11 Days To Go!

11 Days to go! We had an exciting weekend. Sunday was Olivia's last cheerleading competition and it was held at Six Flags. Her tiny team came in 1st place out of 8 other teams. All of us were so proud of the team. All season they kept getting lower scores than they deserved. Finally, they ended the season with style, 1st Place!

She also enjoyed swimming in the pool on Saturday afternoon and getting to ride all the rides on Sunday.

Here is a picture of Olivia with the trophy!

14 Days Left!

14 Days Left, but whose counting. Not much happened today, didn't get any more packing done and didn't get to the bank like I anticipated. No additional news, just counting the days and getting ready for the trip.

Olivia has her last cheerleading competition on Sunday at Six Flags. Go Bravo!

Tickets Arrived Today!

The tickets arrived today and I also booked our hotel room in Manchester, NH for the night prior to us leaving.

It is so cute to see a ticket with Lian Zhi Jie on it, which of course is Baby Lexi's chinese name.

Perhaps now I should start packing!

15 Days Left!

Just 15 days to go! Today we received our in-country itinerary. Here is our schedule.

May 11 Leave for Beijing
May 12 Arrive Beijing
May 13 Great Wall and sight seeing in Beijing
May 14 Fly to Province in the morning; meet Baby Lexi in the afternoon
May 15 Legal Process
May 16 Local Sightseeing
May 17 Tentative Orphanage Visit
May 18 Open
May 19 Open
May 20 Open
May 21 Obtain Legal Documents
May 22 Go To Guangzhou
May 23 Medical Exam
May 24 Consulate Appointment
May 25 Obtain Visa
May 26 Fly Home

I am trying to find out if we are spending the two weeks in Guangzhou as our itinerary says fly to province then on the 22nd go to Guangzhou. Also, the orphanage is a good 6 hours away, which if we are staying in Guangzhou I probably won't be going. I can't imagine leaving Olivia for the day after just receiving Lexi, it is important to me to stay with Olivia and make sure she adjusts well to the change. I could take Olivia with me but I don't want her to have to sit on such along ride with me after just enduring the long flight. Obviously, if we are staying closer to the orphanage then that is different.

That is it for now! Getting Closer!

17 Days Left!

Here we are with 17 days left. Yesterday the temps got up into the high 80's and after school Olivia was able to enjoy a run through the sprinkler. Here is a picture of her cooling herself off.

Also, here is a picture of the big tree that fell down in the rain storm last week. Luckily, it is just outside of our fence and fell away from the house.

Still got to start packing!

18 Days To Go - Some More Travel Arrangements

Just 18 more days to go. Today we received a letter from our in country China coordinators. Stating what to do when we arrive at the Beijing airport and the hotel we will be staying at. Along with, May 12 families arrive in Bejing, May 13 Great Wall and Forbidden City tour, May 14 travel to province.

More to come. Still need to start packing!

And The Countdown Begins!

And the countdown begins, just 19 more days until we leave!

Flights are Booked and Consulate Appt is Confirmed

We finally have confirmation on our travel plans.

Leaving Friday, May 11th at 6:00 am out of Manchester, NH through Washington, DC to Beijing.

Consulate appointment is confirmed for May 24th, which is Lexi and Mom's birthday. We will be celebrating Lexi's 1st birthday in China.

Leaving Guangzhou, May 26th, through Hong Kong and Chicago, arriving home, Saturday, May 26th at 8:00pm in Manchester, NH.

We are still awaiting our inter-country arrangements and touring plans for Beijing.

Got to start packing!

Tentative Consulate Appointment

Today I received an email from our agency that said:

Samantha, A tentative Consulate appointment has been issued for May 24. It has not been confirmed yet, so we suggest you begin researching air flights for arriving in Beijing on May 12 (leaving US on May 11). Your return flight should be from Guangzhou on May 26. Please do not purchase the tickets until we receive confirmation from the Consulate. We will be in touch as soon as we have heard that the date is set.

Unbelievable that once again the red thread is there with a consulate appointment on Lexi's and Mom's birthday.

More news to come soon!

Travel Approval Arrived

Travel approved officially arrived today via Fedex. Now we just wait for our consulate appointment confirmation and then we can book our airfare. I didn't get a chance to see if it was the same Fedex guy who delivered our referral and visas.

Our tentative plans will be:

Flying out of either Manchester NH or Boston.

Preferably flying into Newark or JFK then to Beijing (since there are non stop flights now from the east coast). If we can avoid the LA airport this time, I would love it!

Touring Beijing for 2-4 days, which we will see The Great Wall, Tiannamen Square, The Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. We will also get the chance to try out squatty potties. I am hoping we also get the chance to ride on a rickshaw.

Then we will fly from Beijing to Guangzhou, where we will have our Gotcha Day and then spend almost two weeks shopping, sightseeing and doing the official paperwork before returning home.

Current Beijing weather is 70-80 degrees and mostly sunny.
Current Guangzhou weather is 76-79 degrees and chance of scattered rain storms.

Travel Approval

This news just in from Bonnie at FHSA.

Good news. We expect the travel approval letters in our office tomorrow. We will FedEx them to you upon arrival.

Once we have the TAs in our hands the US Consulate will allow us to fax the Consulate Appt request to them. So that will be done tomorrow. We should receive a reply from them by very early next week. When we get the date from the Consulate we will let you know right away so you can make your flight arrangements.

One step closer!

The Adoption Process

While I wait for travel approval, I have been thinking about just how long of a wait this has been and put together a timeline to give you an idea. It has been over 3 years since I started this process.

Here is the timeline:

Application with FHSA 3/23/04

Adoption Agreement with FHSA 5/9/05
Service Agreement with Leah 5/24/05
Homestudy Complete 7/27/05
INS I-600A 5/17/05
Fingerprinted 6/25/05
INS Approval I171H 8/2/05
Sent Dossier to FHSA 8/30/05
Dossier to China 8/31/05
Log In Date 10/21/05
Updated Homestudy 8/13/06
Refingerprinted 8/26/06
Renewed INS Paperwork I-600A 1/2/07
INS approval I171H (2nd Time)1/22/07
Date of referral 3/07/07
Accepted referral 3/08/07
Acceptance sent to China 3/12/07
Applied for visa 3/14/07

I am just realizing the amazing red thread throughout this process. As March 23 is Olivia's birthday and that was the day I originally signed the application for adoption 3/23/04. May 9, 2005 is my parents wedding anniversary, which is the day I signed the adoption agreement nearly one year later and started the process. May 24 is Lexi's and my moms birthday, which is the day I started the homestudy process with Leah. My dossier was held up for two months before getting a log in date, just 4 days after my birthday 10/17. Which again leaves us with possibly travel at the beginning of May which would put this at a complete life cycle and will most likely fall sometime around 5/9 or 5/24.

Hoping to hear about travel this week.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Olivia celebrated Good Friday by coloring eggs and baking cookies with her friend Sklyar. Here is a picture of them showing off their artistic talents. Easter morning, Olivia woke to find a great big huge basket, that the Easter Bunny left. We celebrated Easter with Grampy Russ and Nana on Saturday afternoon as mom needed to work on Sunday. So, Easter Sunday will be a quiet and relaxing day. Going to work on setting up the web cam and pulling out the suitcases.

No Travel Approval Yet

Travel approvals have started to come in for other agencies. They are ranging from leaving next week, to the first week in May to the second week i nMay.

So far we haven't heard any news from our agency on travel approval. The agency is closed today for the Easter Holiday.

I am hoping we hear some news next week on when we will be travelling.