Almost There

well, since my last post, things have been getting a lot easier. i am feeling so much better, not perfect but almost. i have had the last 3 days to start to put things together and go shopping for last minute items and pack our bags. here is a list of a few things we have done this week.

Stop mail with post office
Called health insurance to add babies
Called credit cards to let them know we are traveling
Arrange a ride to airport, we leave ridiculously early, thanks CT&DT
Got a bunch of “new money” from bank, the Chinese like crisp new dollar bills
2 certified checks to pay for orphanage fees and inside china travel
Got the vaccination letters notarized for each girl
Made plans for an additional day of sight seeing (more info to come about this)
Washed the girls clothes we are taking with us
Put the car seats into the car
Packing, packing, packing...

We are almost there and can't believe it! In just 2.5 days we are leaving for China!
Please pray for our travel. that we stay healthy, safe and there are no delays or issues. This time we go straight to NY and leave for China (going to VN we had to go to Chicago, SF, Taipei, then VN, yuck). Keep that snow away from NY this weekend and we will be good:-)!

We have been working on pushing Nate's bedtime back to get ready for the time change, it's been challenging but we know it will help with the 12 hour difference. Pray that it is an easy time change for us. Also pray that China gets a ridiculous heat wave for just 6 days while we are there. Bring on the heat, it is going to be really cold, pray we keep warm with all the sight seeing!

thank you for following our journey to our girls. We have been so blessed and look forward to sharing this wonderful journey with you. Please feel free to leave a comment along the way, i know we will love to hear from you and it will help with home sickness.

love
kare

Ughhh

For the last 10-12 days i have been battling illness. i had a head cold that went into the flu that went right into another cold with bad congestion and then i had a stomach bug. With only a day or two of semi-health between illnesses it has been very difficult to get things accomplished. DH has been doing lots of errands and phone calls and we are slowly chugging along. Our Christmas was wonderful and quiet and peaceful. We had a lovely day together and really enjoyed our holiday.

We have one week left and we are leaving for China. We are ready to pick up the pace and get all the things we need to get done before this weekend, then we can relax for the New Year celebration. Amazing how this time is flying by, can't wait to see our little babies. I was hoping for an update of our girls, maybe a picture or even just weight and size but nothing has come yet. It has been unusually cold in Nanchang lately, we are praying our babies are staying warm and healthy.

Our Itinerary

I can't tell you how much more work this takes with three holidays occurring while trying to get ready for our trip. We are making it all happen, but it has been a lot of work. We have ordered our tickets and we are packing our bags. We leave in 13 more days! Boy it would be nice to have some master list of things we have to do and when to get them done, i am so afraid that we are going to forget to do something REALLY big. i have lists upon lists of things to do and remember.
We are counting down the days until we can see our precious babies.
here is our itinerary for our trip:


Jan 3: Depart for Beijing
Jan 4: Arrive in Beijing
Jan 8: Group Sightseeing in Beijing: Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City and the Great Wall
Jan 9: travel to province, meet our daughters
Jan 10: do lots of paperwork
Jan 11: do lots of paperwork
Jan 12: Sightseeing or free day
Jan 13: sightseeing or free day
Jan 14: get paperwork back and fly to Guangzhou
Jan 15: medical exams
Jan 16: free day
Jan 17: free day
Jan 18: a big appointment
Jan 19: Free day
Jan 20: take a train to Hong Kong in order to catch a flight for the next day
Jan 21: depart for the US

it's been a busy few weeks

We got our referral in early November and the time is passing by so quickly, we are getting so many things done, yet it feels like we have a ton more to do.

Here are a few of the things we have accomplished so far:

-We bought a new car, we didn’t have enough room in our previous car for 3 car seats! Right after our referral we kicked it into high gear and started looking for a car in our price range. We have been looking for some time, and we really liked the Acadia. We finally found one and we love it.
-We signed our LSC, letter of seeking confirmation, and sent that paperwork off to our agency. This came about 6-7 days after our referral call. This came in a packet that had their medical information and a few pictures.
-We got our visa pictures taken and sent off our passports to get our visas for China. Because we are adopting twins we will need 4-5 photos for each of us. We got this all done at once and sent our passports off to get our visas to enter china. It is difficult to send your passport in the mail and hope and pray that you will get it back. All is good and we got them back a week ago.
-Nate got his last round of shots for travel.
-We had Thanksgiving Dinner with my family at our home
-My friends threw me a baby shower and we got some amazing things for the girls. The theme for the party was Asian, so there were fortune cookies with scriptures, rubber duckys with hats and Chinese characters, chop sticks and Asian food. it was so much fun, we are so blessed to have such great friends.
-Our TA, travel approval, arrived on Dec 6. This allows us the permission to travel to China, this was a bit uneventful however. We got an email stating it was on the way then another when it officially arrived. We will get the document right before we leave to take with us.
-Our CA, consulate appointment, was made on Dec 7. Our appointment is for Jan 18. This too was just an email notification, but we were also told we could book our flights at the same time. this was amazingly exciting, we had 3 days to do so.
-We booked our flights and will be in China on Jan 4, we meet the girls on Jan 9. The plans are to go to Beijing, the girls province and then Guangzhou for final paperwork. i will list our itinerary in the next week or so.
Let me say that again, we will be leaving on Jan 3 and we are meeting our girls on Jan 9th!


