Two of the best days we've had in a while

LOA BABY!!!!!!

Yesterday we received news that our LOA was here in the US. We will have tomorrow and sign it and then send it right back out. LOA is Letter of Acceptance and is essentially the official referral paperwork. So this is big stuff. Next step will be TA and then travel. So best guess based on historical time frames, we will travel about the first two weeks in January. That is of course completely open to change.

As for today, Thanksgiving day, we received several more up to date photos of our little girl. They are fantastic!!!! I'll include a few here. We also then heard from someone who was just visiting the orphanage who said she went to visit her at her foster home and has some more photos that she will get to us ASAP.

Throwing one more thing onto this is that Zack ran his first 5K race this morning. We really and truly couldn't be more proud of him. It was amazing to watch him complete this race!!! His teacher has done some great work getting him ready for this and really helping him learn how to run in an effective manner. Thanks Joe!!!

Oh, one more far less significant item.......Jo and I are sitting in our new theater room watching football on 120" screen in our new theater recliners under our nearly completed fiber optic star field ceiling as I type this. :)

So it's been a pretty good day. OK, onto the pictures......Oh, one last thing before I get to those.....HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

Through Review!

Got an email this morning stating we were through review. So onto the matching room. Our understanding is that the matching room is very quick so we hope to be getting LOA very soon.

Still holding out hope to at least begin our travel prior to years end.

Updates on the house:
We get everything done we could up to and including hanging the drywall. The guys are here this week to finish the drywall and hope to be finished this weekend. CB is driving out here starting this morning bringing Ally's bedroom stuff that we were given from our Mississippi friends!!! Go Carpets! So CB will be here tomorrow and we'll do a few small jobs before the drywallers finish. The theater stuff came in this past week. The fiber optic star field is due in the next day or two, and the theater chairs are on order also. So things are moving forward and it is starting to come together.

I'll try and get pictures soon.

That's it for now, I gotta order some wallpaper border and some more rugs!!!

JB

Not much new lately. We have had some updates about our progress but nothing that really tells when we are going to go. Our China coordinator has kept us as informed as she can. The latest we have is that we are in the "review" room. We got in there on Oct 20th and were still there as of this past Monday. We don't know why we are there as we went thru review prior to switching to a special needs child. I can only assume that since we switched agencies that the person that reviews files for our new agency wanted to go thru our stuff. So after review we will be headed to the matching room where our LOA is written. Once that is written it is sent to our agnecy and then to us. We sign it and it goes I beleive to the American Consolate in Guangzhou and then back to the adoption office in China. They then issue us Travel Approval - TA. During that time we apply for visas. Once we get TA and our visas have been issued, we can travel. we do have to have an appointment in place though at the consolate. So there is still a process to be gone thru yet but we are getting there. We expressed disapointment to our coordinator that we were still in review and probalby not traveling before end of the year. She said she still has good reason to think we will atleast leave prior to end of year. So it's hard to know what to think right now.

A few things that have happened in recent time is that we have made contact with two people that had previously sent LOI to adopt Ally and then rescinded it. One was due to proximity to medical facilities in the event they needed to address Ally's special need. The other withdrew because of an employement situation. So that is very wierd to come accross people that almost adopted our daughter. Obviously we had some concern that maybe they found out something that we didn't know about. However we have quite a large amount of information about ally now and all things point to a pretty normal life with a little extra care taken concerning her need. Certainly we are prepared for more and that could still be the reality, but all info we have to now says things are quite good considering what she's gone thru.

The other thing that happened is that we joined a group on Yahoo that is comprised of other parents adopting from her orphanage in Taiyuan City. In making contact there and announcing we were adopting Yi Xi (Ally), we were contacted discretely by someone who had pictures of Yi Xi. 164!!!!!!! All the way back to her abandonment day thru late summer 2008. You can not imagine how important that history is. It will be of immense importance for Ally to have that to look back on and also of great value for her doctors to understand her pre-surgical condition.

Things are going well with the house renovations other than a delay in the drywall being finished. The theater electronics are due today, and the fiber optics for the star field ceiling will be ordered today or tomorrow. We are looking forward to getting the house back to normal but right now that feels a long way off.

That's it for now, catch you later,
Jim