Update and News!

Rumor Queen (RQ). http://chinaadopttalk.com/ Our constant resource for news, rumors, support, and thousands of dollars worth of free therapy. :)

Each month, the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) matches hundreds of families around the world with babies. They send out these matches once a month, and then agencies call their clients (that’s us) to tell them about the children with whom they’ve been matched. CCAA has currently matched families who were logged into their offices on or before March 24th, 2006. We were logged in on March 29th, which means there are only 4 days left to match before they match US! So, don’t jump up and down just yet. We are VERY close, for sure, but there is no way to know how many days CCAA will match each month. Based on recent matches, we have been expecting “The Call” in mid-late October.

However...

Yesterday morning we awoke to the first rumors for the month, and they are pretty exciting to see! The first of these rumors trickled in from Spain. Someone on RQ used an online translator to decipher the original source of the rumor to find out the following VERY exciting news:

“Sentis start to tickle in the stomach as allocations come dangerously.”

Yeah, so we have no idea what that means. But it was so funny, we thought we should share it!

The rumor is, the 29th (yup, that’s us) could be included in the next batch of matches that will come out next week. Or not. Time will tell. For now, this particular rumor is rated as an R1 on a scale of 1-5. That’s pretty darn low. We will keep you updated as the rumors flow in, and we’ll give you the thumbs up when it’s time to start jumping up and down again!

What we've been up to the past four years:

We think it makes sense to start this shebang by telling you how it has gone so far. This is our adoption story in a nutshell. (Believe you me, you're thankful we’re doing it in a nutshell!) :)

9/01/05: sign & mail our application to our agency

9/10/05: approval! We get to write our first check!

9/11/05: we begin the Paper Chase:

adoption petitions

mandatory adoption classes

physical exams

gathering birth/marriage certificates

financial statements & employment verification

police clearance reports

fingerprints

passports

letters of recommendation

social workers and home studies

consulate applications

notarizations

certifications (by state of document)

authentication (Chinese government)

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

lots of forms with multiple letters and numbers....

completing our dossier (that gets a !!!)

1/11/06: we are determined “favorable” to adopt! Good work, Department of Homeland Security!

And then WALLA! Just like that...

02/22/06: our dossier is received at our agency!

03/04/06: approval from the American Consulate General!

03/13/06: our now translated dossier is sent to China

And...Ta-Da!!!

03/27/06: we receive the ever-important Log-In-Date (LID)! we are officially approved by the Chinese government and we are IN LINE (along with 30,000 other families) waiting to adopt from China!

Now, if it weren’t for SARS, Earthquakes, Scandals, the Olympics, Floods, and most recently, H1N1, we’d probably have gone to China and back more than once, and we would be home with multiple growing children turning our hair gray. Instead, we have no good excuse for the gray, and we sit and wait patiently, knowing and trusting that we are, indeed, in the correct line. And so we stay.

Meanwhile, our paperwork expires. This has never happened in China adoption history. So, along with all those other folks (no, we are not alone)...more fingerprints, more home visits, more forms with letters and numbers, more notarization, and...

07/27/07: we are again determined “favorable” to adopt

rinse, repeat....expire

06/12/09: we are AGAIN determined “favorable” to adopt, we hope, for the final time

All along this journey (well, at least since we came clean about what we were up to) we have had much love and support from all of you. And now, four years later, as we stand at the VERY front of the line, looking at the tens of thousands of people stretching in line behind us, marveling at how very close we are, we are looking forward to sharing the next chapter of this experience with you all!

Getting Started

We are just getting started in the blogging world.

Stay tuned.

Visit often.

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