Someone wake me when we get to China ...

That's what I actually considered for our blog name, but I didn't want our little one to see it and feel hurt in the future. The referrals for June 2007 were for Nov. 1-7, 2005, (yes, that is 2005!!). Only seven days. That's looking like three to four years for us, and that's the optimistic outlook! The waiting is not really the hard part, believe it or not, it's the not knowing what's going to happen in the multiple years that is so hard. We've been waiting so long, and it seems every turn we make toward our family is the wrong one. So as Kevin is usually the driver, and I'm the navigator, I'm going to fold the map, put it away and sleep this one out.

Someone wake me when we get to China ...

Here's our little girl's name

We came up with the name of our daughter pretty quick. We both liked "Emily," and we're going to love calling her Em, Emmie, Emma — we love nicknames, can you tell? :)

This is a cool Web site to go to and see if you can find the Chinese characters for your name:
http://chineseculture.about.com/library/name/blname.htm

Two months down ...

Today is the second month anniversary of being LID (log-in date of our adoption dossier with China)!!
As Kevin said earlier, only 24 more months to go :) and I replied we'll still be saying that this time next year!
Really, though, the wait time right now is approaching 19 months, I believe, and I know it is at 18 months for sure. Some speculate the wait will go up to 3 years and beyond. We only can hope the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) will speed up the number of referrals. It used to be a month or referrals at a time every month. Now it is only a few days every month. That are backed up to November 2005, and several people speculate it will take 5 months or more to get through the referrals of the LIDs that month alone (apparently it was a big month).
So, pull up a chair and get comfortable. We'll be here awhile. :)

LID!

We received our LID. It's 4-4-07. Now we sit and wait for our referral. How long that will be is anybody's guess. Right now, the wait is 18 months, but it's expected by most people to increase, probably to 24 months and maybe more. We shall see. Regardless, we're in this until we get our daughter.

The day that changed our lives

Saturday, Oct. 14, 2006: As we got up early and headed into Enid for a workshop on adopting from China, we didn't realize our lives were about to change. Too many disappointments in the past prompted us not to expect much, but when we left the church building that day where the workshop was held, we were excited. Adopting from China, using Great Wall China Adoption, just seemed right. We decided to wait, not get too excited, but by the next day our decision was made, and here we are, 5 months and 6 days after that day. We are DTC (dossier to China) and waiting on our LID (official log in with the Chinese government - CCAA)

Hi everyone

This is our blog chronicling our journey to bring home our child from China.