We Are DTC!

That's Dossier to China for those outside the international adoption community. All of our paperwork is on its way to Beijing. We now wait for our LOA (Letter of Acceptance). For Kristy it took around 75 days. This could take longer but we won't know for sure when we will hear from China.

Family Day 2009

Two years ago our little empress joined the family. She has grown from this quiet little girl who did not understand our language or what it was to have a family into a talkative, funny, active pre-schooler. Here are a few then and now pictures. Her jie jie's have grown up tremendously in two years as well.

Adoption Progress

I did not realize that it has been so long between blogs. Kelly is on her way to her second camp in two weeks and Kourtney leaves for her camp next Saturday. We are very close to completing our adoption paperwork. The documents are at the Chinese Consulate in Washington, DC. They have told us that they will be sending the documents back to us in the middle of this coming week. From that point our agency will send them to Beijing for final approval. We expect a 90 day wait for that approval. If that is the case we will likely travel in November. Walking the Great Wall will be different in November than July!

Pre-Approval, Recital, Renovations, & Fingerprints

This week we had a few events.  The biggest one was that we received our PA (Pre-Approval) from CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) which means we can proceed with submitting our paperwork for Kassidy so they can make a final decision.  We estimate that we should be done with  our paperwork by the end of August.  We could be traveling anywhere from October to December of this year.  We cannot post any pictures or information on the web but if you ask us we'll show you the three pictures we have.  We also received our appointment to get our fingerprints taken at Immigration/Homeland Security.  We had them taken for Kristy's adoption as well but we have to do it again because, in case you don't know, they do change (eyes rolling).  

In case you haven't been in our house we have 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.  Right now Kelly has her own room and Kourtney and Kristy have bunk beds in the other room.  Kourtney thought sharing a room with a 2 year old would be a good idea at the time.  Kelly had more fore thought.  So what do we do now that a fourth daughter will be moving in?  Two teenagers with bunks in a room and two little ones in bunk beds in the other room?  Well that's half right.  Kristy and Kassidy will share one room in the bunk beds.  The dining area we had with the two archway openings has been converted to a room now.  One archway leading into the living room has been completely closed up and the other archway has been partially closed for a doorway.  That will be Kourtney's room.  Kristy will be by herself until Kassidy comes home.

This weekend was Kourtney and Kelly's dance recital.  They did great!  Kourtney was in two ballets and Kelly was in one of them.  Kelly had a separate dance number (Eight Days a Week).  Next year will even be busier as we will have 4 of them in dance.  I know that was done for her father the Beatle fan!  Video to be posted later.

Happy Mothers Day!

After church we went to Firehouse Subs and then spent the afternoon at the zoo.  It was hot but a great day.  Yesterday we got adoption approval from SC DSS so the home study is with Immigration and Homeland Security.  We are waiting on pre-approval from China to adopt Kassidy.