Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Today we received an email from the agency...pretty exciting (and overwhelming), huh? :) Everything sounds fine, except for the 15 month wait to be matched with a baby.... :(





Congratulations we have received your USCIS approval! You are approved to adopt internationally!


PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!


1. In about 10 weeks after receiving your USCIS approval, both the American Consulate Office in Guangzhou, China and the National Visa Center will send you a package that contains the following items: a cover letter containing a case number, forms I-600, I-604, I-864, 230, and a physical form for the child. If after 10 weeks you still have not received this package, don’t worry! We will be able to give you one at the time of your referral! These items are very important, so put them in a safe place. We will need the case number from you when you get your referral in order to make your appointment with the American Consulate. We will not ask you for this number until you are preparing to travel. Please put these packages in a safe place with your other important adoption documents. We will go through them again before you travel to China.

2. Your dossier for the China Center of Adoption Affairs should be complete. I will be in touch if we are missing any of the documents required for your dossier. Otherwise we will begin the authentication process of your documents. It takes us about three to four weeks to finish the certification and authentication process and another 7-10 days to express mail the dossier to CCAA. The arrival of the package from the American Consulate in Guangzhou does not mean your dossier has arrived in China. Someone from our agency will contact you when your dossier has been sent. The date we express mail your dossier is called DTC date(Dossier to China). We will inform you of this date. We appreciate that you mention your DTC date and your last name when you call the office with any questions and concerns.

3. The date the Chinese government register your dossier is called Login Date. We will let you know of this date as soon as we get them. CCAA does assignments according to the login date. At this time, it’s taking approximately 15 months from the time your dossier arrives in China until you receive a referral, and another 6-8 weeks from referral to travel. There are many factors that determine how quickly you travel after your assignment is accepted. These include visa appointments at the American Consulate, CCAA Official Notification, flight availability, etc. Please know that referral time is always subject to change. We will keep you updated on any and all changes!!

4. It is our recommendation that you start the Hepatitis A and B immunization series NOW, since they take a few months to complete. There are no required immunizations when traveling to China; however, the agency recommends the Hepatitis vaccinations. Please consult your doctor!

We will contact you regularly from now on to update you. Please feel free to call us at any time during the wait!

Best wishes,
CAWLI

Friday, December 22, 2006

WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mike and I are pleased to announce that Christmas came early for us this year. Yesterday we received in the mail our I171-H and today we sent it to our agency via Priority mail (with tracking, OF COURSE!). We are DONE. Now we just wait for CAWLI to review our documents and send them to China. Within about 4 weeks, China should have all of our documents, and we will be able to officially call ourselves “paper pregnant”. On Tuesday, Mike and I will go to the police station to get new letters of good standing (background checks). We’ve already had this done, but they will be close to expiration by the time our stuff goes to China, so we will get new ones just in case we need them. Nothing else is even close to expiration (thank God), so there really is NOTHING left to do except wait, wait and wait. I can’t even tell you how excited and relieved we are to have this paperchase over with and to finally be “in process”!

Hope all of you reading this have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Friday, December 15, 2006


Here is a picture of Emily giving Santa a Christmas card that she made. As you can see, she was very excited!
No word from immigration yet…. We are still waiting for our I171-H (the document that gives us permission from the US government to adopt an orphan from abroad). Without this document, we can’t send our dossier (all of our documents) to China, in order to be matched with a baby. This is the only thing we are waiting for. Everything else is done. Mike and I are going to go back to the police department this upcoming week to get new letters of good standing (background checks). We’re doing this, because the letters can’t be more than 6 months old when sent to China. Our last ones were done on 8/1/06, so we are cutting things close (as it looks like it will be at least another month before our dossier is sent to China, since it takes the agency 3 weeks or so to review everything and send it over after we get the I171-H). This is a bit frustrating, as this will be our 3rd time getting letters of good standing from the police department (since our paperwork stage of this adoption has taken so long). Oh well. Every day I come rushing home from work to see if we’ve received our I171-H yet. Maybe we’ll get it for Christmas….? This would be a great Christmas gift. What’s sad is that even once everything is sent to China, we still have about a 14 month wait.
I would be feeling really down right now if it weren’t for the fact that Emily keeps us both so busy, and keeps us smiling a lot. She is so looking forward to Christmas. She met Santa Claus last night and LOVED him! She even drew a card for him. Emily is so excited for Christmas that her teacher, Miss Danni told me that she woke up suddenly from nap time the other day, ran over to Miss Danni and exclaimed “Miss Danni!...Miss Danni! It’s Christmas! It’s Jesus’ birthday!”
Emily is also so excited about the idea of dressing up for Christmas. She’s turned into quite the girly girl. She’s already told me (and Santa) that all she wants for Christmas is a purple necklace and a purple bracelet. Purple is her favorite color. She likes all things pretty. In fact, so much so that while I was doing laundry the other night, she managed to get her hands on some lipstick and tried to give herself “pretty lips”. Below are some pictures of her makeover.


Wednesday, December 06, 2006


I just wanted to post a beautiful picture of China that a friend of ours took over the summer. Click on it for a larger view.