The whole family took a trip to Chicago last week. I was so very excited to receive my I-800a papers in the mail so I could travel to Chicago before work started up. August 11th, my birthday, I spent sitting in the Chinese Consulate. I loved being there! We were one of the only white folks there and we were admist a handful of little babies running all around. One little girl came up to me and said "hi", I said hello back but I was a bit dramatic. I responded in a way as if this little girl was Mei, Mei, minus tears. LOL I'm pretty sure I scared her father. HA!
We received our Dossier back Fed Ex this Tuesday 8/19/14. We immediately went to our funds and started pulling them all together. The bill this time around is $6,200.00. I have now spent all of our Mei Mei savings on this step plus we had to use up all our savings and emergency account money to pay this bill and we still end up short. No worries though we were able to scrape up some more other places to just make the bill. Waiting on funds right now to be transferred into our account. We were going to send our Dossier in to the Adoption Agency today but decided to wait one more day for the funds to show up. So tomorrow we will send this lovely package off to McLean, VA. where it will be translated into Chinese.
Now I understand a lot of people do not fully understand what is going on and most of the time I'm not sure if I do either. But I will try my best to educate you so you will have a better understanding.
Our Dossier (big giant file of a ton of paperwork) will be sent into our Adoption Agency tomorrow (8/22). They should receive it Monday morning, will translate it, and then send it off to China on Friday (8/29).
Once it arrives in China they will look it over and Log it into their system. Basically saying we received your file and it is now in our system. They will then recognize us as someone who wishes to adopt from their country. We will then be notified and be given a "Log in Date" also known as a "LID".
After we receive our LID is when the real waiting begins. Even though it seems as though we have flown through this process so far, that really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. After we receive our LID we wait on our referral. (Referral = Child's file). This can take anywhere from a couple months, to years to get our first one. I have emailed my Family Coordinator and asked her for some clarification on the wait. Hopefully she can shed some more light, and I pray that it is more closer to months than years right now. From what I understand once you receive your LID you get "in line" and you have to wait your turn before getting referrals.
My prayer is that we will get Mei Mei in God's timing but if he see's fit would he please move mountains so we don't have to wait 2 years.
That's about all I know right now. I do know once you say yes to a child there is paperwork and more waiting for Travel approval (TA).
So if you're reading this right now then that means you stuck with me through this whole blog and I thank you for supporting us during this big event in our life. I appreciate ALL your prayers, kind words, encouragement, gifts, donations, and general support. You all are a blessing to me and my family.
Now onto selling the crap out of Origami Owl and Fundraising like a beast to raise $25,000. That's our next bill. Yikes! Completely worth every penny. :)
