JJ's puzzle

Just a little update on our puzzle progress...

Thank you so much to everyone who has sponsored puzzle pieces to help us bring JJ home. We are so humbled, so incredibly grateful and love seeing the way that God is bringing this all together. I can't wait to tell JJ the stories behind the names that are on the back of these pieces... many of which have brought me to tears.

Hope to post updated pics next week sometime :)

We need help

Soooo we are thrilled to be closer to bringing our son home but are realizing that we need help to do so. Adopting from China costs between $25,000-$30,000 USD. We have saved up some of that but are hoping to raise $5,000 to help out... This is where you, our friends and family, come in.

Our main fundraiser when we brought EB home involved months of training for hubby :) I got to cheer from the sidelines but he did the hard part, running the local half marathon (many of you sponsored him, THANK YOU!!!). For JJ we've decided to do something a little different. We are having a puzzle piece sponsorship! Here's how it works... We have had a picture of JJ printed on a 500 piece puzzle, hoping you all will sponsor a piece/pieces of the puzzle. Your name will be printed on the back of the puzzle piece that you buy. I am really excited about this because I think it will be so wonderful for JJ to be able to see the back of the puzzle, not his picture, but the part that shows him how many people love him and played a part in him coming home.

We are asking you all to sponsor a puzzle piece for $5 or $10. There is a paypal link below and also on the side of our blog where you can contribute. Thank you so very very much!

For those who are wondering, here is the picture that we have chosen to print on our puzzle. Its a pic of our sweet son, JJ, receiving his first care package from us, his forever family :) 

You need flash to view the Paypal giving box below. You won't be able to see it if you are on an iPhone or iPad. So sorry! :(

LID!!!

Woo hoo!!!! We found out that as of 1/17/2012 we are logged-in!!!

It's been...

too long since I've posted. I've been busy just keeping up with our girls and then there was Thanksgiving, and Christmas, AND a new puppy (Thanks Pop-pop!) :)

There are some exciting things to share though! We finally got our USCIS approval aka I800A approval/797. It was dated the 20th of December, but of course that was the day that we flew to Colorado for Christmas so we didn't really 'receive it' until we got home on Dec 29th. This precious piece of paper was our last document that was needed to complete our dossier. The girls and I drove this document all over so that it could be properly authenticated/sealed. This included getting it notarized (which in itself I think is pretty funny: that the lady who works at State Farm needs to notarize/approve the letter from the US Govt!), then we were off to the county clerks office to have the first notarization notarized. After that it was a trip to downtown where the county clerks notarization was notarized by the secretary of state. Then this precious paper was sent to Washington DC where it could finally be notarized/authenticated by the US Dept of State. Finally it stopped in at the Chinese Embassy for its Chinese authentication. Whew - lots of running around (this process was required for all of our dossier documents)... On a side note - all that the Chinese Govt requires on these documents is the Chinese Embassy's seal but in order for that to happen it has to be authenticated by the US Dept of State, who requires the previous 3 notarizations! Talk about a streamlined process ;)

We managed to get this all done relatively quickly (considering that the Govt offices were closed for New Years) so that our 797 was able to join the rest of our dossier in GA (at our agencys office) to go through 'critical review'. After that it was all fedexd to our agency's main office in CO where a summary paragraph was translated and then the entire dossier went to China!!!! yay!!!! We are officially DTC as of Jan 13th!!!! The CCC*A received our dossier (taken in by courier) on Jan 16th!!!

So now that this step is done we are on to the next hurry up and wait. We are still waiting for our official LID (Log In Date) which is when the CCC*A logs our dossier into their system. Then it is the unpredictable wait for our LOA, which can be as quick as 35 days or as long as 120+... no rhyme or reason for the variation in the time frame... Once we have our LOA we file the next bit of paperwork, and then we wait for our next approval before we can proceed.

If you're still reading at this point I'm impressed! I'm mainly writing this down for myself so that I can look back on it and remember, see Gods faithfulness in it all. I thought that I would remember all the dates and bits of the process last time but it didn't work out that way so am attempting to record more of it this time around.

SO from here (well, from our LID) we are told to expect it to be 4-6 months from there to travel approval... Once we have our LOA we'll have a better idea of time to travel as time frames are pretty consistent after that, it is just this unknown wait that we are entering now.

Thats our update on process, will post an update on our precious son next!