T A - we travel July 19th

Our Travel Approval is here and yes we travel to China in only about three weeks. Cannot wait to meet Maya and bring her home. This was the final piece of paper we needed, that everyone needs who will travel to adopt a child in China. Now, I can start counting down the days til we board the plane to Beijing. That will be on Saturday July 19th at 3 pm. We will arrive in Beijing on July 20, meet Maya on July 21st and finalize her adoption on July 22nd. I pray to God all goes well and if the internet will work too I will try to update this blog as we go along.

My sweet and wonderful husband said to me to today with a glint in his eye, honey in three weeks we will have our daughter. Thank you my amazing husband for giving me this opportunity to help a child at a time she needs it. Thank you for accepting her and working so hard to bring her into our arms, for loving her and our children, grandson and me the way that you do. You love us all fiercely and I love you back for it ten fold.

Soon sweet girl you will be home and know a family like you've never known before, who loves you unconditionally and will never forsake you. Soon you will be home where you belong.

Does She Think About Us

It is just so hard, the waiting, I wish she was already home but many preparations still need to be made and things bought. Her bedroom furniture came in yesterday and we are working on setting it up. The bed is just a little too long to be by the door so we'll have to switch it up a bit. That's not a big worry. We are still waiting for the Chinese Visa to come in and then the TA, travel approval which is an invitation by the CCCWA to come to China. Our agency can also pick it up when we are in China but it would be nice to have it now. So it's yet another thing we have to wait for. The adoption process is all about waiting every step of the way.

I'm also trying to put together the gift bags for the officials. It is customary to small tokens to the officials and nannies. I'm looking for things that travel light, don't want to add too much weight in these gifts when we have other things to worry about. At least we don't have to worry about bringing coats and things of that nature because China in July will be hot, too hot probably but still better than freezing cold of winter.

I often wonder what our little girl is doing at the moment. Does she think about us? Is she longing to be with us? I would like to think so but for her perhaps life has not changed much yet. We've sent her another care package but were told she would be at a boarding school for the summer so she may not get it until it gets closer to adoption day if not right on that day but I hope she knows are thinking about her all the time. Here are a couple of photos that we first saw of Maya.

and something that she wrote

LOA is HERE

At long last China says YES. The wait for the LOA has been excruciating. Of all the waiting this one seemed to be the longest, though I'm fully aware that some people have waited even longer. Still, Sunday started off so wonderfully we had to celebrate. I got a cake with our little girl's name on it, some family and friends came over and we had a great day together, just talking about and anticipating the day that she is here.  Everything we've done, all the work we put in the last couple of years has finally come down to this, signing the LOA. We received the LOA or as it's now known Letter Seeking Confirmation yesterday via a PDF file. We promptly signed it and sent it back so the agency can get moving but they will need the original letter signed as well and we should be doing that tomorrow.

Our daughter's name is Maya Lanlan Josephine

Her Chinese name is Lan Lan Rao and she is in the Jiangxi province

She is 9 years old. She is beautiful and we love her so much already and just want to go, get her and bring her home. Here she is, our sweet girl, Maya.

We already have a travel date - we fly July 19th and we receive temporary custody of Maya on July 21st and on the 22nd we finalise the  adoption and than that's it - she is our daughter forever. So looking forward to that moment. We hope that her transition will be a smooth one. Sometimes with the older child it could be even more difficult and we are ready for that to help her the best that we can. She knows about us now and as we are told she is happy to come to Canada with us.  

Here is he listening to a message I wrote for her about the hopes of her being our daughter. So, I am starting to pack. I've shopped for clothes for her and we should be ready to go very soon and I need to thank my husband and my family for being so patient through the whole adoption process. Sometimes it wasn't easy at all but with God's help we somehow made it to this point.  See you soon baby girl.

Out of Translation

Waiting for the last step is soooo hard, especially when we already have plane tickets booked. Yes, the agency had us book the flight for July 19th because the seats were disappearing fast. So we're booked but still waiting for LOA. There was an update last night. If you recall we were LID on March 10th and now we are finally out of translation and in Dept 1. How many departments are there? I do not know. Hopefully only three. In either case our agency asked that they put a rush on it because this is an older child and it's in her best interest to get with her parents as soon as possible, besides she will go to school in September etc. I sure hope someone listened.

