We Have L.I.D. !!!

We were notified this morning that our Log in Date is November 23 2007!

It seems as good of a day as any. Now we can only sit back and wait and imagine holding our little girl for the first time.
We were told about the other families and couples who are also in our group who will all be receiving referrals at the same time and will travel to China together with us when the time comes! It will be nice to have the support of others in our situation and I'm sure that we will be forming some new friendships along the way. Some of the others in our group are from other parts of Canada and some are from right here in Calgary, so I can imagine that we'll be getting to know each other quite well in the next few years while we wait for our special referrals!
We are both happy and excited that we have reached yet another high point in this process!
Although we are only standing at the base of this mountain, we're prepared for a long climb, and we know our little daughter will be waiting for us at the peak, so we can't wait to get there!!!!

A Double Celebration!

Well, I know I said I wouldn't post anything until we heard of our logged in Date.....I lied.

Today was such a special day for us!

We sent our Dossier on it's way! It is now out of our hands and gone to Ottawa to be Authenticated and Translated. I went to the post office today and got my friend Clay to take a picture of me sending the whole package on it's way. It was hard to let go of something we've worked so hard over the Past 7 months to put together! I found out that today is actually a very special day in Chinese Culture. It is the Mid-Autumn Moon festival today. It is traditional to reunite with family and celebrate by eating, drinking, looking at the moon and enjoying little moon cakes. I thought it would be a great way for us to celebrate our big step into the adoption of our little girl by getting some moon cakes and having a little moon festival party, so John went to the T&T supermarket and after a little bit of "moon cake education" from the baker at the store, he arrived home with a beautiful little box containing 4 moon cakes for our party. Cadence was VERY excited to try one! Avery was already in bed by the time the moon cakes showed up, but we'll let her see them tomorrow. Well, we definitely liked the way the moon cakes looked! The taste on the other hand...well, lets just say that for next year's moon festival, we are going to put our own spin on moon cakes!!

So we had a great day, sending off our Dossier and experiencing our own little moon festival celebration. We are looking forward to many more celebrations ahead!

I've posted a few pictures of the high lites of our day!

So Much Has Happened!!

Well, once again our life has been so busy that I haven't had a second to update our blog...sorry.
So much has happened in the past month and a half! The last time I wrote that John's pardon was on the way in the mail. We received it in our hot little hands on August 6 and went the very next day to apply for John's clean record check from the municipal Police service. Our Agency was able to process everything for our home study and send it to the Director for adoptions for Alberta by August 29. In the meantime, John and I went to renew our passports which we received only 2 weeks later in the mail!! I love it when things happen quicker than we expect!
Then, 2 days after our passports came in, we received our provincial approval letter from the Director of Adoptions for Alberta!!! Needless to say we have been frantically gathering all of the required documents for our Dossier which we have been collecting since February. We now have everything together except for one last letter of request to China to adopt a child, as well as some "family life" photos with descriptions on each. We can get those tasks done in the next day or so.

I took a few pictures of all of the paperwork that we have been anxiously waiting for, creating, collecting and completing over the past 7 months. They will be something we can always look back on as a reminder of how hard we worked to become the lucky parents of one very special little girl!
It will be such different feeling once the dossier has been sent and logged into China....knowing that there's nothing that has to be filled out, acquired, picked up, sent in the mail, etc...until aprox. 3 years from now, when we receive our referral
it's a good thing because I don't know how much more info I can retain before I start forgetting my own name! ...Actually that has happened recently. Oh well, I'll be clearing up some room soon I hope!

We will be sooo excited to announce that we have sent our Dossier to China! That will be my next post, so until then....Cheers!!

I'm adding our little LADYBUG again so that she/he will continue to bring us Good Luck!

Pardon Granted!!!!!

We are happy to announce that John is now a free bird!! (he's been singing the song free bird all day!)
I called the Pardons and Clemency division in Ottawa this morning to find out the status of Johns pardon application. The officer there told me that the letter had been sent out just this morning, so we should see it in our mailbox next week sometime! Meaning that John's pardon is on it's way to us right now!
I'm so glad that the pardons officers took our plee seriously and processed John's application so quickly! This helps me to regain a little bit more faith in the system.
We are getting so close!!

