Dec 2006/Wild Animal Zoo

Doug's mom, Grandma Candi, moved to Phoenix in October of 2006. She's been having a great time ever since with her five grandchildren that live here. I have two, and Doug's sister Cori has three, one of which is the only girl in the family! We, of course, know that will be changing with the arrival of our sugarplum which is not coming fast enough.

One of the things we did this month to distract ourselves from the wait was to go to the World Zoo on the west side of town. You can get up close and personal with many of the animals there. They even have baby white tigers. We got so close to them you could feel their fur through the chain link fence around their pen. We also fed birds and the giraffes! It was a fun day. The boys and I promised to take our sugarplum there when she's old enough to enjoy it.

Dec 2006

Doug decided to remodel the entertainment center he had built in our living room. This project went well and moved along rather quickly. I get real nervous whenever we do a home renovation project. I can't stand living in a mess, so I'm usually pretty anxious until it's over. Earlier in the year we had remodeled the boys bedroom and playroom area of the house so that we could create a bedroom for our baby girl. That was a BIG project, and it kind of burned me out. This one was much less overwhelming. Doug had plenty of help from the boys as well. He is training them to be little "do-it-yourselfers". They already know how to use most of the power tools in this house, including a skill saw! It's fun to watch them work with Doug. They are both very detailed and take a lot of pride in their work!


Finished product!

Nov 2006/GLASSES

About the only other thing of monumental importance that we experienced in November was Benjamin getting his glasses. We found out that Benjamin is only seeing well out of one of his eyes. In fact, he is barely using his left eye at all for sight. So, we are using glasses and some patch therapy to try to improve the vision in that eye. He was a good sport about hearing the news that he would need to wear glasses all day, everyday for the rest of his life. He was not quite as a good a sport when he found out about the patch therapy (I can hardly blame him). But, we are doing the best we can with it.
They believe Benjamin has had vision problems since birth. Let's hope these glasses do the trick and help to improve the vision in that eye! I think for a red head with glasses he's just adorable!!

November 2006/Endless Journey?

At times, this journey seems endless!

Below is the post that Ann, our agencies program director for China, put on the Yahoo group. This is one way we find out where we are in the stream of time. As of the start of November 2006 our wait time had moved to 15 months.



Children’s Hope International (CHI) is proud to announce that we received 28 China referrals on Thursday 11/2/06 for 26 CHI families with 8/11/05, 8/18/05 and 8/25/05 log in dates. One of the referrals is for a Chinese expedited family with a 1/6/06 log in date. All the referrals are little girls including TWO SETS of twins!! The referrals range in age from 7 to 12 months, one 14 month old, one 15 month old and one 3 year old. The children are from the Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces. Four of the referrals were for AZ. families. We expect the families to travel in about 8 weeks.



This batch of China referrals were from August 10, 2005 through August 25, 2005 log in dates. For these families, the wait from log in date to referral was 15 months.



Congratulations again to these blessed CHI families and everyone who moved up in line for referrals!

Oct 2006/Meet Ellie

Your about to see what a really long wait can drive a person to do. As I mentioned, Benjamin and I went on a field trip earlier this month to a farm on the west side of town. We saw these adorable little baby goats that we thought were the sweetest things in the world. So, we (meaning Jacob, Benji and I) called the farm and asked if we could ADOPT one of their goats. They said yes!
So we did! I thought Doug was going to have a heart attack when he came home that night and found me bottle feeding a goat in the backyard! I just looked at him and said, "Do you see what this wait is doing to me? I'm playing mom to a baby goat!" He just laughed (I think). We named her Ellie.

We had a lot of fun with Ellie....for a few months. Then she started acting like....well, a goat. She is now living a very happy life at our friends, The Cooks, house. She is being taken good care of by Micheala (their daughter) and has other goats to play with and even a horse to annoy. She couldn't be happier.

Oct 2006/International Day

Every year the kid's school has what they call Spirit Week. Each day of the week has a different theme. This year, one of the themes was "International Day". The kids were encouraged to dress in traditional clothing from a country of their choice. Benjamin chose.....CHINA! Jacob chose....AMERICA (In other words, he wanted no part in dressing up like anything other than himself)!
So, I took Benjamin, along with his best friend Travis and his sister Ashley, down to the Chinese Cultural Center to do some shopping. They all chose great outfits. I wish I had a picture of Ashley because she looked so pretty! It was nice to have China represented that day!

