Our acceptance letter will be on its way to China tomorrow!

I was able to get everything together, including my dad's visa application and passport, to be able to overnight the travel stuff to our adoption agency yesterday. Well, actually DH did the shipping part, but I got things together to go. So it was a joint effort. We also sent in our signed acceptance letter accepting the referral for Grace. The paperwork is supposed to be on its way to China tomorrow. The visa applications and passports get sent to the closest consulate office I think, but that happens tomorrow too. I guess it's takes about 4 weeks from the time that gets sent in until you get your passport back with the visa, and the same to get travel approval to China. After that they set up our consulate appointment in Guangzhou, and then it's time to make flight arrangements.

We, of course, will be flying space available because of DH's airline job, but our in-China travel will be arranged by our agency's staff in China.

One sad note is that DDs will not be traveling with us. They opted to stay home because they didn't want to miss the start of school. I can understand that, but am disappointed they won't be with us. They will be staying with friends, so they'll be well taken care of.

I'm working on putting together the dresser for Grace, although DD2 has said she want the new dresser and Grace can have the old one. We'll see. I've got the cabinet part put together, but not the drawers. I'll finish that this weekend.

My SIL and Sister are going to throw us a baby shower! How fun!! It will be on July 14, so I've got to get the names and addresses of everyone that we want to invite. I'll try to do that tonight or tomorrow.

This is finally a reality, after waiting so long!!!

DD2 has butterfly curtains!

I was finally able to get the butterfly curtains up in DD2's room. I think they turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself! We'll see if they let too much light in, as they are pretty sheer. If so, I may have to put up blinds or a shade underneath. But for now, I'm just happy they are up and I was able to take down the towels that were tacked up over her windows since we had the new windows installed.

Here's the photos:

Now, on to the master bedroom!

Whew, what a flurry of activity!

It's now been 2 days since our referral for Grace, and things have been a little bit crazy. I had to work yesterday, so not much related to the adoption happened. But DDs were pretty busy. Both had sleepover and playdates. So I had to run them around. DD2 and I went out to dinner and then to the library. I have to say, it was great to have the one on one time with DD2. She's 10, and I don't really get much of a chance to be with just her. I'm either with her and her sister or her and her Dad. So we had a very special time, just the two of us. She's a great kid! We hadn't been to the library much either, so it was great to be able to get some books and movies to share.

I spent alot of the evening after she went to bed reading up on Chongqing and Nanchuan, and surfing the internet. I didn't get to bed until 12:30, and then had to get up around 7 to start work at 8. DD2 slept in until about 8:30, so I had a little bit of time by myself getting some work done. Shortly after that, things got crazy. Our family advocate called and said that he'd emailed Grace's translated medical records, so of course I had trouble concentrating on much else but being able to read it carefully. Unfortunately, I had a teleconference that lasted pretty much the rest of the morning. After that ended I quickly read over the report, and realized that I needed to have our pediatrician look over her medical record and let us know of any concerns very quickly because we have to send back our acceptance by mid-next week. So I quickly showered, dropped the paperwork off, and then had get DD2 over to the pool to meet up with her friends. Well, shortly after that the doctor called, told me what she'd found in the report.

Everything looked good. So now it's on to signing the acceptance form and moving forward with our adoption of Grace!!!

After that, things just didn't stop until I was able to finally sit down around 8:30. I'm pooped, and will sleep well tonight!

We are proud to announce the referral of our daughter!

We got the call at 1:35 today about our daughter, Grace. Here's what we know so far:

Chinese Name: Nan Min Shan, DOB 10/1/06, about 2 months ago she weighed 14.3 lbs, and was 24.2 inches in length. Her finding date was 10/2/06 (so she was 1 day old when she went to the orphanage).

She is in the Nan Chuan SWI (orphanage) in Chongqing.

She is a deep sleeper (YES!!!), holds her head up when lying on her tummy; can tear paper, can roll over from back to front, can take a toy or block in one hand, crawls, and can grasp with her thumb and index finger. We get all of the translated paperwork on Friday by FedEx, but here's the photos we received! Isn't she beautiful?!

The girls were totally excited. DH was shocked at how young she is, and I was just overwhelmed with joy!!! This is a wonderful day. Today has been a great day! Thank you Lord!

 

Referrals are IN!

Well, rumor has it that referrals are in for the month and that the CCAA got through November 7, 2005! That means that we're in with a LID of 11/4/05!!! WOW!

