Happy Birthday, Katie!

I can't believe my baby is 5!
It was a big birthday weekend for her, with a party for her friends on Saturday
 and  family over for lunch today. (Wish all of the family could have been here!)

Hoping for LID...

Was hoping for LID last week and it just didn't come. SO hoping and praying that TOMORROW it will come!

DHL

Been tracking DHL all weekend! During the weekend and often while we were sleeping, our dossier went from Delaware to Philadelphia to Cincinnati to Hong Kong to Shanghai and is now DELIVERED! (It's Monday morning in China while it's still Sunday evening here) Would love to see our LID (logged in date) come through this week! Baby steps!

DTC!

We are DTC!!!!! (Dossier to China) See blog below about all the acronyms!!
WOOOOOOOOOOO! We have waited a LONG time for this! (8 months)

To Delaware

I just returned from shipping our dossier to our agency, Madison Adoption Associates, in Delaware! I hope they are able to send them right on to China this week!! Woo Hoo

DTC LID LOA TA What does it all mean?

Lots of you are asking, "Now that you're matched, what's next?" Here's a peek into all the acronyms that make up the journey of adopting a child from China. (Every country has their own set of papers and "letters".)

From February to today we have been working on the dossier. The dossier consists of paperwork that China will review to approve us as people they will allow to adopt a child from their country. It includes:
birth and marriage certificates
physician reports (about our health)
social worker's home study
police reports
employment letters
Homeland Security's fingerprint approval

Here are all the remaining steps:
DTC (Dossier To China)
LID (Logged In Date: the date China logs our dossier into their system)
LOA (Letter Of Approval) Letter from China approving us to adopt Sophie
NVC (National Visa Center) sends a letter to the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China
Article 5 - US Consulate reviews Sophie's travel visa and gives TA
TA (Travel Approval) buy tickets to China! leave in appox. 2 weeks

Whew!
THEN....
Once we arrive in China we have a pretty busy 2 weeks with Civil Affairs, Consulate appointments, etc before we arrive HOME WITH SOPHIE!!

At this point we think travel may happen in February/March, 2012. As you can see it's a guess with all these steps that have to happen and not all of them happen in a standard 2 weeks! For example, LOA can take 6 weeks to 4 months.

Thanks for joining us for the ride. Please pray with us to be willing to accept God's timing, whatever it is. And pray for our daughter's heart to be open to us and to bond and attach quickly with her new family.

Thank you, God!

God has done a miracle with our paperwork! ALL our papers were processed by the Chinese Consulate yesterday! HURRAY! I should get them all back via FedEx today and will copy them and send them to Madison Adoption Associates and they will send them to China!!