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!!