Baby, we're going to China!

After the single most expensive and chaotic 12 hours, I have finally confirmed the following:
*We depart from home on October 5th and arrive in Beijing on October 6th
*We will be staying in Beijing until Sunday, October 9th, and we'll be on an early train from Beijing to Harbin
*We will finally, at long last, after months of waiting, hold Elliott in our arms the morning of October 10
*We will travel by plane from Harbin to Guangzhou on Friday, October 14
*We will confirm our adoption on October 19 at the US Consulate in Guangzhou
*We will travel by train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong the evening of October 20
*We fly home on October 21 and arrive home on the same day considering the time zones

Hotels were three times more expensive because of the Canton Trade Show going on in town, and I spent HOURS on the computer and the phone bargaining down different hotels and begging for every applicable discount.  We settled on the Holiday Inn Shifu in GZ and I am very satisfied.  I got a GREAT rate on airline tickets (thanks, Todd!) although I could have bought a nice little car for that same amount of money.  The last arrangement for us to make is for a hotel stay in Beijing and booking a tour guide to take us around Beijing.  I have that almost wrapped up, but that will have to wait until this weekend with the 12-hour time difference I'm working with and my 12-hour work shift tomorrow.  Beijing hotels are not booking up nearly as fast as Guangzhou is because of the GZ Trade Show.  I have time.

It feels great to have some of the biggest headaches behind me.  Just a few smaller details and a few suitcases to pack up and we're all set.  We have our farm helpers arranged to take care of our farm and our home while we are gone (thank you Vanderweys!) and our sweet little girls (thank you Wissinks, and thank you Grandparents!).  It's finally all falling into place, it's just going to take some time for the sticker shock to wear off after all of the damage I did to that poor little credit card today.  I think I can hear it crying from inside my purse.

Leaving for China in 19 days
Getting Elliott in 25 days

Up for work in 6 hours....  *yawn*

Gimme a T! Gimme an A!

Every time the phone has rang this week, I found myself holding my breath in hopes that it was the TA call from Tiffany.  I have found myself running, literally, to catch every single phone call while I have been at home.  So it is rather funny that the one phone call that I totally missed was my TA call this afternoon.  I saw the answering machine light blinking red at me at 4:15 today and didn't even hear the call come in.  It was Tiffany, and we have TRAVEL APPROVAL!  Because we are at the end of a week filled with more than a dozen other TA's, and with the Chinese Moon festival coming up in the first week of October, the soonest we will be able to travel would be Oct. 5 for an Oct. 10 Gotcha Day.  That's if all goes as we have planned.  It's not the Sept. 29th CA date that I would have given my left arm to have, but it's less than a month that hopefully we will have Elliott with us.  Forever with us.  We won't have confirmation of our travel dates and our itinerary until the first half of next week because tomorrow starts out a weekend and the TA came in at the end of the day today.  But we're back on track and celebrating tonight!!!

Having a tearful moment....

I was really really really hoping for TA today.  There were NO travel approvals issued last week from the CCCWA, and that created a backlog of about 20 of us on the RQ site that are waiting for permission to go get our children.  There was indeed a flash flood of TA's today, but we weren't included.  Most TA seem to come on Mondays (with the exception of this week, as yesterday was Labor Day Monday) so I'm doubtful we'll be purchasing plane tickets this week or packing any bags.  The hardest part is trying to remain patient with a positive attitude when other families are crusing right past us with quicker approval times.  We are definitely on the longer side of the wait times, and have been so throughout this whole adoption journey.  If the average wait times are 2 to 4 weeks for a certain step, you can bet your last dollar we'll be waiting the full 4 weeks.  And so we wait.  And wait.  And wait.  And now all of the September CA appointments have been taken, so our best chance at leaving at this point will be mid-October.  I keep repeating:

 Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

But still, a few sad tears have escaped today.  And I don't usually cry easily.  It's overdue.

Now waiting for travel approval!

Elliott's room is ready....

His clothes are all washed and folded....

We have our LOA, our I-800 approval, our Article 5 approval, and our Chinese travel visas....

Now all we need is our Travel Approval!



