Spring Break 2008

We spent Spring Break down in Squamish and Vancouver. While we were there we had a family movie night and went to see the new Hannah Montana 3D movie. Yes...Daddy saw it too! It was actually quite well done. Drew and I were pleasantly surprised.

My first digital scrapbook page!

Well...not bad for a first attempt. It was actually quite fun. I used the program Foto Fusion and gave it a whirl. These photos were taken last weekend at Madi's ballet recital. She was a grape princess. They were so cute!

Month 9

Yikes! Are those labor pains I feel? Nope...false alarm. It has been 9 months since we have been logged in with China. In any typical pregnancy this should mark the end of our waiting period, but with this atypical pregnancy, I think I am still in my 1st trimester! I wonder how elephants do it? There is a rumor that referrals are "in the air" but no cut off date has been announced yet. Rumor has it that they have only matched through January 9th, 2006. If this is true then this is the smallest batch in recent history, only 5 days! And I think 2 of those fell on a weekend! As for an update on our application with Taiwan, we are still number 13. No one from Sunrise has received a referral from Chung Yi that we know of. Maybe we will have better news next month!

April 2, 2008

8 Month

March 2, 2008 We have now been logged in with China for 8 months. Currently families who are receiving proposals this month have been waiting 26 months and that is predicted to rise to at least 36 months. Hmmm... 36-8=29 more months! That seems like a really long time! And that even looks like a best case scenario. Hopefully things will pick up after the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. Because "the box" is no longer shown on the CCAA's website, we have only heard rumors of this months cut off. It appears that the cut off may be Jan 4, 2006. Another 8 day batch. What happened to the promised 15 day batches? At least 2005 is finally finished! This month also marks 1 year since our home study was done. We got a home study update form, that thankfully didn't come with another bill. I guess we will have to update our home study annually until we receive our child. This years update was easy...no, we do not have a cat anymore and yes, our fence is now completed around our yard! Everything else is still the same!

7 Months

February 2, 2008 Wow, I can't believe we have been logged in for 7 months now. The "box" that used to on the CCAA's website that updated how far they got with referrals has now been removed....why? I am not sure. Anyway, now we have to rely on our agency to tell us when they get this information. As far as we can tell, this month's referral batch got as far as December 27, 2005. ( 8 days) Hopefully they will finish off 2005 in March. It will be so great to finally see people with a LID of 2006 start to get their referrals. As for us, this month also marks our start date for our waiting period for an adoption through Taiwan. Will it be quicker than China? Theoretically it should be, but one never knows.

A new beginning?

Wow ...a whole year has gone by since we started this journey.

This January we found ourselves back at the adoption agency talking about other options for us to explore. The wait time in China was been getting longer and longer over this past year and it appears that it will only continue to increase, leaving us thinking it may be 3 or 4 more years until we get a referral from China. In the meantime we have decided to submit an application to Taiwan. It is another growing international program with wait times increasing as well, but it looks promising that the wait will not be as long as China.

We have filled out all the application forms and are sending them to an adoption agency in North Vancouver tomorrow. We are happy to announce that we do not have to do another home study. As ours is less than one year old, we are able to transfer it to another agency. With some minor tweaking it should ready to go soon.

Taiwan works a little differently than China. We will be sending our application directly to an orphanage, where either the orphanage director or birth mother chooses/matches us with an infant. With the agency we have signed up with, there are currently 3 families that have their dossiers in Taiwan and 10 who are waiting for theirs to be sent. (The agency is only allowed to have 3 applications in Taiwan at a time). We will be number 10 in the line of applications waiting to be sent. How long will it take? Only God knows for sure...so we will continue to watch our position in both China and Taiwan.