Hand in Hand Christmas Party

Last Friday night we went to our adoption agency's Christmas party.  They had asked for children of the adoptive families to perform musically, read poetry, etc.  Our kids were thrilled to perform.  The boys all played their Christmas songs on the piano and Sydney played Jingle Bells on the violin.  They were a bit intimidated at the auditorium size, the amount of people watching and the "spotlight" when we first walked in, but in the end they played right through their songs just fine, nerves and all!  Afterwards, we treated them to an ice cream at Mc D's for being brave.

These are the smiles of some relieved kids!

LOA Celebration

I got my cake as promised!  John and Mitchell did a great job.  Last night we celebrated LOA with Mom Mom and Pop Pop.  The arrow is pointing to city of  Kunming where Shan Yu lives. 

LOA!

On Monday, we got LOA!  This is the Letter of Acceptance from China!  Yesterday we went to our adoption agency's office and signed the letter confirming our decision to adopt.

There is an LOA cake coming this weekend!  Mitchell has promised!  We are so thrilled to be one step closer to our little Shan Yu.  We hope to have her English name picked out soon! 

Thanksgiving Surprise!

We woke up today to a Thanksgiving surprise!  We got an email from an adoptive family who visited Shan yu's orphanage yesterday.  They got to see her!  They said she was in an exercise room on a mat playing with toys and that she looked great!!!! She said she was very alert and smiled at them : ) The family wasn't allowed to take a picture of her but she did find her crib and got a picture of it.  She also said the room she was in looked clean and nice and that they're taking good care of her. 

The children in our orphanage usually go to foster care around six months old.  She is six months old now, so she will probably go to live with a foster family until we travel to get her. 

We are so thankful to have any information about her because her orphanage does not give updates.  The neat thing is that I "met" the adoptive Mom on our yahoo group two days before she left for China.  She emailed me from the airport and asked me to send her Shan yu's name in Chinese.  I'm giving God the credit for this little gift.  It sure does make waiting a little easier to get an update...or maybe harder!

Happy Thanksgiving.

We have been pre-approved!

On Monday, we got pre-approval from China to move forward with the adoption of little Shan Yu.  We think she's pretty adorable and we're glad to finally share her picture with you!

We got the call!

We received a call yesterday morning from our agency saying they had found a baby girl on the special needs list that might be a good fit for us.  We were expecting a toddler and we were a little shocked to find out that she is only five months old (very young for a special needs referral)!  We also expected her to have orthopedic issues, since this was our main need, but she has a heart murmur as her special need. We had a doctor review her file and today we wrote our letter of intent!  She is beautiful and we are all feeling very blessed today!  We will share pictures as soon as we are approved.  Thank you for your prayers yesterday!

We are logged in!

We got an email saying our paperwork got logged into China while we were in New Jersey! This means we can start recieving referrals (children who are available for adoption) this month. For this adoption process, there is a shared list of children which comes out once a month. We will be matched with a child from that list. We then look at her medical file and have it reviewed and hopefully we will find our daughter! It should be sometime next week. I will post the date as soon as I find out.

Our trip to New Jersey was so much fun! Our good friends the Anderson's joined us and we caravaned out to my brother and sister in law's, Gary and Judy's, beautiful house and amazing property in New Jersey near where I grew up. We also got to go to a great pumpkin farm, run around New York City, see the famous sites toy stores,  Statue of Liberty and we even got to meet "The Cake Boss" and be on a show in his bakery! While we were there, we also drove to South Jersey to see my Grandpa who is 98 years young!  We also did a quick run out on the beach at the shore.