God Keeps Amazing...

Our package to Zhong Yong has hopefully made it's way to him by now. We sent the package below along with a letter to him, some pictures of our family and house and a camera for him to take pictures of himself and his friends. We also included a return envelope so he can write us a letter back. We also got an update of his measurements and the pictures above. He is smaller than I thought he would be. He is 5 inches smaller than Bradley and 13 pounds lighter than Kennedi! I'm positive he will grow tons once he's home!

God keeps amazing me with this adoption! It just seems like all keeps falling perfectly into place. For not expecting to be adopting from China again and only a month ago finding our son waiting on a website, I just can't believe it sometimes.

Last night I came in contact with the family who is adopting the boy in the orange shirt in the picture below. I check in daily to the yahoo chat group for the orphanage our boy is at (all the families adopting or have adopted from there are on there) and last night I finally posted his pictures. The family saw the picture and wrote to me that they are adopting the boy in the orange shirt. By the looks of the smile on our boy's face, it looks like they have a lot of fun together, so it will be fun to keep them in contact after we return home! They live in Washington (so not too far) but she (Chris) grew up in Tulare and has lived in Fresno! They also have 3 kids like we do and their youngest 8 and they adopted her from China the same year we adopted Kennedi! They are also using the same agency as we are. Wow! How crazy is that?? So many similarities. They are just slightly behind us in the process. Would be exciting if we could travel together!

She also told me of a rumor that came out yesterday that China is cutting out a step in the process, called the LOA or letter of approval. If this stands true, this will cut out about 2 months of our wait time! If possible, I would really like to take the kids with us to China (or at least Bradley) because it really helped Kennedi having Katelyn and Bradley there. Kids just have a way of relating to each other. So I've been praying that we would travel over the summer so the kids wouldn't miss school. This is a long shot with all the steps in the process, more likely would be October. Last night when I was driving home I was thinking about the likelyness of summer travel and just told myself anything is possible. Then I learned that there's this rumor. See, anything is possible! It IS just a rumor at this point, but now I have more hope that it could happen!

Funny I keep wanting an earlier travel and plan for the kids to maybe come along, because we have NO idea where we will get the money to get to China...let alone stay there and eat for 2 weeks! But the money part really hasn't worried me (at least not yet). I just really have this feeling like it will all work out. Weird, because I have never had this strong of a feeling before. Maybe I'm just being naive. Right now, I'm just enjoying not worrying about it. We are applying for two grants, JSC and Show Hope. Show Hope's deadline is December 31st but with the holidays we are not going to make that deadline because WACAP still needs to approve our homestudy and get us a letter to send to Show Hope (and the lady to do so is on vacation). So their next deadline is the end of March then it takes 90 days to hear back so that's the end of June! Ugh. That's pushing it close! JSC is much quicker and I have talked to two people who just got $10,000 grant from them! Wow, wouldn't that be nice! So as soon as our homestudy is approved, probably first week of January, I will send off our applications and then wait for results. Praying it all works out in our favor.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderfully blessed New Year!

Received PA Today!

After emailing our agency to check in on our pre-approval from China to adopt our boy (at day 15 because most families waited only 10 days for their's), I was told our PA had been in for days and I was not contacted by mistake. I'm glad I checked on it. It's not a huge deal really and not an official approval until they receive our dossier (homestudy and the other documents they need), but it does allow us to share with everyone his picture and we were able to send him a package for Christmas (which I ordered last night)! I'm excited for him to find out he finally has a family after waiting 11 years! Wish I could be a fly on that wall!

Our homestudy is just about completed. Mark had his physical on Tuesday, the kids have their's today, and myself tomorrow. Those get notarized and then off to our homestudy agency. They just need to plug in dates and our homestudy will be off to our agency to send on to Homeland Security for approval. That approval is taking about 70 days right now and once we receive that, our dossier goes to China (hopefully by the beginning of March). Having our homestudy completed also allows us to apply for grants. I really hope we receive one or two grants, it would help tremendously. I know a family who just received $15,000 in grants, I pray that will be us! Grants are not easy to get however, it all depends on the funding available. Please pray those come through for us, otherwise I am not sure where the rest of the funds will come from. If all things go smoothly and the wait times for documents stay the same and don't increase, we are looking at possibly traveling by August (fall at the latest but are really hoping for summer so if the kids go they won't miss school). I still can't believe how quickly this process this time is going! Thanks for the prayers and support!

Moving Right Along...

Things seem to be moving right along. Our final homestudy visit was last Friday so that part is all done. We have mailed off for our birth certificates and marriage licence...all have to be originals and less than a year old. We all have our physicals next week and then we can finalize our homestudy and send off our application to Homeland Security (I-800A). We are hopefully to receive our PA (pre-approval) from China by the end of this week! Once we do, we can send Zhong Yong a package and he will know he finally has a family!! I can't wait!!

We had a Gold Canyon candle fundraiser and are thankful to those who purchased candles to help us raise some of the money. We were also given $250 in cash donations this past weekend which were a huge blessing! As you can imagine, it does cost more to adopt internationally. We will be applying for grants but you cannot apply for those until your homestudy is finalized and then it takes weeks to hear back from them (and it's not guaranteed, and really not likely that you will be awarded one, because there are more applicants than there are funds). So we have to find alternatives to the fundraising until we get to that point. We have come across this neat t-shirt site. I love their t-shirts and what they say on them and they do fundraisers for adopting families!! They have shirts for women and children (sorry men) and we make $10 for every shirt sold. Just click the link to the right to go to the fundraising site. You must enter the code SALVADOR1206 in the coupon section when placing your order for us to get credit. If you want to just make a cash donation, you can do so as well by clicking the CHIP-IN link to the right as well and donate through Paypal. Thank you to all of you for your continued prayers and support!