Also today, I read that in Shanghai right now there are over 100,000 orphaned babies and toddlers under the age of 3. That's in Shanghai alone...which is basically the smallest province in all of china!! Wow. Knowing that makes it so much more frustrating to have to wait over a year to be placed with a child when there are so many little souls over there that need mommies and daddies and families right now. :(
But again, there is nothing we can do but wait for the little soul that was meant to be with us all along. Did I mention before that Cadence thinks she is growing our China baby in her belly button?? Too cute!
The truth is that our whole family is growing our China baby in our hearts!

I'll post again when we have word that our home study has been sent to the government of Alberta for approval. We're hoping for that to happen within a couple of weeks from now!
Bye! Hope every one's summer is going well!

Bon Voyage Pardon Application!

We have finally received all of the required paperwork for John's pardon application!
The girls and I ran down to the post office as soon as it opened up this morning so that we could mail it off!
If all goes well (the gov't actually processes John's pardon quickly as we requested) We should be able to send our homestudy to the gov't of Alberta in 5-8 weeks from now. I will be calling the pardon's division everyday until I am told that they have his application and are expediting his file. No point in backing off now...LETS GET THINGS GOING!!!
We are happy and excited that soon our dossier will be sent to China! by soon I mean a couple months, but in the grand scheme of things 2 months isn't much time to wait!

We just got back from our holidays. We had such a great time! It was a tiring trek, but well worth it! Cadence and Avery had so much fun!
The lake was beautiful this year and we can't wait to get back there next summer! A couple people asked me if we'd have our new baby by next summer so we can bring her to the lake too. Sorry people, but a couple more summers might pass before our little one can finally join us there. It will be so fun to watch her play in the sand with her sisters! Can't wait!!!

We'll keep you posted as to when John's pardon comes through!

Take care!

WOO HOO!!!!!!!!

O.M.G. O.M.G...........! We are SOOOOOOO excited!!!

The RCMP paperwork we thought we wouldn't get until September came in the mail today!!!!!!

The squeaky wheel worked after all!! (patting myself on the back)

We were feeling quite discouraged thinking we'd have to wait an extra 3-4 months before proceeding with the adoption process....now we can move along with John's pardon and get our application moving again!!!!

Geez...if we're this excited about getting RCMP papers I can't imagine what it will feel like when we get the adoption referral!!!

Anyways...we'll keep you posted as to what's going to happen next! For now I think we'll just take a deep breath and maybe do a little celebrating this weekend!! WooHoo!

Our Ultrasound

Seeing as though we are lucky enough to get to see everyone else's ultrasound photos, we thought we would share ours as well!! Hee Hee Hee...

Well, it's not quite the same...but it's as close as we're going to get to an ultrasound for our 3rd baby! She is, or will be, somewhere out there! We can only hope that she will be loved and cared for until we can get to China to welcome her into our family.

ROADBLOCK !

Well, it's not like we weren't expecting this to happen....
We've hit a bit of a road block. Because John did not have a sparkly clean criminal record like me (j.j.), he has to apply for a pardon. Don't worry...he did not do anything terrible...he was just a rebellious young lad with bad luck on his side!
We are waiting for word from the RCMP in Ottawa to let us know the status of his fingerprint screening so that we can move forward with the pardon application. Try getting a hold of ANYONE in Ottawa...I dare you. I have become the "squeaky wheel" that just won't go away. Hopefully someone will return one of my 50 phone messages regarding pressing the urgency on this matter! Once we get the go ahead for his pardon, it shouldn't take too much longer.........we hope. We still have our fingers crossed to get our papers to China by the end of the summer.

On a better note, our home study is finished and is now being professionally edited to prepare it to go to the Gov. Ab. for approval. So for now John and I are going to get our passports renewed and have another medical exam done...this time for the official China medical form.
They keep putting hoops in front of us and we'll keep jumping. Anything we have to do to get our little baby!

WHEW...!

