pleased and proud to see how much he has grown in just a few short months. Now, if we could just bring him home!!