This is a picture of what our car looks like, we love it so much.

signing our letter of seeking confirmation

A few photos from my baby shower

Referral Call

we wanted to share a small piece of our referral phone call. We are thankful that we were able to take video of this moment. it's amazing to watch and has me in tears just about every time i watch it. November 2 was an amazing day for us, for our entire family. Enjoy.

Finally

We have been hard at work trying to pick out names for the girls. this was so much harder than we expected. We loved so many names, but we were not sure if we should choose names that started with the same first letter or with the same letter as big brother or make them all completely different. We also wanted to include some of our family into it too. It was a hard decision but we are so happy with what we came up with.

So let me introduce to you:

Paige Elizabeth

Phoebe Louise

Jiangxi

i have to admit that i have loved having their picture at the top of the blog. i have almost not wanted to post anything, just so i can keep the "introducing" post the most current and the first thing i see when i open the page. So now you will have to scroll down a bit to see their first picture. :-)

i have been doing a little research on where the girls are from and about that part of China. so here is a little information about Jiangxi.

The Gan River dominates the province, flowing through the entire length of the province from south to north. It enters Lake Poyang in the north, the largest freshwater lake of China; that lake in turn empties into the Yangtze River, which forms part of the northern border of Jiangxi. Important reservoirs include the Xiushui Tuolin Reservoir in the northwest of the province on the Xiushui River, and the Wan'an Reservoir in the upper section of the Gan.

Jiangxi's climate is subtropical. Average temperatures are about 3 to 9°C (35-48F) in January and 27 to 31°C (80-87F) in July. Annual precipitation is 1200 to 1900 mm.

Nanchang, the region's capital and the most densely populated city, is one of China's largest metropolis. Nanchang is the hub of Jiangxi civilization throughout its history, which plays a leading role in the commercial, intellectual and industrial and political fields. While Ganzhou is the largest subdivision of Jiangxi.

Although little known outside of the province, Jiangxi cuisine is rich and distinctive. Flavors are some of the strongest in China, with heavy use of chile peppers and especially pickled and fermented products.

Introducing

Thank you so much for visiting our blog.
we are excited and amazed to announce we have two daughters!

they are 7.5 months old

born march 15

from Jaingxi

and totally adorable too...

we haven't picked out names yet, well we had one name picked out, but now we are rethinking their names a little bit.

more information to come.

We got our referral

here's a hint.













more info to come in a few hours.

November Referrals--May 23

Referrals are here!!
Referrals will be arriving in the US probably sometime today or tomorrow. Europe is getting them today so we should be getting the call in a few days. Hurray! we are going to get our referral this week!! I called DH at work to let him know, i think he was a bit stunned. We can't believe it is finally here! Thank you Lord!

Conversation with nate

Daddy and nate had been talking about nate's baby sister and how we will meet her, a few hours later we had this conversation.
nate: mommy, baby sister lives far away
mom: yes i know.
nate: we have to get on a plane, plaplaplane (sound of a put-put airplane). nate is going on plane, daddy is going on plane, mommy do you want to come too?
mom: yes i really do! :-)

Matching Rumors

there are rumors this week that they have started matching families with babies. the waiting is slowly becoming less and less painful for us. we know we are next and that sometime within the next two weeks we will finally get to see our daughter's face. we are so excited.
----- -----
just a look back almost 5 years ago to when we were doing our paper chasing. it took us about 3 months to do our paperwork, which included police background checks, fingerprinting, doctor appointment and paperwork stating we were healthy including a full blood workup, our birth certs and marriage cert., financial statements and employment letters (a total of 10-12 docs.). And of course a home study with a visit from a social worker and answering a ton of questions about us and our marriage. (since then we have done this paper chasing process an additional 4 times!!)

Then all these documents had to be notarized, thankfully we knew two notaries.

