Waiting.....

We think we will travel around mid to late September. That is if we stay the average, we could go sooner we could go later. If you are wondering if the wait is harder now that we have a picture of Sophie, nope the entire wait SUCKS! Ok, I will be honest it is a little harder. Each time I look at her picture my heart aches. Is she ok? Can she hear my whispers that we love her and that we are coming?

This is the most exhausting experience, and I know it will all be worth it once that little girl that we have dreamed and waited for is put in our arms. We love you Sophie, we will be there soon. We promise.

Sista Can You Spare a Square??

Awhile back I found a lady to make Sophie's 100 wishes quilt. I recognized that I wasn't going to be able to make the quilt, but I could write a check! Well now it is time to get it done and I still need fourteen squares. If you would like to help me out and send me a square drop me an email at maryellen@otsports.com. I would be happy to send you a square too!

Thanks!

This and That.....

Just a few of the things going on in TBG Land.....

Ben left today for his National Technology conference. He won't be home unitl Thursday night, I really pushed for Chris to let him go ( code for come up with the cash). This week I changed my mind.....he will be 8 hours away for 6 days. Chris laughed this morning at the thought of me being away from Ben and Hannah for 2 weeks when we go to China. Not to worry though, we decided waaaaay back that they would be coming with us to meet their baby sister.

We are still waiting for our loveseat and sofa that I ordered 2 weeks before we got our referral. We have painted the room and the built-in cabinets. I have ordered the window treatments and the pillows for the furniture. This is my referral theory; as soon as we decided to redecorate the family room with new furniture and window treatments we layed out the $$$. We were not expecting a referral anytime soon, so why not right??!! 2 weeks to the day that I ordered the furniture we got our referral! ( DISCLAIMER: this is not a scientifically proven theory, but our baby girl is going to have a fabulous family room to hang out in with her brother and sister!)

I had a doctors appt. this week for my yearly physical. I don't go to an ob/gyn my regular doc takes care of me head to toe. Anyway I ususally count on them being about 20-30 mintues behind. I waited total of an hour and fifteen minutes and I still had not seen my doctor! The nurse took me back and did the ususal but I was still waiting for the doctor an hour and fifteen minutes. I had to get dressed and leave before I saw my doctor, Ben had a dentist appointment. I wasted an hour and fifteen minutes of my day! I tried not to be nasty, I know that all it takes are two old ladies who have been looking forward to seeing Dr. M so they could tell her EVERYTHING, and the office gets behind schedule. But when they called me to reshedule the receptionist said "oh, here we go I have a 15 minute block right here that I can put you in." What???? could this be the problem?? I don't have anything wrong with me and I know that my appointment is going to last longer than 15 minutes!! WTF???

It is amazing what you can find out on the adoption yahoo boards. On Sophie's province board I found out that all if not most of the babies and toddlers had been moved to foster care in May due to a insect problem. Also that when sending care packages to our little ones remember that the mailman makes delivieries on a bike and won't deliver packages he can't carry. I also found out that Sophie was on another agency WC list back in December.

Hannah is having a great time at artsploration camp. It is a half day program through our school system. She gets to do all kinds of cool stuff like dance, music, drama, art etc. They will put on their performance on the last day of camp. I will post
some pictures.

Both Ben and Hannah did well in their first swim meet of the season. Both won 3rd place ribbons.

This part of the wait is harder than I anticipated. Hopefully it will fly by....

I cannot wait to go on my "girls only get away" in July!

Our Letter of Intent for Sophie is off to China today! It took forever to get to our agency. The wrong zip code was entered so I kept getting emails about attempts to deliver.....which of course sent me inot major freak out mode. ( Lets all take a moment and thank God that I am married to a man of infinite patience) Basically Sophie's letter was within 20 minutes of our agency and was delivered this morning. I got an email later today telling me that our letter was off to China.

Chris also sent off Sophie's care package. We will try to send her one each month until we are able to travel. This time I sent a photo album with labels for each picture in Chinese, Jelly Belly candy for her care takers, a little stuffed animal that Hannah has been sleeping with, bubbles for the kids, and 2 little summer outfits and a camera with her name written on it. I don't expect that we will get anything back, although many families have gotten their camera's back with pictures so I am hopeful. If you have any other ideas of things I can send, post a comment. I am open to suggestions!

Now we wait for our LOA (letter of acceptance). I am hoping that this goes quickly since we are already through review. We will just have to wait and see, but we are anticipating waiting 60-90 days until we travel.

Details....

I can't seem to post that picture enough! Anyway here are some details on our girl. She is from DaTong City, in the Shanxi Province. She was born on May 4, 2006. She is attached to her caregiver, and gets excited when she sees food. She seems to be developmentally on target, and smiles when you tease her. Her favorite thing to do is to be held or carried by her caregiver and to be taken outside to play.

Our agency should get our LOI tomorrow, then they will send it to the CCAA. That begins another wait for LOA (letter of acceptance) and TA. The average wait for travel is about 90 days give or take. That would likely put us traveling some time in September. I am working on a care package for Sophie and hope to have that out by the end of the week. I had a letter to the director of her SWI translated over at Research-China. They were very fast and affordable.

A big thank you to Colleen for the very cute little outfit for Sophie. I would post a pic but it is in the laundry! I will have to post one later.

