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.