One More Traveler

We just decided to take Luke to China!  It will be Chad and I, my mom, and Luke.  It really would have decreased my stress level to figure this out before, since now we are rushing to get his passport and visa.  We have debated about taking our kids all along, but in the end, we just wanted to have that time with Natalie ourselves.  Once we started planning the tours and sightseeing, I felt like it would be too great of an experience for  Luke to miss.  He is excited and probably a little shocked.  I just picked him up at school one day and told him we needed to go get his passport picture immediately.  

It will still be awhile before we know for sure, but we are planning on leaving March 6th so that we can arrive in Beijing by the 7th.  We will spend a few days there, and then meet our daughter on March 11th.  The main thing we are waiting on is something called an Article V which I think I mentioned before.  It literally should be coming ANY MINUTE.  As soon as that is in, we will wait for our final travel approval, which normally takes about two weeks.  According to that timeline, we would have nothing to worry about as far as being ready to travel on March 6th.  The problem is that Chinese New Year falls on February 10th, and all government offices shut down for a week!  That means our travel approval will be delayed, and without it, Holt cannot schedule our final appointment in China at the US Consulate.  Until that appointment is made and confirmed, we will not know for sure that we can travel at that time.  
Worst case scenario is that we would go a week later, because the agency has added in another travel date on March 15th.  The not knowing and being able to plan is seriously annoying for someone like me!!!  I am just sick to death of waiting for things.   

Planning for Travel March 8th

We are getting excited for travel to China but also anxious about all that has to be done first.  After this very LONG, seemingly endless paperwork trail, we are only waiting on two more things.  Our agency sent our final documents to the US Consulate in China last week. Two or three weeks after that, the Consulate should issue an Article V, which is a formal request to the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) asking them to issue our TA (Travel Approval).  When you are adopting you have to learn what a lot of things stand for!  

In a few weeks after that, the CCAA will send our travel approvals to our agency and we can finally book tickets to fly to China.  The only travel dates that the agency does in March are March 1st and March 8th.  After that, the next opportunity would not be until April 5th.  Needless to say we are really hoping for March and based on where everything is right now, we should be good to go for March 8th departure.  Actually we are taking an optional trip to Beijing before heading to Natalie's province, so we would most likely leave on the 7th.  For something that once felt like it would never happen, I can't believe that this trip is probably only 7 weeks away.  Crazy.  I now have a "due date."  I am feeling the pressure to be ready for her and since January is so unbelievably busy for me, I don't feel ready at all. I guess that is good because it helps me to be patient with the waiting. 

 



 

Little Miss Natalie's Room

The transformation from Luke's old room to Natalie's new room.  Her crib will go right under the flower picture on the empty wall once we get it.  The bed is for someone to be able to sleep with her if she wants, which I have a feeling I will be doing!  It feels so much better to have things in place for her. 

Gifts for Natalie

I sent some gifts to Natalie this week.  I have no idea how long it will take for her to receive them, hopefully not too long since we will be going to get her in about 2 months!  There is a photo album that has a ton of pictures of our family, that her careworkers will show her in the orphanage.  I also sent a lullaby CD, blanket, stuffed animal, and a couple of disposable cameras.  I had read in one of my adoption books that if you send a disposable camera and you are lucky enough that the workers use it, you will have a lot of pictures of life in the orphanage.  I would love to be able to show her those someday.

Relief

Visa applications were sent out by FedEx yesterday.  

Our family photo album that we can send to Natalie was finished today, and her lullaby CD was purchased.  

Stress level is going down and life is good!
  

Visa Applications

This week I have been working on our visa applications to China.  For some reason this felt like the most stressful thing I have done in this adoption process.  It shouldn't have been that difficult, but I was about to scream my head off a few times!!!  I think the added stress of Christmas right around the corner and my classes I am teaching just intensified the stress.  With adoption papers, you always want to get everything mailed off as soon as possible because you never know how long the wait time is going to be. 

In order to apply for visas, we have to hire a courier to take them into the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. (just like we did with our dossier papers) because you can't just mail them in.  As I was trying to decide which courier to use, and reading Holt's instructions, I was getting so confused because they each said something different.  I thought one said that you could hand write the applications, so I did that for all three of ours (Chad, me, my mom) only to find out that they had to be typed.  These are the kinds of papers where everything has to be just right or China might reject them, so I think I quadruple checked everything I did.  We also had to go get another set of passport pictures taken.  Apparently the ones we took 7 months ago were too old.  Good grief. 

I had everything ready to go yesterday, hoping to get to FedEx before the big winter storm hit.  There was one last document that I was waiting on, a formal invitation letter from the Chinese government to show that we had a reason to be in China at that time.  I did not end up receiving that until last night due to the time differences in the work days between here and the west coast.  I was so frustrated that I could not get out of the house to go send them off due to the blizzard.  Chad does not understand that, he thinks there is really no difference between sending them one day versus the next, or even waiting until after Christmas.  He is a little paranoid that they will get lost in the massive amounts of packages and mail going out this week, and it does make you nervous since you are sending your passports with it.  What he doesn't understand is the huge relief I have just getting those things out of my hands and my house so that I don't keep looking at them and stressing over the details.  I keep getting them out and looking over everything again, like the boogie man came in and stole some of my papers during the night.  :)  I am heading out later this afternoon to GET IT DONE. 

Fortune Cookies

When we ate our fortune cookies after dinner last night, none of the fortunes were really all that great.  On the back of each of them, there was an English word given, along with the Chinese version of that word so that each of us could learn a little Chinese. Here are the words that each of us got:

Luke:   LEARN CHINESE - TV   (this is actually very appropriate!)

Logan:  LEARN CHINESE -  Living Room

Jenna:  LEARN CHINESE - Bowling

Tera:  LEARN CHINESE - Family

Chad:  LEARN CHINESE - Daughter  


Chad thought it was amazing that out of all the words there are, that was the one he got!  I have to agree.