CA and travel booked!

Here we go folks and fun seekers!!!! Keep all arms and legs inside the ride at all times!

We have our consulate appointment on Jan 12. This date pretty much dictates our trip as we back it out from there. So, we leave on Dec31 for Beijing. We land on the 1st. We tour the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and the Forbidden City. All very cool. We then travel to Taiyuan City in the Shanxi province on the 3rd. We have not decided whether we want to take the train or fly. The next morning, Jan4th, we will get up, attempt to have breakfast and then go meet our daughter for the first time!! She will then come with us for a bonding period, about 24 hours. Assuming all is good, we will go back and meet with the officials on the 5th and complete the adoption and application for her passport. We then will do some touring of her home province for the next few days and shop and just start trying to develop a bond. On the 8th we will fly to Guangzhou. This is where all of the immigration related things will happen as well as a medical checkup, TB test, consulate appointment, etc. It is also where all adopting families will be as well. Her visa should be ready on the 14th. We will then take a late night flight to Beijing and stay at a hotel near the airport. Our flight home is on the 15th and we connect to Jetblue at JFK and then should be arriving Burlington just after 6pm. That's it in a nut shell. We are over the moon and pretty darn freaked out. Thanks to all for the support shown us thru this process.

Jim

TA TA TA!

We have our travel approval! We are really excited and more than a bit freaked out. So we are hoping to get our consulate appointment on the 12th and that puts us departing on Dec 31st. We should know by tomorrow.

Jim

Back on Track

There is not much to report right now. However we did get some tentative travel plans. Our coordinator thinks our TA is due any day now and if it comes in the next week we should be good to travel on Dec 31 to Beijing. Then we go to Taiyuan in the Shanxi Province on the 3rd, wake up the next morning and go get our girl! It's commonly called Gotcha day or Forever Family day, etc. We haven't really talked about what we'll call it. It is the day after that she becomes our daughter officially. We hang out for 4 or 5 days and then head to Guangzhou for a week. In Guangzhou we do a medical exam and TB test and all the immigration work. Plus we just hang out and start bonding with our little one. We will head home on the 15th. Once we get off the plane and to the immigration officer hand him/her the documents and they say "OK" or "You can go" or "Welcome to America", whatever, it's at that moment she becomes a US citizen. Then we take our last little flight to Burlington and we'll be together as a family for the first time. As far as work on the home goes, we are behind but at least back on the tracks again moving forward. Theater carpet comes in on Friday and then a cabinet or two to build in there and that room will nearly be finished. We hope to do some tiling prior to and immediately after Christmas and from there we will be getting very close. There is still tons to do, but we feel like we are getting there now.

Later,
Jim

....followed by six of the worst!

So many of you know that I awoke the Friday morning feeling fine, but within 5 minutes I began to feel a pain in my lower right abdomen. This ramped up very, very quickly. Ten minutes later we were herding the boys to the car with me doubled over in pain. Thankfully the ER is only about 10 minutes away, though it seemed like an hour. We got to the ER and while Jo was at registration two nurses came to me in the hall and took me away before we got any further. They got me hooked up to an IV and drew blood and all that. I was actually throwing up just from the pain. So long story shorter, they suspected a kidney stone and sent me to get a CAT scan. Sure enough, kidney stone. Only about 3-4mm but when you send something sharp as glass down an internal organ, size becomes less an issue. So we were able to get the pain down to within reason. Well various flare ups and two more ER visits and i finally made it to Wednesday when I can visit the Urologist. So we do that and get an X-ray to find out where the stone is. Turns out it was almost at the end. So we decide not to go to the operating room and suck it up. I took some pain killers at night and went to bed around 11:30. As usual I woke up about 4:45 when the pain meds wore off. This morning though the pain wasn't quite as bad and so I decided to hold off and not do another pill. I was awake thru when everyone else wakes up but nodded off at about 6:10 for about ten minutes. When i woke up, I was pain free!!!! Happy! So I said to Jo "Need help with the garbage?" She looked at me like, right, what are you gonna do! I said I all the sudden don't have pain and think that maybe the stone passed into the bladder. I was right. I'll save you the gruesome details but the stone popped out about an hour later. I am super happy to be done with that but I'm not 100% yet. I've still got a few smaller side issues, but I am so much happier. So, that's been my week. I've been so drugged I really don't know how the rest of my families has been. I guess I'll have to find out.

Later for now,
Jim

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