Our Home study went very well! Carolyn (our Social Worker) was so nice...and funny, which made the whole process much easier on us. I will say though, that it was sooo very tiring. After she left yesterday I felt a wave of exhaustion rush over me. I think it was the anticipation and nervousness that I was all of a sudden washing out of my body. So we took it easy yesterday afternoon.
It's feels great to know that we have completed the biggest step of our paper chase!! woohoo! We're also one step closer to our 3rd baby! Man, what a feeling!
Anyway, Now we just have to wait a few weeks for Carolyn to complete the home study documents which will then be sent to us for review. At that point we can make amendments to it and scan it for any errors there might be. The whole thing gets checked over and over again because if there's even a small grammar mistake on it the Government of Alberta will shoot it right back at us...damn Government!

So right now we are just sitting tight and waiting for our next instructions!! :) :)

It's Homestudy Day!!!!

Our Social worker is meeting with John and I tonight, then she is returning again tomorrow to spend the morning with our family. We are excited and a little nervous! I've been picturing an interrogation room with one bright light and a lot of "on the spot" questions...but I've been told that's not how it will be.
John and I finished our own self assessment report last night...whew, that was sure a lengthy and very thorough process which took us over a week to complete! Now that it's done, we realize that it will be an important document in our adopted daughter's life. It reflects upon our life as it was, is and will hopefully be once she is a part of our family. In it we also describe the nature of our decision to adopt and the emotion that comes with the idea of blessing our family with such a special addition.
So, wish us luck!
I'll report afterward on how everything went with the home study!

The ladybug is a symbol of "good Luck" in the adoption world!
May this little ladybug bring us LOTS of luck along our journey!!

Well, A lot has been hapenning again since last time. John and I got all of the required paperwork into our agency that is needed in order for us to be assigned a social worker.
Our medicals were the last thing we had to send in. We got those done last week.
So now we have been assigned a Social Worker. She will begin our homestudy on April 17th. We do have some homework to do before she arrives though. We have to write a long and very in depth self assessment. I was told this that this is the most daunting task of the whole process (other than the wait). We are to hand our self assessment over to our Social worker when she arrives. This will help her write her report on us...so the more good things we write about ourselves the better her report will be!!! Sounds like a funny process, but whatever, we'll roll with it!
She comes to spend a few hours with just John and I on the 17th in the evening and then she will come back the next morning to spend about 4 hours with the whole family. After that she has to write her assessment on us and sent it into the Adoptions director for Alberta (Anne Sculley). Apparently it takes about 6 weeks to get authorization back from her. So Judging by all the timelines I've been told, if I had to guess, I would say we will have our dossier (group of documents) sent to China by the end of July. Here's hoping I'm right and not way out to lunch!

John and I also attended an International adoptions course over the weekend. It was Excellent! We got a lot of important informaton out of it! A family who had adopted from China last year came to speak about thier experience and answer questions for the group. When they walked in and we saw their little adopted daughter(mellissa) I got tears in my eyes. Then I looked over at John and he was grinning from ear to ear like a little kid at christmas! It was a great feeling and I can't imagine what we'll feel the first time we see our daughter, not to mention the first time we see all of our little girls together!!
Although there was a lot of positive moments during the course, it was also heartbreaking to hear about some of the things that happen to children all over the world. Leaves you with a feeling of wanting to do more to help them all...but one step at a time is all you can do I suppose...and every little step helps! It was nice to see that the room was full though! 28 couples looking to adopt meant that there would be 28 little kids saved from a life of poverty stricken orphanage life...or worse. Anyway...the course was great and left John and I feeling very excited.

One more thing that we did was we joined the I.A.F.A. (International Adoptive Families Association) This is a support network for adoptive families and adopted children. They hold special events throughout the year for the kids as well as the parents and families to be. I'm sure we will end up taking Cadie and Avery to many of the playgroups that are held. They also hold a "mom's night out" every once in a while which I would LOVE to take part in!! Any excuse to go out for some fun!!
IAFA also provides education regarding international adoption.

I'll write another post after the Social worker has finished our homestudy visits to let everyone know how it all went!

Until then.....:)

As I was researching more about Chinese Adoptions I came across a Poem and an ancient Chinese Belief that were so touching they made me ball my eyes out!
Here they are......

