Let's do the TA chant!!!

TA! TA! TA! TA! We need Travel Approval so that we can get to China. We need it really soon if we have any chance of getting there before our precious daughter's birthday. Her birthday is on May 13th and our agency has a group leaving on May 5th. We really want to travel with that group! Please pray that we will get our TA soon. The three years that we waited is nothing compared to the waiting that we have had since we have gotten our referral. I constantly feel edgy and jumpy. I don't think I will feel settled again until we have our family complete.

Easter

Prayers answered!

Our immigration papers came in the mail and we got our LOA this week!! We are so excited! Our next step is TA- travel approval. Of course, every time we get another step through this whole process, there is a mound of paperwork to complete. I will work over spring break on getting our Visas to travel to China. We are thinking that we will travel in May if everything goes well. According to our agency, China should issue our TA in 2-4 weeks, but they are running really slowly right now. I know of several families who have waited more than 4 weeks already. I am praying that we will get our TA soon so that we can be there for Anna Grace's birthday.

We are getting ready for Easter weekend. Today we will have my family over and then we will go to Mike's family's house after church tomorrow. Cole & Alex are really excited about all of our plans.

We are praying for our little neighbor who is recovering from heart surgery. He is from the same province in China as Anna Grace, and he has only been home a few weeks. Little John Asher has had a really hard time of recovering after his surgery. You can check out the Beall family blog at http://www.bealladoptionjourney.blogspot.com/ .

More waiting!!

We are really hoping and praying that we will get our next set of approvals this week. Our next approval from China is the Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and there is a good chance that it will come in the next few days. But, it will do nothing without our next approval from the US government- our immigration approval. It is sitting on a desk in the immigration office waiting to be processed. Apparently, I messed up part of the form when I sent it in, so we are trying to get that all staightened out.

One of our neighbors lent us a crib that would match Anna Grace's room, so the boys helped to put it together. My mom has a friend who is making us a little pink blanket to put in her crib. We can not wait until our sweet little girl is here to play in her room and sleep in her crib that her big brothers helped to put together!

Care package is on the way to China!!

We finally get to send Anna Grace a care package! The boys and I have been working to put this together for a few weeks now. Cole & Alex helped pick out several toys, 2 pairs of pajamas, a toothbrush, and some little gifts for the foster family. Cole noticed that Anna Grace's referral papers said she likes to play with blocks, so he picked out a little block set for her. Alex read that her favorite activity is dancing, so he picked out a little stuffed toy that plays different music. We also put together a little photo album with pictures of the whole family and little labels in Chinese so that she can start to learn about her family. Now, we just pray that her package is delivered to her foster family, and they will start to prepare her. This may be the first notification that the foster family has that she has been matched with a permanent family. We pray that they will find comfort in knowing that she is going to a loving family.

Announcing our precious daughter!!!

After 3 years of waiting, we have a beautiful little girl! Her name is Zheng Ping An and she is living in a foster care in Henan, China. Her birthday is May 13 and she is about to turn 2 years old. We can not wait to hold her in our arms!! We hope to travel in May or June. We would love to be with her for her birthday, but we realize that we may not get to travel that soon.

Happy Valentine's Day & Chinese New Year!!

Wow!! It has been a really long time since my last post. I guess that just shows how busy we are during the school year! Today we are celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day together. We are planning a big Chinese dinner for tonight. Yesterday we went to a Chinese grocery store to get some of the ingredients. Today the boys and I made paper lanterns to hang around the kitchen, and we will have a big heart shaped cookie for dessert tonight. I plan to use some of the dishes and recipes that my parents used when I was growing up. My mom and dad loved to get into the kitchen together to make big Chinese dinners, so I guess Mike and I are carrying on that tradition. We also went to the Chinese New Year celebration last weekend for adoptive families and students from our local university. We met a graduate student who would like to help us when we are finally home from China with Anna Grace. Her parents still live in China, so I think she will be able to help with any language barriers that we might have in the first few weeks home.
There is no "news" on the adoption yet, other than we seem to be getting very close. We have no idea how close we are to getting "the call," but we are very hopeful that it will come soon. Anna Grace's bedroom is coming along nicely. Mike made a beautiful cabinet to store her toys, and he also made an adorable doll house. He still wants to build a table for tea parties, and I have several more little projects in mind that will help to complete the room.
Xin nian yu kuai! Happy Chinese New Year!