Do you Believe in Red Thread Moments?

We have had an exciting unexpected week. It really is all just starting to hit me…in waves. For the 200 new readers from yesterday (seriously that is what my counter said for the day yesterday!) I’ll save you some time and tell you our story. We logged in NSN 3/29/06. But the waiting children’s list tugged at me, and after quite a few days of back and forth discussion Chris and I asked our agency to please consider us for the their waiting children’s program. In April 2006 we were the number 8 family on the waiting children’s list. We have been called 3 times since first being added to the list, and each time Sophie was not on the list. Each time we were disappointed and we continued to wait.

On June 4th I received an email from Colleen asking me if we got a call from our agency about the WC list. I told her no that we shouldn’t get a new list until sometime in July. Our agency had just sent a new request in the second week of May. That nigh Colleen dreamt that we got our referral.

On June 5th I tell friends at work that I am not expecting to get a call any time soon. I am ok with that; I have convinced myself that it will all happen when it is supposed to happen. I get a call at school from our agency around 1:45 I think that Sophie has found us! Soon as school ends we head over to see Chris and open Sophie’s picture. I email friends and family trying to keep it calm. We need to find out a little more about her SN. In my heart I know that we have found each other. Crazy Colleen calls me screaming about her dream…I am so thankful for my friends that have shared this journey with us. We wait for Sophie’s file to be translated and sent. There is nothing in there that will change our minds.

On June 12th the doorbell rings and our mail carrier is holding Sophie’s file. Hannah and I run and get our camera so we can take a picture of Sophie being “delivered”. The mail carrier is very nice. I ask him his name and if he has delivered many babies? Of course he says no, but he figured we must have been adopting since he has delivered passports, and some adoption related mail. I show him Sophie’s picture and tell him she is from China. He replies “ my daughters are also from China.” Ummm What???!! Yes, he has two daughters from China 4 and 7 years old. For the record we live in a fairly small town, for you shoppers out there this might help put it in perspective, our mall doesn’t have a Gap. Our mail carrier has two daughters from China, a very odd coincidence or just another Red Thread Moment…..

The Call

I need to write about this before I forget. Last Tuesday was the final day of our school field day. The last day is always crazy. The entire student body is piled into the gym for the 3-5 grade tug-a-war. Our P.E. teacher has an entire system worked out with brackets and everything....... it is crazy. Anyway I was in the gym watching the tug-a-war when our school secretary Jane came in the gym looking for me. She put her one hand on each of my arms and said, “ Your adoption agency is on the phone, run, run, run!!” I must have stood there for a split second because she had to tell me to run more than once! I didn’t expect our agency to get a new waiting childrens' list until some time in July. They had just sent a request in May for a new group of children. Needless to say I bolted out of the gym. The other special education teacher ran after me because she thought that one of my students had flipped. (I have a very strong student who has some pretty significant behavior issues and she figured I was going to need some back up!)

I was shaking when I picked up the phone. Ashley from Living Hope sweetly informed me that they had just received a new list of children and that there were two babies available. I don’t remember much of what she said except where Sophie was from and how old she was. I got off the phone and seriously I was shaking. I was talking to Jane and our school nurse when it hit me that I needed to call Chris!! Chris was very calm, of course, and was asking me all kinds of questions that I couldn’t remember the answers to because I was freaking out! I called Ashley back and she told me that there was something in English in Sophie’s file and did I want her to fax it to me, she also asked if I wanted her to email me Sophie’s picture. Ummmm….......YES!!

Thankfully it was the end of the day and Hannah and I headed over to Chris’s office with the information Ashley had faxed and to check email for Sophie’s picture. Sophie’s SN is something that we had said from the beginning that we could handle, but before we opened the picture I had to ask Chris first if he was sure. We both knew once we saw the picture it would be more difficult not to accept the file if her medical concerns were more than we thought we could handle. Chris clicked on Sophie ‘s picture and there was our little girl, no doubt about it…..

Not Much to Blog About...... Except Sophie!!!!!

Why yes that is Sophie! I got an unexpected call from our agency on Tuesday. We are waiting to get her complete translated file. But there is NOTHING in there that could change our minds......this is Ben and Hannah's little sister and our youngest daughter.

Ok details.....Besides being too stinkin cute for words, Sophia June was born on May 4, 2006. She is about 5 1/2 months old in this picture. We think that she is in the city of Da Tong, but won't know for sure until we get the rest of her file. She smiles if you tease her and she gets excited when she sees food. She is perfect. We will hopefully travel within the next 3 months. She is perfect we love her to pieces and can't wait to bring her home.

I have 2 pictures the other one she is crying and has tears right to the brim of her eyes. She has her little right hand tucked in her shirt in both pictures so you can't see it. The other picture makes me sad to see her little tears right on the edge. I will post more after we get some more info. We are over the moon and so happy it is hard to put it into words....

Last Week of School!

Yipeee! It is the last week of school! The year has gone by quickly. Having said that I will be kickin up some gravel when I pull out of the parking lot on Friday! Our staff party is being held at a local vineyard...pretty swanky for a bunch of beer loving teachers. Of course we are not allowed to drink, we will have a very nice lunch and wine tasting, or as Chris likes to put it " a bunch of teachers doing shots of local wine while eating their lunch."