DTC!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE ARE DTC!!!!!!!!  For all you non-Chinese adoption obsessed people, that stands for Dossier to China.  I think I have mentioned in posts past that our dossier is all of our certified and authenticated documents that we have spent the last 6 months running all over Michigan and Ohio to gather notaries on, taking them onto Columbus to the Secretary of State's office for special authentication, only to tearfully send them off to Washington D.C. to spend a week getting even more authentications and certifications completed on them! Yes, I did actually cry after these precious pieces of paper were in Fed Ex's hands earlier this month.  We send them off to Washington D.C. to a courier service who actually walked them into the offices where they needed to go for certification.  When I was telling the courier over the phone that I cried when I sent them off to him, he didn't laugh at me as I had expected him to.  He simply said, "...to an adoptive parent, until you get your child in your arms, those documents are all you have of your child, and so you cling onto them as if they are one."  That really stuck to me, and I'm sure any adoptive parent can relate to those words.  All of those precious hours spent collecting that information that gets us one step closer to getting our little man in our arms.  Gone.  It was as though I was leaving my child for a week instead of just a set of papers!

Once the dossier left Washington D.C., it went straight onto our agency in Washington.  It arrived there safely late last week, but of course with the holiday, they weren't able to add what they needed to until this week.  With that being said, at about 6pm last night, I received the most glorious Fed Ex tracking email that I have ever received...in Chinese!  It looks as though our dossier should be arriving in China on June 3rd.  Once it arrives, we will then be looking to be notified of our LID, or Log In Date.  This is the date that our dossier is logged into their system, and that is when we start to wait for our LOA, or Letter of Acceptance to arrive on our doorstep.  This is simply a letter from the Chinese government that asks us if we are wanting to move forward with this adoption process.  I know what you are thinking...really?  I know, formalities...ugh! This LOA has been trending for others anywhere from 35-100ish days after receiving their LID.  So...it will be a looooooong summer!   Not really, we are actually busy as ever, and I'm hoping if we keep busy, we don't get wrapped up in our wait!  Once we receive our LOA, they say it is typically around 8-12 weeks from that point to when you actually get on a plane for China!  Whoo hooo!!!

That's all for now, but we have a VERY exciting part 2 to this post that you will want to stay tuned for!  If you have been praying for us, please pray for our little man, for his safety and physical health.  Also for the protection of our documents as they travel to China, and for a speedy processing of them!

Birthday Boy!

Today is our little man's 3rd birthday!  A day that I feel mixed emotions towards, as I have been thinking of May 5th for some time now in my head.  Birthdays are great days around our house.  I mean, your birthday around here is a BIG deal!  But as I rose out of bed this morning, I had a heavy heart knowing that our little man was alone for his birthday.  Not alone in the literal sense, but alone in the sense that no one celebrated his most very special day.  I've read that often times in orphanages, they don't celebrate each child's birthday because there are just too many kids to make that possible.  Just breaks my heart.  On the other hand, it does make this momma's heart happy to know that this is the LAST birthday that our little guy will be alone, and that makes me smile!

As an early birthday gift for our little man, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office decided to send us our approval letter for our I800A, which also magically turned into the I797C.  Insert ooohhhs and ahhhs here :)  So, our goal for this week is to get everything down to the Secretary of State's office for our final round of certification and to also get everything out to Washington D.C. to get authenticated by the U.S. government and Chinese Embassy.  Once these documents have gone through both, they will be overnighted to our agency in Washington, and then they will send our dossier to China!  I'm being optimistic and thinking that we have a shot of getting them there by our early June deadline if all goes well!  Please be praying for this next and very important step to go smoothly!

Once I'm finished sending things out Wednesday, then I'm going to be focusing on completing a few more grant applications and hopefully starting to get working on that top secret fundraiser that I may or may not have mentioned in my last post...I can't remember!

Thanks to all for all of your continued support and prayers!  We are so thankful to have such wonderful friends and family!