As well last night we had dinner with another adoptive family of two little girls from China and we could see how well the second girl has adjusted being home only a year. She speaks English well, she looks happy and secure in her family and home, she's obviously loved. This was an older child adoption as the girl was eight when adopted last year out of the same orphanage our little girl is at, mind you she's in foster care now but these girls were friends and soon will be friends again. They had pictures of our girl and video as she was brought for gotcha day with the little girl being adopted. My heart just went out to her. She was so upset and broken hearted, she cried a lot. She also had beautiful long hair and soon after obviously the orphanage had it cut but she was so sad that her friend was leaving. I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her until she stopped crying. Hopefully soon I can do that and let her know that she will be loved forever.

The family offered to come to the airport with their daughter in case our daughter needs anything urgently translated or just to have her see a familiar face to let her know that it will be ok. That was very generous of them but when they met our daughter I think they were also very taken with her and as they kept up with the orphanage always kept up with what's happening with her though they work with a different agency than ours. They do know other families who used our agency too. There is another family in our city whom we hope to meet, they also have two little girls our daughter's age.

In the meantime last weekend our grandson turned 3, wow a whole big 3. He has grown so much since his NICU days. He was a tiny little thing and now he's a budding little three year old. Love him so much and can't wait to watch him grow and grow into a young man some day. Here he is with his guitar at his party.

PA Received 04.23

LOI Approved

A quick post just to let you know that our LOI was approved yesterday. So, now CCCWA is onto our logged in Dossier for assessment and approval. Honestly, I had no idea that we were already DTC and LID. Last agency told me was they were done processing the paperwork I sent them and then soon after we had to change something in our home study and had to wait for approval again so I thought the dossier never went to China yet since we were waiting on another approval BUT dossier did go to China and ...

we were LID on 03/10/14 - fantastic

it's been a month since then and hopefully enough time to be translated and ready for the assessment happening now

in that case we look forward to the Letter Seeking Confirmation soon afterward
then it's just waiting on our Ministry, it's all happening so fast now, finally

in the meantime sending love to our sweet girl waiting in China

LOI Submitted

Things are moving for a change. We had our official referral or proposal and lo and behold my husband signed the papers. Sure, he had some more questions about the girl but he would not let it hold up the LOI, letter of intent to adopt the child. He was ready and willing to do what's necessary to bring our daughter home. I was too. We listened to the social worker do her presentation, show us her picture and video but all we wanted to do was sign the papers. We did, thank you Lord for this strength and faith. Only with his guidance and provisions were we able to come this far; to almost be done and be blessed with another daughter to make our family a family of six, three daughters and a son.

Let me tell you about watching the video or our precious nine year old daughter. It was incredible to see her animated and smiling. I just wanted to jump inside that video and hug her, squeeze her and hold her close to my heart. She was a good helper to her six year old friend, a little boy she could be particularly close to. Her leaving could potentially be hard on him. I hope he finds a family very soon. He looks like a wonderful little boy. Our social worker is going to ask, seeing our daughter is older, if she can write to us, communicate in some way with us as a part of her pre-adoption preparation. That sounds great to me and a great idea, if we could exchange letters or photos or whatever she wants to. She is at an orphanage in Jiangxi. So, when we travel we will go to Nanchang to meet her. I hope we will be able to go to the orphanage for a visit. That was one of the other questions we had. We will find out if any of it is possible or not hopefully sometimes this week.

Our agency said that our status for the LOI should change in a day or two to Assessing and then in a week or so to Accepted. Please, sweet Jesus, let it be that way. Let these next few steps go quickly. Also this week our LOI will be submitted to our Ministry as well so that both of the approvals may come in at the same time. So once CCCWA gives approval to the LOI they will check on our dossier and if that is approved as well then they will give us a PA - pre approval by sending us an LSC - letter seeking confirmation. We will sign the LSC and return to both of our Ministries and then ... and then at last the very last step, we wait on the TA - travel approval. We will finally get a date when we can travel to China to pick our precious daughter, finalize the adoption and bring her home with us where she belongs.