HI everyone! Well My oldest son, Aaron is now safely tucked away at his College. He is a freshman at Valley Forge Christian College and I am so proud of him. It is truly strange for him to not be home (our house is the place where him and his friends where every single day as well) so even with 2 young ones at home I feel like I am going through empty nest syndrome hahah. I am missing my big guy, but am so so so proud of him. I cant believe he is off and on his own and doing amazing and loving college. Geesh where has the time gone???


I am sitting here waiting for our paperwork to come back from the Consulate with Authentication and then all will be shipped off to China and I will finally be able to say we have DTC .. but not yet. I cant believe how long this process takes as we have been working away like crazy people since February and thought our son would be home by November until we hit sooooo many speed bumps and roadblocks. I know this is all in Gods time and He has the perfect plan, but it is sometimes hard when I know my son is now aware of us and wondering what is taking so long for his mommy and daddy to come and get him.... We are coming Luke!!!. Our big guy is going to be 10 on September 22nd and it is sad to know we wont be there with him.... but we are planning on sending him another care package with more pictures of us and a nice big cake! It is nice to know that this is his last birthday without a family and I plan to throw on whopper of a shindig for his birthday next year :)


So for now I just sit and wait for notice from Madison that our paperwork is back from the Consulate and on its way to China!!!!!!!tick, tock, tick , tock

AWAITING I-800-A approval!

We are in a "holding pattern" while we wait for our approval of our I-800A. We went in early Monday morning and were fingerprinted. Our appointment was Aug31st but we took the risk and went in early. Our dossier (all of our paperwork going to China) is due in China on Aug 21st and our that is the end of our 1 month extension. Plus Aaron is heading off to College on Aug 21st so how would Aug 31st have worked for us? Sooo we decided to take a chance and the Lord watched over us and made a way! We walked into the office and a very nice lady behind the desk didn't even glance at our date on our papers. She whisked us right in and had us sit down. After we came in she switched places with another woman and that woman was inspecting peoples hands and checking dates (she sent one family away as their time wasn't until the afternoon) so we just missed having her check us in by 2 minutes..... Then as we sit waiting our turn one of the men my husband coaches football with comes across the room and heads into the supervisors office... turns out he is the supervisor of that office and runs the whole thing... Thank you Lord! He made sure everyone knew who we were and that we were well taken care of. We could not have asked for more. So the fingerprinting was done Monday morning, I called the USCIS that afternoon to let them know we were printed very early and hope that an officer was assigned to our case, and we had just been assigned an officer that morning. I got to speak with him and let him know we went in early. He said if everything is approved the fingerprint results should be back in 3-5 days and then if approved we would get our I-800A approval in the mail after that..... So now we wait! When the approval comes back I will drive it to Trenton to get State Sealed and then quickly get it to Madison so they can get it Consulate Authenticated for me. Then and only then can my dossier be sent to China and we can finally say we are DTC, (dossier to China) after that await LID (Log in Date) then we await LOA (letter of Acceptance) and then we hit Article 5 (which I believe that has a few steps involved) after that we get TA (travel appointment) and then we are off to get our son! So for now we wait and we count days until our approval comes and then we wait and we count days for the next thing.. I do predict a lot of counting!!!!!  But we are getting closer and closer to LUKE! We are working as hard and fast as we can to come get you!  

What an amazing day!

Well today has been an amazing day!!!!!! I got an email today and opened it up to find not one but 12 new pictures of our amazingly handsome son! Plus an update too! The update is a little rough with the translation ( I am going to see if I can find someone to re-translate it) but it is amazing. Our Luke XinHai got his care package and seemed to really enjoy what we sent him! We hear that he is doing very well. Amazingly sweet, friendly and loving! We got new measurements too. Seems he grew a bunch since April as he is now 4'7" which is amazing as he was 4'5' in April. He thinned out a bunch too as the pics we got sent in April his face was chunky and now he is quite slender.  Weighing in at 66 lbs. His brother Tommy was upset that Luke grew so much as he wants them to be the same height, which I think is so funny. He was happy when he saw that his brother is about 3 inches or so taller then him but seems to weigh about 6 lbs more.. so not too much difference. His brothers feet are only 1 inch bigger then Tommys' so they should be pretty close in body type, both skinny bone boys hahah. Opening this email with the pictures surely made my day! I am waiting on our fingerprint appointment for our I-800A. I called yesterday and they said our appointment is Aug 31st but we are going to try a walk-in as my son will be gone for College at that point and also my extension deadline will have come and gone by then. When we applied for an extension due to my homestudy agency taking forever we only got a 3 week extension. So please pray that we can turn things around quickly as we want to hurry and go get this handsome little boy home! We are all smiles today after seeing these pictures!

 God is sooooogood!