Dossier has passed the critical review, undergoing translation!

We received word late last week that our dossier is entirely in order! It has been submitted for translation and will soon be on its way to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA), the Chinese government agency that oversees adoptions. Once it is logged in at CCAA, our wait begins for a "match" with a child...the wait could be anywhere from just a month or two, up to nearly a year... I am personally hoping for a short wait for our match!! Once we are matched with a child, we wait another 3-6 months until we are able to travel.

The waiting is still a struggle, but it's a chance to learn to rest on God's sovereignty and trust His timing.

In the meantime, we celebrated Anna's 8th birthday this week!! She had a pool party here at the house for a few friends, and we had a fabulous time. I can't believe she is 8 years old already! We also bought hiking shoes for Jared last night since he leaves next weekend for a week at Boy Scout summer camp. Not only can I not believe that he will be away from us for a whole week at a camp in Georgia learning to shoot a rifle, drive a motorboat, ride a horse, and live in the mountains, but--get this--his shoe size is only a size and a half smaller that Tom's!! Yikes! When did this happen??

Thanks for the comments some of you have left for us...always fun to hear from friends!

Happy Father's Day to any dads who are reading!

Enjoy the photos! There are some from the last day of school, the black and white of Jared is his 5th grade portrait (isn't he handsome?) and some are from Anna's birthday.

State Certification is Complete!

Last week, Tom and I visited our notary at the Eglin Hospital (I told her we'd have to name our baby Kim in her honor after all the time we put in!) and had all our dossier documents notarized. The timing couldn't hvae been better--Tom's folks arrived Thursday evening to spend a week with us and Tom had Friday off. So, he and I took off Friday to drive all the paperwork to Tallahassee for state certification. Then, as planned, we spent a lovely 2 nights together in a local resort to celebrate our anniversary while Grammy and Pop Pop stayed with the kids and the dog. We had a nice time away and they all seemed to enjoy their time together!

Now, the final step in getting the dossier ready for submission is authentication. Tuesday morning, i will express mail the entire package to the local Chinese consulate to accoplish this last step, before the dossier undergoes critical review with our agency and then is sent off to China. Slowly we are able to tick things off the list.

Our agency last Friday did present something for Tom and me to consider--would we maybe be willing to consider accepting a little boy instead of a girl? Hmmmm....something we were thankful to have a few days away to think, talk, and pray about. We are still sort of undecided and have some questions I need to ask our agency first thing Tuesday morning. After thinking about our new child as our "daughter" and our "little girl" since we began chasing paper last fall, it seems weird to now perhaps switch gears. But we are challenging our thinking and our assumptions because boy or girl, we don't want to miss any of the blessings God might have in store for us with this adoption. We will keep you posted!

I-171H Finally Came!!

Yesterday afternoon the mailbox finally contained our final piece of the dossier! I was thrilled. The next layer of the onion (I have come to think of this whole process as a giant onion with layer upon layer to be unpeeled one at a time) can now begin to unpeel. The flurry of activity that accompanies each layer of the onion is now beginning: today we hope to have everything notarized, tomorrow we hope to drive to Tallahassee to have it all certified by the Florida Secretary of State, and then we can express mail it all off to the Chinese Consulate in Houston for authentication. Then, finally, after a final critical review at CCAI (our adoption agency), the dossier will be sent to China. Then, beginning anew will be the waiting that follows the flurry of activity with each layer of the onion--this time the waiting to learn who our daughter is.

Tragic news also came yesterday--the 5-year-old daughter of Christian Singer/Songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman was killed yesterday in the family's driveway, struck accidentally by a car driven by her older brother who didn't see her. I do not obviously know this family personally, but this well-known family has 3 biological children and 3 children adopted from China and has done much to raise awareness of the need for families to love Chinese orphans through their organization, Shaohannah's Hope. Here is a link to a story on this tragedy, as well as links to their organization and Mary Beth Chapman's weblog.

http://chapmanchannel.typepad.com/marybeth/

http://members.shaohannahshope.org/site/PageServer

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,357046,00.html

Finally, back to good news, Tom's parents are arriving either late this evening or tomorrow for about a week. We are so excited to see them! They are driving here from Missouri, where they attended our niece, Jollene's, college graduation. How exciting! They will stay with the kids while we take 2 nights away to celebrate our anniversary, and they will also be here next week when Tom pins on Lt. Colonel. How exciting!

OK, off to begin my flurry of activity with the dossier! Thanks for reading!