We decided to start working on a blog for our family. We think we will use this for our next trip to China.An update on China... Friday we completed all of our paperwork and sent it off to Washington DC to be authenticated by the US and China. A week ago we were told that within the next 'few' weeks the agency we have been using will be getting their new list of children (I have been trying to figure out what few means but know with how unpredictable the adoptions have become it may mean anywhere from 2-22 or more weeks :) ). We hope we will find the baby/child that is suppose to be in our family on this list... if not we will continue to look until we find the one that we know is suppose to be apart of our family. After we find Lili, Rebecca or Ben... :) (Davis thinks it will be Ben) the long process will then begin. It takes anywhere from 5-8 months to get all of the paperwork completed in China. It all starts with a letter (LOI... letter of intent)sent from us saying that we would like to adopt and then they send back a letter of approval (LOA) to us... this is taking 2-3 months..., then after we send the letter of approval back with our dossier they then make sure the baby is still doing ok and send back preapproval (2-3 months)... then we send another form for them to ok us to travel and after 3-5 weeks we get a letter back allowing us to travel to pick up the baby/child. It seems as though we do many of the steps over and over again but this is the way it is. Knowing the reward at the end of the long wait makes us realize we will do what it takes. (I'm not even sure if I got all of the steps totally correct...)
Anyway, we will definately keep you posted on the process/progress.
Melanie
