Abbrivation Meanings

For those of you who do not know what the abbrivations stand for here is the run down.

AWA - America World Adoption (Our agency)
HS - Home Study
SW - Social Worker
DTC - Dossier To China (Our home study and all our paper work goes to China)
EA/LOI - Electronic Acceptance/Letter of Intent (Initial Contact letting China know your intent to adopt a certain child)
PA - Pre-approval (China knows your intent and has given you pre-approval for your child!)RA/LOA - Referral Acceptance/Letter of Acceptance (China sends written approval and you send back your acceptance.
TA - Travel Approval (Permission to travel to China)
CA - Consulate Appointment (Needed for childs Visa to become a US citizen)

Tenative EA Date!

Our FC was out of the office most of this week. She returned today and called to let us know that if all went well she expected us to be able to send our EA on Monday! How exciting!!

Blog Redesigned

As you can see we had the blog redesigned. Jenny at Pink Armchair Designs did it for us and worked her tail off! LOL As you can see there is a grab button on our side bar, please do not grab it yet. We are gearing up for our fundraiser soon and will use it for that. We will let you know when the kick off is.

Received One More

We received state #2 clearances today! How is that for super fast! Less than a week with a holiday thrown in the mix. If only state #3 comes that fast! Did I tell you that only half of our home states clearances are back? So frustrating.

Our home study rough draft is with our FC at AW. I had hoped we'd hear some thing today but we did not. Praying we are able to send our LOI/RA by the end of the week. We are getting ready to send the rest of our documents off to the Chinese Consulate to finish the notarization process.

These are the steps we have left before our paper work can be shipped to China.

-State #1 Child Abuse Clearance (we have criminal clearance back)
-State #3 Clearance
-Immigration Finger Printing
-Receive I-800
-Notarize I-800 and Homestudy
-Send documents to Agency
-Agency sends DTC!!!

Mind you this could all still take months. Praying that it does not.

Sending LOI/EA?

It appears that the rough draft of our home study has made it's way to our family coordinator yesterday. That is wonderful news because as soon as she is done reviewing and tweaking it then she will be able to send our Letter of Intent/Electronic Acceptance to China and let them know we want to adopt Evan!

Praying that next week is full of good news. :)

Evan's School

On Monday we visited our State School for the Deaf. I must admit when we pulled up I had to hold back the flood gate of tears. I was overwhelmed with emotions. It finally felt real but after hearing the heartbreaking news that we were further away than we thought we were from getting Evan it was hard.

We spent two hours with the Director of Pupil Personnel Services and a half hour with the schools audiologist. They were the nicest people. Actually everyone we met at the school was super nice. We toured the whole school which is huge by the way! We saw their gym, fitness room, 3 cafeterias (small tables, medium tables and large table) OK I'll stop listing everything because I can go on and on. They do have an indoor pool that the children use as part of their PE. I love that! Did I tell you every child must take music? The music teacher also told us that 85% of the students take a musical instrument by middle school years. How awesome is that! The school also offers a birth to 3 program and then a preschool program for children.

It is a state school so they have to offer residential living. We were able to walk through the dormitories and saw were the students sleep, their kitchen and lounge area. I must say it is all very nice but I'm so glad we live very close to the school. Anyone under 34 miles will be bused to the school everyday. Over that you must stay on campus.

It is very diverse. There are students from Burma, Thailand, Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and one more country that I can't think of. I just think it is awesome. We don't have that much in our public school.

I must say we are very glad we took the time to visit the school. I think Evan will really like it there.

Glimmer of Hope

I receive an e-mail yesterday that state #2 received our faxed paper work from our SW. The SW called to make sure it went through OK and the lady said that she would process them by today and have them out in the mail! :) How is that for fast. We should have them by next week.

Unfortunately we have to snail mail the forms for state #3 but our SW is adding a cover letter stating that we are completely done with our home study and waiting on SC to apply for our I-800. Could they please expedite? It's worth a shot. Otherwise it could be weeks before we see those.

Keep those prayers coming as they are doing wonderful things! :) Thanks friends.