Travel Approval

We are going to China!!!  Our agency received our Travel Approval on Monday and we received our Consulate Appointment on Tuesday.  We are leaving for Beijing on New Year's Day and we will fly to Guangzhou on Monday.  We will meet Avery on January 6th.  Our Consulate Appointment is January 13th and we will return home as a family of 4 on January 15th.  

Happy Halloween and Adoption Update

On the adoption front our I800 was approved last Friday.  Now we are awaiting the National Visa Center to send our things to the US Consulate in Guangzhou so we can have our Article 5 drop off, which is part of the visa process.  This will take about 3 more weeks to complete, then we will be waiting for our Travel Approval.  Carsen was a cowboy for Halloween this year.  He had a good time for the little bit of trick or treating he got to do before the rain started.

LOA!!

Big news this week on the Avery front.  We have been notified by our agency that our LOA, Letter of Acceptance, is on its way from China.  This means we have been officially approved to adoption Avery.  Our next step will be to file our I800 with Citizen's and Immigration Services.  This process takes 2-3 weeks, then we wait for it to sent from the National Visa Center to the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China, which takes approximately one week.   Then our Article 5 will be dropped off and be picked up 10 business days later.  Once that is finished we will be officially waiting for China to issue our Travel Approval.  This should occur around the first of December and we are hoping to travel later in December.

Forever Family Day!

Today marks two years since we became a family of three.  It seems like he has always been a part of our lives.  He has made so much progress since he has come home.  We can't imagine life without him.  We can't wait to see him as a big brother in a few months!  Here are a few pictures from our Labor Day weekend getaway.

Our Dossier has arrived!

Our dossier has arrived in China and has been logged in at the CCCWA as of Wednesday, August 28th.  Now we wait for our LOA or Letter of Acceptance to be issued by China.  This process takes anywhere from 30-100+ days.  So now we settle in for the long wait...

Dossier to China!

We received the wonderful news that our agency has received our final documents back from the Chinese Consulate today and our dossier will head off to China tomorrow.  Hopefully it will get there safe and sound and very quickly.  We now wait for our dossier to be logged in to the system (LID) and then we will be waiting for China to issue our LOA or our official acceptance of our adoption of Avery.  This step can take anywhere from a month to 3 months.  Obviously we pray for sooner rather than later, but we are trusting in the Lord's perfect timing for our family and for Avery.

An Avery Update

We were blessed to receive an update on Avery today.  She has grown over an inch and gained a couple of pounds over the past 3 months.  The update says she can be an obstinate child at times...I guess we can handle that, since Carsen can be a little like that sometimes.  She enjoys playing with toys and music.  So I am guessing Carsen will love sharing his beloved Sing Along videos with her.  As far as the process goes we should be DTC by the end of next week.

Here's one of big brother to be Carsen

Introducing Avery!!

We proudly introduce our new daughter to be Avery Gracyn.  She is two years old and resides in the Zhanjiang SWI Guangdong China.   We are waiting on our I800A approval and then our dossier will be on its way to China.  Then we wait to be logged in and then our official acceptance from China.  We hope to travel at the end of the year or first part of 2014.  We really want to meet her before her third birthday on March 2.  The first pictures are from last year and the rest are from this May.

Adoption Update

Since we began the adoption journey again back in January we basically have just been plugging along drudging through all the fun paperwork of compiling our dossier.  Our home study was finally completed last week.  We received it this past Tuesday and sent off our I800A application to the US Citizens and Immigration Services.  The approval of our I800A is the last thing we need before our dossier can make its way to China to be logged in at the CCCWA.  The I800A process has generally been taking about 40 days to complete.  Our official receipt date for the I800A is today, 5/31/13, so hopefully we can be DTC (dossier to China) by the end of July.  Then we wait for China to issue us a LID (log in date).  So no exciting news, but making progress.

3rd Birthday and Easter 2013

We celebrated Carsen's 3rd birthday yesterday.  He had a great time and enjoyed all his presents and his cake.  He continues to do well and make progress with his speech and overall catching.  He will be starting preschool on Tuesday and we are very excited.

We also celebrated Easter today at church and with families and friends.  It started off rainy and dreary, but turned out very nice.  Here are a few pics.

The Adventure Begins Again.

You may have noticed that the title of the blog has changed. We have have decided to take to plunge again. We are embarking on the crazy, nerve wracking, wonderful, amazing journey to bring our new daughter or son home. We have just recently began the process and will hopefully be getting started on our home study soon. I thought this Matthew West video of "One Less" was a fitting into to our second adoption, because hopefully sometime on 2014, there will be one less orphan and he or she will be our child.