We have been waiting for one week, as of today, for our travel approval.  So it really is at this point, an "any day now" waiting game.  According to most recent RQ statistics, the average wait for TA is 20 days, but it has come in as early as one week for one lucky family this month.  Once we get TA from China, our adoption coordinator will secure our consulate appointment (CA) at the US Embassy.  This is also known as the "exit interview" and it comes at the end of the trip in China, and it is where we get the final blessing to bring Elliott home as a U.S. citizen.  It is the final chapter in the legal adoption process and the end to the paperwork chase.  Once we get that date, we work backwards to arrange a pick-up date for Elliott in Harbin, either at his orphanage, at our hotel, or at a civil affairs office.  There are lots of other details, too, as just about every day in that two week period has something to be accomplished, but at that point, once we have TA and our CA we can buy plane tickets and know when we will be leaving and coming home.  

Matt is back to school, and he has a great group of students this year and it looks like he's off to a great start.  The girls and I have been keeping busy, and enjoying these last few days of summer, before Madeline starts her first grade school year next week.  I am quite sad that I am going to miss out on our time together during the week, but am happy to share in her excitement for another school year.

Picking raspberries.

Painting with water colors.

Riding the horses.

Reading books (yes, this one does say "Christmas", it's Charlotte's favorite book!).

Playing with friends.

And playing with our farm animals.

We love summer!

Happy Birthday Marvelous Miss Madeline!

Today we celebrated Madeline's sixth birthday.  I'm in awe that six years have already passed since I first laid eyes on my precious princess.  She is so beautiful, so smart, so kind and so sweet that I have no choice but to gush over what a wonderful daughter I have.  I am so proud to be her Momma!  She was born at 10:43 pm, weighing a whopping 9 pounds and 3 ounces, and measured 20.5 inches, and today she measures 51 inches and 50 pounds.  What does that mean?  It means she can ride all but TWO of the big rollercoasters at Michigan's Adventure as a not-quite-yet first grader!  We had so much fun at the amusement park.  We were there when they opened at 11am and we closed the place down at 9pm.  Here are some of the hightlights:

Up, up, and AWAYYYYY!

Riding in the ferris wheel

One of the highlights of the day was a big puppy hug from Snoopy, her hero!  To state that she LOVES Snoopy is a major understatement.

You can see it in her smile!

Little sister, Charlotte, was enamored with Lucy, who is just as 'girlie' as she is!

The first "big" rollercoaster of the day for all of us was the MAD MOUSE.  (And a stark reminder that I am NOT in my 20's anymore and now this stuff scares me!)  My kids are adrenaline junkies!

Madeline driving her first car! (with Daddy!)

Charlotte behind the wheel!

Charlotte, my little Motorcycle Mama in training!

They were the only ones on this ride at the time but still insisted on riding together.  The love these two girls share for each other continues to amaze me.

Heads up!  Flying elephants!

The last ride of the day was the carousel, a Maddie 'n Charlotte favorite.

WHAT A FUN DAY!



On the drive home, with the kids sound asleep in the car (totally exhausted!) Matt and I had time to talk about birthdays.  We wonder what birthdays will mean to Elliott.  Will it bother him that we don't know the EXACT date and time he was born, or how big he was?  How long was he?  Did he cry right away after being born?  Was he born at a hospital?  Was he full term?  Does he have siblings?  Did his birth mother hold him after being born?  Was his father present?  We have a pretty good idea of when he was born because of the age that he was placed at the orphanage.  I have confidence that it is accurate within a day or two of the date listed on his referral paperwork.  But birthdays will likely mean something different to him.  I wonder if anyone at the orphanage arranges birthday celebrations, or if he'll be totally surprised at the big to-do that the Beresford family arranges for birthdays.  Will it still be a happy celebration for Elliott on that day, or will he feel sad because he is celebrating it with his adoptive family and not with his birth mother?  Will his birth mother remember him on this day?  Is she thinking of him and remembering his birth?  So many questions on such a relatively happy and benign subject is a reminder of how aware we have to be of his emotions, and to let go of expectations.  I have confidence, however, that his third birthday is going to be FILLED with family, fun, and lots of yummy cake like this boy has never seen before!  I have six months to plan.......  

And as a completely off-topic comment, I have to post a photo of BearBear.  We are dog-sitting for some wonderful friends of ours who are enjoying some southern summer sun this weekend, and Bearbear makes me smile.  He has a huge crush on our beagle, Daisy, snores at least 75% of the day, and sits like a tired monkey.  How do you not fall in love with that?!?!

