It's Official!!!!

We just got word from our agency that we got the Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China!!!  This is the official notice from the CCAA that approves us to adopt little Siying.  So we can now post her pic!  Here she is...

How stinkin' cute is she???  Only little girls can make daddies gush this much!

So, when do we go to China and get her?  Best guess 3-4 months. I know, that seems too long.  I agree.  But there are a few more paperwork hurdles we have to go through on the US Customs and Immigration side. Our travel planning will start soon but no specific dates will get nailed down until the US Gov gives it's big stamp of approval.
Nevertheless, this is the BIG news we have been waiting and praying for. Yahoo!  We are sooooo excited.  We can now move forward with doing things like decorating her room and ordering her room furniture - all things we have been holding off on until we got this LOA. We'll update as we get more info, but things are definitely moving forward.  What a blessing!

We love you Siying and can't wait to bring you home.

Cast Your Vote!!!

CCAA guidelines request that we don't post our little one's pic on a public site until after we've gotten the LOA and are officially matched with Si Ying.  However many of you have seen her pic via email, so you know she is absolutely adorable.  We are still bouncing around on an American name for her and thought we'd let you play along.  So, I've created a poll to survey our friends on which name they like best.  Relax, your votes aren't binding; Melissa reserves the right to change her mind at any time and either add or drop a name from the list.  A few names that have already been passed over (unless Melis resurrects them) include Ruby, Fiona and Jar Jar (jk).  So, let us know what you think...we just might listen.

Little Jacques Update

So we've decided to resurrect the blog to fill everybody in on all the latest and greatest news about our little girl from China. That's right, we're going for number two!  So after over a year of paperwork hell we finally received a referral on February 8th; a beautiful 14-month old little girl from Nanchang, China.  She is gorgeous and cute and has the biggest brown eyes you've ever seen.  Our match with her has been "pre-approved", which basically means both China and our agency have preliminarily approved for us to be her forever family.  Now we are patiently awaiting the "official" match from China, called the Letter of Acceptance (LOA).  This takes an an average of 58 days but could take as long as 100 days.  Needless to say we are praying to beat the average.  After the LOA it can take up to three months to travel, so basically we are talking about a 5-6 month wait until we can go get our little girl.  The waiting is agony.  And I'm pretty convinced it will take that long since that would make our travel dates sometime in August.  August is the hottest month in Nanchang (one of the hottest cities in all of China) with average highs of 96 degrees.  So, we're pretty much guaranteed to go in August...

Tyson is very excited for his little sister to arrive.  I'm sure he thinks she'll kung fu with him and play with his Transformers.  He's probably in for a bit of a let down as there is nothing in her file to indicate she is much of a fan of giant, metal, fighting robots.  He has decided to name her Hot Dog, but he's changed his mind several times now so that's up for grabs.  We'll keep everyone updated as things move along, but be ready to play the waiting game with us for the next several month.  Thanks for celebrating this small miracle with us.  More news to come...