October 2006

By October, school was well under way for the boys. We went on a field trip with Benjamin's class to a farm on the west side of town. The kids had a blast! It was on this field trip that we met someone, or something I should say, who would soon become the newest member of our family. Ellie the goat!!!

These field trips are a lot of work, but I'm grateful to be in a position to go on them. I keep telling myself to enjoy the freedom to be doing these things now with the boys, because next year it will be a whole different ball game with their sister in tote!!

Sept 2006/What's our dossier doing?

In case any of you are wondering, below is a message our agency placed on it's website to help explain what happens with your dossier once you mail it to China. To help you understand what you are about to read, I will explain the following abbreviations:

1. CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs)
2. CHI (Children's Hope International), our adoption agency. They have a branch in Beijing.

As of September 2006, our dossier had made to step #5. It was in Department 1 waiting to be reviewed and either approved or denied.

The picture above shows dossiers waiting in line for review at the CCAA! Our's could be one of these! (I stole this photo off my friend Mardi's blog...I love my fellow bloggers!)



Here is one web site that shows a picture "tour" of the CCAA:

http://familyoffour.homestead.com/June05CCAA.html

While it is not practical to ask the CCAA to notify an agency of where
a certain dossier or set of dossiers is located in their process, the
CHI Beijing office was able to provide me with the CURRENT schedule
for your dossier at the CCAA.

1. CHI Beijing office takes your dossier to the CCAA.
2. Your dossier enters the CCAA administration office and can wait
for up to 1 month to be logged in. Once you have a log in date (LID)
your official wait begins.
3. Your dossier waits to begin the process. This currently takes
3 to 4 months.
4. The CCAA administration office passes your dossiers to Bridge of
Love where they verify your dossier's translation. This process
takes from 2 to 3 months.
5. Your dossier is passed to Department I for review. This process
takes from 1 to 2 months.
6. Your dossier is passed to Department II for matching. This too
can take from 3 to 4 months. Your dossier is matched several weeks
before step #7.
7. Your referral is sent to the administrative office to be signed
by all the CCAA directors and mailed to CHI. This can take several
weeks.
8. You receive your referral - a very happy day! You return your
acceptance of referral letter to the CCAA.
9. The CCAA sends your travel approval to come to China to complete
your adoption. This process takes about 1 month.
10. You travel to China to meet your child and complete the adoption.
This is approximately 6-8 weeks after referral.

Aug 2006

Well, summer vacation had to come to an end. The boys headed back to school. I now had a fourth grader and a second grader! They were both pretty excited to go back. Jacob had moved into the "big room" (it's a 4th - 6th grade classroom) his teacher was Mr. Gentile, and Benjamin had a new teacher as well, Mr. Preston!

Our agency received a batch of referrals at the end of the month, and the wait time had gone to 14 months!

July 2066/Change of heart?

By the end of July, the completion of our adoption was starting to feel farther away from us rather than closer. The wait was getting longer, not shorter...the tears of sadness over not having our daughter in our arms were coming much more often.

During this time, I received a call from a woman I had come to know over the telephone who was with my same agency and working on her documents for China. She also lives in Phoenix and has 3 little boys. She had completed her dossier at the end of May and was very discouraged about what was happening with the wait time. She told me how she had come in contact with an agency called VORF who had recently become a placement agency for the country of Vietnam. After contacting them, her and her husband made the difficult decision to revise some of their documents and submit their dossier to Vietnam through the VORF agency. They received a referral for a 2 month old baby girl the first week of July! It was unbelievable!

Knowing the wait that lay ahead of us, Doug and I began discussing whether or not it was in our family's best interest to consider switching countries. We gathered information, made a bunch of phone calls and prayed over the matter. Looking at the numbers alone (meaning dates and wait time, money, etc.) it would have been a reasonable decision for us to switch to the Vietnam program. But, there was more involved....the biggest thing was our heart! Our heart was in China, it had been from the very beginning. We just knew, and still know, that our daughter is there!

When I think back at that time when we were considering whether or not to switch programs, I remember how the thought kept coming into my mind, "I don't care if we decide to adopt a child from Vietnam, but what about our baby in China?! We can't just leave her there! We are HER parents...she's there waiting for us to come get her. This just doesn't feel right." The wait for her has been one of the hardest things I have ever been through, but I will never, ever regret our decision to stay with the China program.

By September, my friend had brought her daughter home from Vietnam. She's a beautiful little girl who, I'm told, has a very sweet disposition. Her photo is posted below. Her name is Sarah!