All day yesterday I stayed away from RQ's website and never checked my email because I was so sick of not hearing anything about referrals. So this morning around 9, I decided to take a peek a RQ. Was I surprised when I saw that a couple of people with a LID of 11/7/05 got "the call" with their referral information. When it became real that we were actually going to see our little girl's face TODAY, I got goosebumps and felt like I was going to burst into tears! I didn't, of course, because I was sitting at my desk at work. I didn't think it would be very professional :-)!

Anyway, now we wait. One of the other waiting mothers sent an email saying she asked Ebbie (our family advocate for our adoption agency) about any news, and he wrote back and said he'd heard nothing yet. I called DH to let him know, but got his voicemail. So I left a wobbly-voiced message for him, that we would probably get the call today. Then I wrote my dad, my brothers and sisters, and my sister-in-law with the same info. Staci called back about 15 minutes later and asked me what I knew - which is nothing yet.

I have to say after over 2 years in this waiting game, it's hard to believe that it's FINALLY going to happen!!! Please, Lord, let us get our call soon!

Summing up the weekend

Here it is Sunday afternoon. I know that there's still some more left of the weekend, but here's the summary of what I've accomplished:

1. Finished sewing the butterflies on DD2's curtains, so now they are ready to hang (still need to hem them).

2. measured the curtain rod for DD2's window and figured how to hang the rod so the flower finnial won't hit the closet on the one side.

3. tried to drill the holes to hang the curtain rod, but ran into a snag with the power drill. The drill battery doesn't work, and DH says charging it doesn't work so well either. So I'm kind of at a standstill there.

4. went to church and out to dinner with DDs. It was nice and relaxing.

5. did laundry - not all of it, but it'll get us through a few more days.

6. went shopping at Kohls for DD's bathingsuits, and even got a couple of tops for me too (I still need those elusive affordable black dress slacks though).

7. had breakfast with a friend I hadn't spent much time with for about 6 months. It was a good time. I really enjoyed getting caught up with her and sharing my life and her life in that oh too brief time together.

8. had to ground DD1 from her friends for the weekend. So there was no trip to the mall, no sleepover, no giggling 13 year old girls at our house for the weekend.

That about brings up to now. DDs are at the pool swimming, and I'm here blogging while listening to the dishwasher run. In the meantime, we didn't make it to either graudation party for various reasons, and our house is a mess. If there's such a thing as pre-adoption syndrome (PAS), I think I may have it. I'm feeling totally unmotivated to do much of anything. It feels a little like depression with the cure being to get our referral information. I know I need to suck it up and just wait, but boy am I having a hard time doing that. I guess doing nothing is my coping mechanism. PLEASE GOD, let us get our referral soon! We are soooo close!!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh!

I've had it with this week! I've lost my patience. I can't get anything done because I keep thinking about getting our referral. Nothing is happening. Today there is NO news on referrals. No guess as to when they'll come. No new guess as to how far the CCAA will get. Nothing! So I'm going to stop writing about it, and write about other things.

I drove into work today which is unusual for me, because my schedule is to work from home on Friday mornings. Today I had a diagonal slice meeting with the president of our company.I asked about viability of engineering at our location. He said we will stay a technical center, but we won't grow. The growth is coming in China, Mexico and India. That doesn't mean we aren't hiring, but the director of HR said we'd hired 50 people this last year. So not a whole lot. At any rate, I think my job is secure, unless things take an unexpected turn. I'm not worried about that right now though.

In the meantime, DH gets to go to Honolulu for work. What a lucky duck! He's in Chicago tonight and leaves in the morning. It's his first time in Hawaii, and I think he's excited about it. DDs have 2 more days of school left this school year. Then I'll have a 5th grader and an 8th grader! Wow! Time flies. Hopefully by fall we'll have DD3, but who knows what age she'll be.

Here's our weekend plans. I'm bound and determined to get DD2's curtains up and get the beach towels down off her windows. I've got the butterflies sewn on one panel, and will sew the others on tonight. I still need to figure out how the heck I'm going to get the curtain rod up with that big flower finial on it and the closet door so close on the one side. But I'm going to. Once I do that then I can hang the curtains and measure for the length. Lastly, I'll hem the bottom, iron the curtains and be done with it. Hopefully these curtains will keep enough light from coming in. They are pretty shear. We'll try them and see. Wish me luck! Oh, I also have two graduation parties to goto. DD1 wants to have 3 girlfriends go to church with us and then spend the night. I need to work out at least two of the next 3 days, and our house needs to be cleaned. I also need to get DD3's dresser put together. I'm going to put it together downstairs and have DH move it up in DD2 and her room. But before I do that, we've got to de-junk DD2's room. That should be fun - NOT! Anyway, it should be a busy weekend. Hopefully a fun one too.