Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone!  Hope you had a fun filled and safe one.  We finally got around to carving our pumpkin this morning.



 So much fun!



Digging in





Pumpkin love




The final product


This year for Halloween Samie wanted to be Dorothy.  So my mom, Mema, made her costume for her.  She is an amazing seamstress and will do anything for her grandchildren!  The costume turned out so cute.  Then we have Sydney..... well for months we have asked Sydney what she wanted to be for Halloween.  Every time we would get a different answer, but we would say OK!  In the past she has wanted no part of dressing up.  Then a few weeks ago she started saying, "No, I no dress up, I just want to be Sydney."  No problem I thought, we will just put on one of her Chinese outfits and she will be Sydney!  When I told her this, she would tell me, "No, I not Chinese!  I Sydney!"  Too funny!  She did finally let us put her outfit on her tonight and she was off and running.  And yes, those are Cr*cs she is wearing!  Her favorite shoe.



Happy Halloween!


This is actually the first year Sydney has really enjoyed Halloween.  Samie has always loved it.  Are you kidding.... with all that candy?!  So once again they made a haul and the candy will just have to quietly disappear in the next few weeks.  I am sure Daddy will help with that! 
Photobucket

Friday, October 30, 2009

The Long Bumpy Road

Our current journey started on New Year's Day of this year.  I have never been able to completely say we were done with kids and have been looking at all the available children since we brought Sydney home.  On New Year's Day I was looking on Rainbow Kids and there she was.  An adorable little 3 year old.  I told Tim about her and he said to contact the agency that had her file.  We never expected to hear from the agency until the Mon or Tues after the holiday.  But that same night we received an e-mail from the China Asst. Director of Faith International Adoptions.  She said the file was still available and she would send it to us that night.  We looked through it and said YES, this is our daughter!

We were able to start our dossier, the paperwork that is sent to China, right away.  Our preliminary approval came on Jan 19th.  Our dossier was logged in to the CCAA, China Center for Adoption Affairs, on May 27th.  Now the wait for approval had begun.  Normally the wait for LOC, letter of seeking confirmation, takes from 2-3 months.  This is where the road gets bumpy!

We waited 149 days for our LOC.  We found out from our agency about 3 weeks prior to that, that a problem had occured.  Apparently the CCAA's bank in China had rejected the check our agency had sent with our dossier.  Never telling our agency!!  We are still unsure why it was rejected.  They are speculating that there was a tear or mark on the check that the bank did not like.  But WHY would they not contact our agency??  We will never know.  Several families from different agencies had this same problem around the same time as us.

OK, now we know the problem and can get approval, right??  Wrong!!  The CCAA was going on holiday for the Autumn Moon Festival and then they had a staff retreat and then the person who signs the LOC was out of the office!!  Well, 3 weeks later we finally received LOC on Oct 23rd.  YYIIPPEE!!

So now we are in the wait for our TA, travel approval!  This is taking 6- 10 weeks.  The majority of this wait is on the US side.  USCIS has not made bringing home our children easier!  It is much more time consuming.  But we are keeping our eye on that treasure at the end of this long bumpy road!  Our Sierra! 
Photobucket

Of These Three Things...

Thing 1-  Samantha, "Samie"
beautiful,smart,athletic
loving




Thing 2-  Sydney, "Syd"
beautiful, energetic, fearless
loving





Thing 3-  Sierra
soon to be discovered




Three things that fill our hearts!
signature

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Welcome!

Welcome to our journey to our next daughter.  We'd love for you to follow along as we walk this rather bumpy road together.  So far it has proven to be quite the ride!  I will fill in the blanks in the next few posts.  For now I am just so glad to finally have this up and running!
signature

About Me

My photo
Hi I'm Sandy, a stay at home Mom to Samantha and Sydney and wife to an amazing man who is not afraid to live in a house full of estrogen...although he does work a lot! Welcome to our blog~

Followers

My Blog List

About This Blog

the long road
Red Thread Stitches

Pages