The Upside, A New Look, LOI, PA!

Ok, I said during my last post that things had been up and down so here is the upside! As you can tell there is a new look to our blog to celebrate this wonderful news that we have ...... It's a girl! Yes, we are on another journey to add to our family and this time it is a girl so it is pink galore!
I have been wanting to tell you all for weeks now but with everything going on and then trying to go hyper-speed on the paperwork, I just have not had the time. So today I needed a paperwork break and thought it would be great to post and update the blog, I just love the colors, it has been awhile since pink has been a color that I get to look at much.

Ok, ok, so here are the details. We had decided to move forward with another adoption this summer but decided that Russia was just not for us this time. The last time, the stress was just unbearable at times and it seemed like they are trying to make it harder and harder to adopt from there. Also the travel was just way too much for all of our family to handle this time around. So with much thought, prayer and research, we decided to go to China. Now some of you who are familiar with adoption know that China's wait times are literally verging on 4 years if not more and that was not our plan, so we decided to go with the Special Needs program. China's special needs program includes older children, kids with medical issues both minor and correctable and more severe.

China adoptions are really very different then what we dealt with in Russia, especially the special needs program. So I have spent a lot of time searching the internet and joining yahoo groups trying to educate myself. We started the process to get our homestudy going back in August but I just put it off because frankly, I did not want to have to deal with all that paperwork. Ok, not a good reason to delay but I guess I was just not ready. I also know that God had our daughter all picked out and the time was just not right. The week I decided to get back on the papertrail, I started requesting info from agencies. China handles special needs in that they send out pictures and medical information to approved agencies on either a shared list( all agencies have access) or an individual list just to a specific agency. You can have access to these files and look for that one that you just make a connection with. So on Saturday November 14th, I got an email from and agency I was looking into regarding a little girl that was back on their list so I checked it out. I fell in love immediately and after Russ and I talked, I figured out how to lock her file and talking to doctors, we decided to move forward with the adoption( that is what the LOI is in the title), we wrote a Letter of Intent to adopt her. Next came the PA(Pre-approval) from China less than a week later. Now it is massive amounts of paperwork and trying to coordinate everything to get our dossier to China as fast as bureaucracy will let us. Once our dossier is logged into China(LID) we will wait for our Letter of Acceptance(LOA) and then our TA(Travel Approval). From looking at other's it seems that about 4-5 months from LID until travel, so the fast I get our paperwork done, the sooner we can bring her home.

Ok, The other great thing about working with China is that we have a picture and we know some things about her. Sophia is the name that we plan to give her. Her Chinese name is Lu Xin Yan, she just turned 5 in November and is currently in Foster care in a city south east of Beijing. Her special need is that she is post operative spina bifada but seems to be doing wonderful. She is a girly girl, loves pink and loves to be pretty( that means I can buy dresses again!). So without further delay here she is:
This picture reminds me so much of Micah

Doesn't she just melt your heart? That smile just gets me every time. I don't have much more to say except that we are all so very excited to add another little one to our family. It is so much easier to fight through the paperwork with a picture to look at and just dream. I don't know if I will get back to blogging before Christmas( trying to get a homestudy visit in before that - don't know if that will happen) so I want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas celebrating the joys of Christ in your life. I know that I already have my Christmas present and I couldn't be more thankful.

Blessings to you all!