Then they all had to be state certified, this is to certify that the person who signed as a notary is actually a notary. this is where we experience a huge fiasco. we sent all our documents to get state certified and our entire package was lost. at the time they signed for a huge case of fed3x packages and didn't check that all were there. ours was not, but there was a signature so we had no recourse (they have since change this process due to our loss). We had to do ALL our paperwork AGAIN while living in a different state! We did all our paperwork in about 14 days this time, a miracle! Then, Fed3x temporarily lost our paperwork again while we were living in New Jersey and placed our package in the wrong apartment. we did finally find our state certified paperwork package.

Then we had to get our documents authenticated. we sent all docs to the Chinese consulate, this was a very expensive process, and i really don't even know exactly why this was needed but it made the docs look really official. But this was the final step to finishing our dossier and we sent it all off to our agency which sent it to china and our official date that our paper work was logged into the china office was may 19th 2006.
Here is a picture of us right around the time we were starting the process.

Sept/Oct referrals--May 18th

well it seems the rumor is that they have done referrals to May 18th. Uuggghhh! we missed it by one day, one day! So this means we are next. "When" that will be, we're not sure. they kind of skipped over September, referrals should be coming out around sept 30/oct 1. yes, that means no one on this entire planet got a referral this september. so if they mail these referrals out and they arrive October 1st, this will probably count for October's batch, which means sometime in november we can expect ours.
We are next! We are next!

predictions

on one of the other chat groups i am on we were all making predictions on where our babies are and when they were born.
so here are my thoughts. we will see how close if at all i will be.

born March 26 (my sister-in-laws birthday) :-)
born in jiangxi province (fuzhou or ganzhou city)
well, maybe only about 40 more days 'til we find out...

getting closer

last week we were at one of our favorite places for lunch , panda express, and we got a fortune cookie that read: you will enjoy a trip to asia. i think it is a sign. :-)

the wait

i was recently thinking about how our lives have changed OR have not changed in the last 4 years since we started waiting. what were YOU doing differently in 2006? it seems like this waiting has become a part of our lives and is somehow hard to believe it will not be there in a few more months. all the paperwork, the slow downs, the Olympics, the slow downs, H1N1, rumors, theories, more paperwork, skipped months, quotas, fingerprinting, and counting down the days to our log in date of May 19th. waiting is hard to do and our wait has been long but it made us stronger and made us focus on what is important.

we still live in the same house and have the same cars. i've had two jobs but now i no longer work outside the home. p has changed departments 2-3 times and has moved from building 1 to building 2 to building 3 and is now back to building 1 again. we have done a ton of traveling and we even went to the west coast, a place i swore i would never go. We have had several close friends and family die. We went to vietnam and met the most amazing little boy ever. We have a beautiful son!

the wait is almost over. a new chapter will finally begin.

August referrals--May 15th

this month they got to May 15th! that's 5 more days! there were rumors that they could maybe get to the 16th. that day is really huge (so many agencies sent in dossiers that week and got logged in) and we were is shock that it was a possibility/rumor, unfortunately they didn't get that far.

For Sept we toggle back and forth as to "will this be our month"? they will probably only get to may 17th but man, just a little bigger of a month and they could get to the 19th. We are counting the days to Oct referrals. we believe that is our month!

we haven't done much in getting ready yet. we do have so much to do, it is a little overwhelming. sometimes it just doesn't seem real that it's around the corner. We are so close yet we have been so close for 4 years it's hard to wrap your brain around it this time. it took them an entire year to get through March 2006 and this year they may just get through 2 months. i still remember the days when they did 30 days of referrals EVERY month, now they do 2-5 days a month.

i'm pretty sure that both our baby registries have expired. i stopped pushing the "due date" back on them a couple of years ago. i kept getting notices that the items i picked were no longer available or there was a recall on them. i will have to go do that soon, it's just so hard since i don't know how old she will be yet. i will let you know when i get that done, that's another thing that will make it feel "real". We are slowly getting the house ready, moving furniture around and all that goes with that.

Pray that there are no delays for the next few months. all our paperwork is just fine, and that we will hear some good news in October!
kare

Day Dreaming

this is a poem a may lid'er wrote at the beginning of the wait. little did she/we know that it would take 4 years for her to get "the call".

Day Dreaming
i stepped into her room today
knowing she's not there
this waiting for referral
is more that one can bear

but taking in the moment
i sit down on the floor
and dream of her here with me
when waiting is no more.

a little giggle fills the air
as i rub her feet
i place my hand upon her heart
to feel its every beat.

a song is sung so very soft
her eyes begin to close
she's meeting me in dream land
a place where love still grows.

my vision now is very blurred
the tears stream down my cheeks
i've dreamed of her quite often
through these pas few weeks.

suddenly a sound is heard
the phone rings in the hall
waking up i quickly pray
please let it be "the call".

