New Arrivals

My cousin Pat and his wife Cathy just had their first child, Harrison Garst Hoffman. Time goes by so fast, I remember holding Pat when he was a little baby and now he has a baby of his own. I am getting old!!

As I was typing this blog Tim called me and told me that Rose (sister in-law) just had her second child. Rose and Jim (Tim's brother) live in China, they teach at an ex-pat school. They had a baby girl, her name is Alma. My in-laws are leaving for China next weekend to meet their second grandchild. Hopefully next year at this time Jim & Judy (in-laws) will be proud grandparents of their third grandchild, Mei.

Our fingerprints expire on 4/11/07 and our I-600A expires on 7/20/07. When we got fingerprinted 15 months ago, I thought to myself "we are in the clear, there is no way it is going to take 15 months to get our referral", well, I guess I was wrong. I am just hoping we get our referral before our new fingerprints and I-600A expire!!!

The I-600A needs to be completed by a U.S. citizen who plans to adopt a foreign-born orphan but does not have a specific child in mind. The I-600A is filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. We need to be re-fingerprinted as part of renewing our I-600A and our home study will need to be updated, and of course, there is an additional fee for getting re-fingerprinted and re-filing the I-600A. Oh well, I know it will be worth it when we finally bring Mei home.

FYI - our fingerprints are valid for 15 months from date of fingerprinting and the I-600A approval is valid for 18 months from the date of completion printed on the I-171H (Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition).

I am off to work on our I-600A application for the second time since we started this process, hopefully this will be the last time (at least for this adoption).

New Computer

We got a new computer, a MacBook, on Sunday. We are both PC users so the Mac world takes some getting used to. It took me almost 2 hours to figure out how to get the picture of Fly from IPhoto to this blog!! My sister helped me figure it out. I love my new Mac but I think I have had enough of the computer for one night. I am off to watch the 10:00 news.

FYI - Fly is a retired racer. I adopted him six years ago from Greyhound Pets of America, he is 10 years old.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!!

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we met again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. - Irish Blessing -

This Irish Blessing always reminds me of my Uncle Frank and Aunt Connie. My mom, my sisters and I sang it at their wedding. Hopefully I was a better singer back then.

My Grandfather was Irish, If I remember correctly, he came to America when he was 3 or 4. He passed away 10 years ago, I still miss him very much. I know he is watching over me and I think he would be very happy with our decision to adopt. He was a big part of my life and I feel very lucky to have had such a special bond with him. OK, I am crying now so I need to change the subject.

Not much going on with us. Tim is at the mountain snowboarding. I should be doing stuff around the house, but as you can see, I am on the computer. We might go out tonight for St. Patty's day with some friends, if Tim is not to tired after snowboarding all day. Hopefully next year at this time we will be parents!

My first blog posting

This is our journey to becoming parents. We are like most married couples who want to have a family (I think), we got married (in the fall of 2002) and thought it would be easy, we thought we would become parents in our first year of marriage, we did not. We decided to adopt in the summer of 2005. We discussed our option, domestic or international, and did a lot of research and decided to adopt from China. We started the "paper chase" in Aug of 2005 and we were LID with the CCAA on March 7, 2006. When we started the process, the wait time from LID to referral was 6-9 months, it is now 16-19 months.

We are private people, so when I told my husband I wanted to start a blog he thought I was nuts. Before we started the adoption process, I rarely searched the Internet and I did not know what a blog was. I try not to get caught up in the rumor mill, but reading other peoples blogs about their adoption experience helps because they understand. We started attending the FCC Waiting Families meetings about 6 months ago and have already witnessed several families receive their referrals and travel to China to bring home their beautiful children.

We are hoping to travel to China this year to bring our daughter home but it may not work out that way. When we hold our beautiful little girl for the first time, I know we will forget about the long wait and all we will feel is love for our new daughter, Mei.

I started this blog to keep family and friends updated on our adoption progress and our lives in general. I am not sure how to do the blogging thing or if my family and friends will read it but I guess we will see. I am off to watch Grey's Anatomy and Tim is out with his friends watching basketball, which he will be doing all weekend - gotta love March Madness.