The Gift of Life
I didn't give you the Gift of Life, but in my heart I know
The Love I feel is deep and real,
As if it had been so.
For us to have eachother is like a dream come true!
No, I didn't give you the Gift of Life, Life gave me the Gift of You.


an ancient Chinese belief....
When a child is born, invisible red threads extend from the child's spirit and connect to all the signifigant people who will be part of the child's life. As the child grows, the threads shorten, drawing closer those people who are destined to be together.

It's stuff like this that makes me wish we had our 3rd little daughter Already so we could give her a huge hug and kiss!

Whew...it's been a busy couple of weeks with my mom being in town and Avery's 1st Birthday, so I haven't been able to post any news!
So here it is.....

We got our authorization for International Adoption from the Gov. Ab. on Feb. 28th just as we had hoped! woohoo!
Our next hurdle was to send in a big long application to our agency along with the first portion of our paperwork which we had been gathering. We sent all of that in on March 6th. We have only a couple more things to send into our agency before they can assign us a social worker for our homestudy. I'm hoping that sometime in April our homestudy will begin. I was told by a lady at our Agency that the homestudy can be as quick as 3 weeks long! That is a lot better than what I was expecting!

I was looking at a few other blogs by families who are also adopting. Apparently the wait time from L.I.D. (documents logged in date in China) till the time of referral is aprox. 16 months right now. It is expected to get longer, but we'll watch and see what happens. I get so excited thinking about it all and then I think about how long 16 months - 24 months really is. Man that's going to be the hardest wait EVER!

As I mentioned above we had Avery's 1st birthday this past weekend. She enjoyed her birthday and birthday cake very much. She practiced her walking again tonight with John and Cadence and myself. She took one step on her own from me to John. she knows what to do, she just needs to get her balance. She loves to clap for herself whether she actually crawls or tries to walk to us. Either way we all get excited! And Cadence showed us how she can hop on one foot. We all clapped and got very excited for her as well. Oh the milestones they reach!

I was also informed that Cadence has been telling the kids at her babysitter that she is getting a baby from China! I was shocked to hear that because when we mentioned our plans to her she seemed not to understand or take interest in what we were telling her. Funny how those little sponges take everything in and hold it there.

Well, I'll try to keep up the posts a little better from now on, but it's hard with such busy lives these days!
Until next time........:)

Hi again!
Just thought I'd report what's been going on in the last week or so. We haven't gotten our International Adoption Approval back from Child Services yet, but we are checking the mailbox every day!! We're hoping to see it arrive later this week. While waiting, we have started getting some of the paperwork together to send to our agency in order to start our homestudy. I've sent away for extra copies of John and my birth certificates as well as our marriage certificate. John got his certified letter of employment from Eagle copters, and today John and I went down to get our criminal record checks. Hope everything comes back clear!! We also got our references (thank you again for doing that for us guys!) There's a lot more that needs to be done before homestudy can begin, but if we chew away at it bit by bit we should get there in no time!
We also informed our immediate friends and family about our plans to adopt! Everyone was very happy and excited for us! We're so lucky to have such a great support system behind us!
Thanks everyone!
Well, my next post will hopefully be to let you all know that we got our International Adoption Approval in the mail!!
bye for now!

Today I called Christian Adoption Services to register us for the International Adoptions Course.
I spoke to a lady who advised us to fill out the International Adoption Application and send it in. This will get our file started!! I did as she said.
So on this day we have begun our long journey to adopting the 3rd of our little sweethearts.
I was told that the whole process from now until we go to China to get our daughter can take up to 2 years. As hard as the long journey will be, we are fine with it because we know that nothing is more worth the wait than this!!

A RED THREAD
A red thread to China was cast today from us to a child so far away. This thread symbolizes an attachment of hearts, that distance alone can't keep us apart. This tiny, thin thread may stretch, tangle or fray, but our love for her grows stronger each day. Through the test of time it won't break or sever, she'll be a part of us forever and ever. So for now we'll just love her and pray everyday that God keeps her and loves her for us till we may travel to China, that land of great past, to the side of our daughter, to hold her at last.

This is my first of many posts to come regarding the future adoption of our daughter from China! I am creating this blog so that we can share all of the memorable and precious events of this process with our friends and family!