Yikes, time to post, it's been a week.

I found this graphic on someone's blog, and it was just too cute (and too true,lol:)

Sorry it's already been over a week since I posted on here. Lots has been going on, mostly with work (and me adjusting to flipping back and forth between two shifts) Sleep seems to be something I'm always trying to fit into my schedule,ha ha, I'm hopeful I'll get used to this in time?

One of the things that Hasn't been going on,( as of this posting) is Kirby and Takaho's new baby has not yet made her appearance! She was due the 26th, tried to come a little bit early, and now seems to be dragging her feet. So, we are all waiting for That bit of news.

I've taken to calling her 'nameless second baby",ha ha, as they changed their minds about the name at the last minute, and now won't tell us what they've picked!

So, dear "NSB"....we're waiting for you!!!

Another baby the family is waiting on is the baby Tracy and Adam are in the process of adopting from China. Tracy thought they had good news at the beginning of the month, as far as when their referral was going to come through, and then she sent an email that said "the crappy rumors have started." And the rumors seem to be indicating that they won't get their referral till much later than they thought.

At the end of the email, she said "Thanks for riding the rollercoaster with us." and I was inspired to write a poem, to try and cheer she and Adam up. I sent it to them, and holy cow,lol, they posted it on their blog (if you want to see what type of poet I am:)

Click here: A Red Thread to China: From my sister-in-law

As far as trying to explain what they are going through? Adam sent a very informative email not too long ago, copied here:

Good morning,

I wanted to pass along some info about our adoption process.

 

If we jump in our way-back-machine and set the date to, well, way-back, I'll give a glimpse of how this process goes down.

 

November 11th, 2005: We see a giddy Tracy and Adam sealing up an envelope bulging with paperwork. This precious paperwork, or dossier, contains all sorts of info about us. Birth certificates, fingerprints, doctor's approval, home study, legal recounts (tickets, fines, etc) and most importantly, our adoption application. This heavy envelope, this messenger of hope, is now ready to make it's way to China where it will start the process of completing our family. According to the adoption community, we are now DTC (Dossier to China), on Nov. 11th, 2005.

 

back to the way-back-machine...

 

November 22nd, 2005: According to our adoption agency China revieved and acknowledged our dossier on November 22nd. Now we have a LID (Log-in Date) and the adoption process has officially started. From this day forward, November 22nd will be imprinted on our minds, similar to our birthday. I don't think I'll forget this date. It's also a date that we'll come to use very often later on as we meet other families adopting. It's almost like asking what someone's sign is. When new adopting parents meet, the big question is "What's your LID?" This date is important because it's the date that China will refer to whenever there is progress in the process.

 

Let's get back to our normal timeframe - back to the machine!

 

Each dossier in China goes through several stages before it comes back to us with a picture of our baby.

• When it arrives, it gets assigned a LID.
• Next it gets translated from English
• Then it moves to the Review Room. If China has any questions/issues about us as a couple or our history, they'll pull our dossier and ask here.
• The last steps are Pending Referral and Referral

China will (try to) process as many dossiers as they can in about a months time and then send those dossiers (which are now referrals) back to the waiting families. Every month those of us waiting are on seat's edge, hoping that they were able to move through several dates in this month's batch. As an example: This past April, China sent a group of referrals with a range of LIDs from October 26th - October 27th. Not a huge batch at all. As prospective parents we'd like there to be a bigger gap between the dates, as that means China is getting closer and closer to our Nov. 22nd LID.

 

Since China typically sends out a batch of referrals once a month, we are stuck waiting until next month to see how far they get. This month they sent a batch and the news was much brighter. The LIDs were October 28th - November 1st. As you can see, the 1st of Nov. is sort of close to the 22nd. This means they're finally processing dossiers that are in our month. This means that we are finally getting closer!

 

Currently the rumors in the adoption community are saying that June's batch of referrals could be anywere from the 8th to the 14th of November. Several scenarios can be played out from here:

 

China processes referrals up to Nov. 8th for the month of June. That would lead us to believe that they could then get to the 16th for July, at which point it would look very likely for our LID (Nov 22nd) to be included in August. 

 

OR

 

The rumors are true, and China processes referrals up to Nov. 14th for the month of June. Which would look very likely for our LID (Nov 22nd) to be included in July. 

 

I guess, all of the above to say...

As you can see, even as we're this close it's still a guessing game. However, once we get our referral and have accepted it, we will then be given Travel Approval. That will be our itineray and we'll have some firm dates that I can bring to you both. Typically, travel happens 6-8 weeks after we get our referral.

 

In summary, there's a slim,slim,slim,slim,SLIM chance that we'll get our referral in June - which would mean that we would travel in July/August. A more realistic guess is that we get our referral in July and travel in Aug/Sept.

 

 I hope this helps a bit, and if you have any questions, just let me know. I love to talk about it!

 

Adam

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(see why I think he's such a nice brother-in-law:)

 

In other news, we heard from Dustin, and he is doing OK. Can't believe it's almost time for him to graduate from training, when he left in Jan, it seemed like it was going to take Forever to get here!

 

And, the best brother in the world:) is sending April and I a digital camera!! Hurray! We're finally making it into the 21rst century,lol.

 

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Lastly, I have decided to go ahead and change this journal to 'public' status. Mostly because since part of my family is Not on AOL, it was kind of redundant, to post here and then still copy and paste all the news into an email to send to the non-AOL members of the family.

 

I've looked back through my previous postings (and discovered that most of my pictures associated with those postings seem to have disappeared...yikes! )and I don't really see anything that couldn't be written for public consumption.

 

So, it should be easier now, for family and friends to keep up with our 'oh-so-exciting' family news,LOL. (and perhaps I'll post in here more often then)

 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

 

(P.S.  Sorry, when I just changed the journal to 'public', it said that it deleted all of the comments left while it was private! Didn't know that was going to happen!)