July referrals--may 10

China actually did 14 days! Only about 5 of them were actual LIDs. they got to may 10th! it came a little later than we thought. they did not arrive until around july 16th, the china office was on a trip during the beginning of the month and matching started late. rumors were flying the entire second week of july.

we are only 9 days away from a referral. what does that mean? at a rate of 4-5 days a month we should get a referral in october! the next few days are really large days, so we predict that they will get to around may 15th for aug, and may 17th for sept and to around may 24th in october. we are praying that this will happen and we will hear very early in the month so we don't have to sit and wait in agony longer than necessary.

i just did a cyber baby shower with another woman in nova scotia. her name is shauna and is a single mom with a lid of may 22. we will probably travel together. the theme was "year of the tiger", since that is what the sign our children will be born under.

there were a few families that has an early may lid and did not get a referral this month. the first week was a holiday in china during 2006 and they were told their lid was may 1-6. this was a mistake and they didn't get a referral and are hoping to get one next month. very scary, makes you doubt if your lid is correct.

June

well it's june 2010 and the weeks are going by so slowly now. the last batch came out june7th and i can barely wait for the next. that should be around july 6th-ish. We are praying that this will be a good month with a good number of referrals, however, the rumors are that in the past they have always ended on the last day of the month. that would mean that they would only get to april 31 or may 1st. that's another 4-5 days of referrals, but a really small batch and most of the beginning of may is empty due to a holiday in 2006. so it's any ones guess how far they will get. Please pray with us that our baby is safe and loved, healthy and strong. we are praying that we get our referral on or before October 2010. It is so hard to get our hopes up again, we have been disappointed so many times in the past, but we believe that the Lord will provide continued patience and strength. we are so close, we are so close now!

Predictions

here are the most current predictions for referrals. here is how the chart works, the dates on the left are the months the referrals come out, june referrals got to april 26 and so we start with july. the columns across the top are kind of the size of the referrals, in 2006, there were 2 sizes. Good was probably 150-250 referrals or more. each year it has been going down in size, the spring 2010 is pretty much the smallest and it would include about 40-50 referrals each month (or about 4-5 days).

So to use this chart, you find the column across the top that you think is the size the next batch will be. i believe it is spring 2010 or smaller. Our lid is may 19th, and so using this chart we should get our referral by October2010! I think these predictions are a bit enthusiastic so it would probably be more like November 2010.

Any way, each month they come out and each month they change. we shall see what july brings, my predictions will be May 1.

june referrals--April 26

it's early june and we are waiting for this month's batch. it is rumored that they will get to april 26th. a little disappointing. we hoped they would get to the 27th or further. so they did 5 days. not sure now if they are doing 5 days consistantly or 40-50 referrals each month. it seems to have gone down to the mid 40's instead of the mid 50's just a few months ago.

we are praying that we will travel by Christmas. that would be wonderful to have our baby by then.

happy anniversary

tomorrow is our 17 year anniversary. we are looking forward to celebrating that, can't believe it's been that long. it feels like last week that we got married. it's been a wonderful 17 years! love ya babe.

4 years

well, this month is our 4 year anniversary, i can't believe we have been waiting that long. we just redid our paperwork and home study again, our fourth time! we got our fingerprints done this week. I think that is 5 times for the fingerprinting, they have even moved their offices to a larger facility since our last visit. this was our last time for doing our i600, if we don't travel by the time this expires we will have to go through the i800 process, which is longer and harder that what we have been through already. i pray we travel before next year.

currently they are up to April 17, 2006. they have been doing about 5-6 days a month, thank god! and they have been pretty consistent with the delivery of them. the predictions for this month are April 21 or 24th. we all pray 24th or more. the next referrals are due any day now.

we still are praying that oct or sooner to hear something. that would be so wonderful.

china in drought and sandstorms

China has warned Beijing residents to avoid going outside as a sandstorm sweeping down from the Gobi desert blankets the area in fine yellow powder.

Many young people are leaving their villages to find work in industrial areas for manual work. 50 million people are struggling to cope. Water is carted in by trucks every few days for drinking water. Crops have failed for almost 1 year. some areas have received 90% less rain fall for this time of year and no rainfall is expected for another 10 days.

still waiting

it's been about 6 months since my last entry and it feels like we are no closer to our baby. our life continues and we continue to wait. the referrals have slowed to a crawl, never thought it could get any slower, but it has. they are referring about 2-3 days at a time, and actually not even consistantly, they skipped several months last year. To date they are at April 5th 2006. the next few months should really tell us what to expect for our referral timing. It took them 1 full year to go through march 06 LIDs. there actually was a pattern to it, they did about 100 referrals or about 3-5 days at a time. the question now is, will they do 100 a month or just 3 days a month. It could be this fall or it could be next year 2011.
Time will tell....