Oh, and by the way, our Article 5 did get submitted on August 9th as planned.  It is going to be picked up by our Guangzhou courrier on Tuesday, August 23rd and then overnighted to the CCCWA in Beijing.  The CCCWA will then issue us our invitation to come pick Elliott up, and we will schedule the first consulate appointment (US Embassy exit interview & adoption/immigration finalization) we can get.  Travel approvals (TA's) have been averaging 18 to 20 days using data from the 20 most recently invited families, but one family last week got theirs in just SIX DAYS!  It's mind-boggling to think that a month from now we could be boarding a plane to go get Elliott, and six weeks from now he will be HOME with his forever family.  Pinch me!

Here's hoping I get to surprise you with a T.A. post next week!





Nesting.....

OKay, so the next step should have taken place on Tuesday.  According to the delivery confirmation or my paperwork in China, my paperwork should have been hand-delivered to the US Embassy in China on Tuesday, August 9th and scheduled for a Tuesday, August 23 pick-up.  I have been waiting patiently for two days to get confirmation that it actually happened but have not yet received any sort of assurance that it has been handled.  I'm getting frustrated. 

I'm holding out hope that things are going to get back on track for end-of-September travel.  There is another wonderful family in our city that has a little boy waiting for them in another province in China that is on the exact same timeline that we are.  I'm hoping that our families can travel together.  How fun would that be?!

This week we spent time getting Elliott's room ready.  Now that we are just a month and a half away (we hope) from finally going to get him, I am finally allowing myself to start 'nesting'.  Matt and I painted it, and we let the girls decide where all of the little animal characters went.  As a gift, a dear friend of ours had Elliott's Chinese characters hand-painted in gold paint on special paper by an Asian artist, and we framed it and hung it on the wall over his bed.  Matt, the uber-creative handyman, made a custom nightlight out of a globe and hung it from the ceiling near his bed.  His closet is overflowing with new clothes.  It's so exciting to see it all come together, but at the same it was so hard for me to paint over the purple paint in the girls' old nursery room.  Just six years ago, I was painting it with lilac and purple and daydreaming about children during first pregnancy.  Painting over that was like closing a door on some of the happiest years of my life so far.  But then when I stand back and see this, with so much of it gifted to us from good friends who have supported us throughout our adoption journey and continue to cheer us on, I feel so grateful and excited....

And as you can see here, the girls already stacked Elliott's puzzles and set up his train table for him....

And here's the globe light that his Daddy made for him ('cause we're traveling from one end to the other to get him and bring him HOME!)

Love this beautiful painting!  (Thank you, Candi & Casey!)

Look at all these clothes!  (Thank you Becky and Cathy!)

 I know the quilt on the bed is a little feminine, but we're keeping the room set up to be a guest room for a little while, until he's ready to move into it from the toddler bed in our bedroom (we want him close to us at first). We're planning on finding some unique treasures while we are in China to hang in his room, but this is a very good start. A very good start, indeed!

NVC letter and cable complete!

After our I-800 was approved we received a confirmation letter that our approval was cabled (aka emailed) to the US Embassy in Guangzhou.  That was the final piece of the puzzle from the USA.  Now we wait for our courrier in Guangzhou to hand-deliver our paperwork, arriving by both FedEx and email, to the US Embassy for them to pre-process our adoption and Elliott's VISA.  That takes a pretty predictable two weeks.  It gets picked up by the same courrier two weeks later, and overnighted to the CCCWA in Beijing, and it's our hope that the CCCWA will give us our final travel approval (aka TA) in one to three weeks.  Then we buy plane tickets!  Just to think that in one month from how we'll be hauling out suitcases and buying tickets is SO exciting! I'm finally allowing myself to 'nest' now, and get his room ready and start washing and folding his clothes and getting out his new toys. 

We found out just a couple of days ago that Matthew is going to start back to his teaching job about a month earlier than 'normal'.  His first day back is August 15, as he is teaching now on a year-round school caledar.  As disturbing as it was to us to lose a month of summer, he is a bit relieved that he'll have moer time with his students and his parapros to get the school year off to a good start before leaving for China and a few weeks of FMLA family bonding time.  So we've been packing a lot of fun into our last couple of weeks together in the beautiful summer sun!