Back again...

Hi Everyone!  I know it's been along time.  We have just been preoccupied over here....preparing for Chu Chu and all.  Things are going good.  We are still waiting to get our little girl home.  No updates yet.  Things are still moving along fine.  We have not waited any longer than the estimated time frame.  We were just hoping to have more info by now because things were moving quickly for a while.  But we are still praying and hoping to get our LOA this month, that would hopefully make it possible to get Chu Chu in February.  So please keep us in our prayers, as the waiting is the hardest part.

I will leave you with some pics from our trip to Vietnam in October.  It was a great trip.  We have discovered that Southeast Asia is definitely one of our favorite places to travel so far.

Had a thought...

I had a thought after the last post that maybe some of you were wondering why I had not posted a picture of our girl because we do have some pics and a video that were in her file we received from the agency.

The Chinese adoption process involved many steps.  And you cannot post any pics publicly until you get to a certain step.  I will try to break the steps down a little bit.

1.  We applied to an adoption agency we found online that works with expats living in China

2.  We were approved so we started putting together our dossier.  The dossier has things like birth certificate, marriage license, adoption petition, physicals, pictures, police reports, fingerprints, immigration approvals, etc...Most people refer to this part of the process as the "paper chase"

3.  All of this paperwork has to be "authenticated".  All of the paperwork needs to be sent to the agency. It then gets notarized and after it is all notarized it needs to be certified by the Chinese Embassy.  This process takes about a month or more.  Usually we would have to do this on our own, but because we live in China the agency did it for us....for an extra fee of course ;o)

4.  Once all the paper work is authenticated our dossier is complete and it can be send to be China to be logged in.  Once we get your Log in Date (LID) we could officially be matched through our agency

5.  Once we matched ourselves with a child (another story) rather the agency matching us we then submitted a Letter of Intent (LOI) letting China know that we want to adopt that specific child.

6.  Once China receives our LOI we will receive a pre-approval (PA).  That is China's acknowledgement that they received our LOI

7.  At this point we can post pics wherever we want ;o)

8.  Then we get a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) That is when we can start making travel arrangements to pick up our girl.   

Since we live in China hopefully that should help speed up the travel portion because we do not need to wait to be approved for Visas and such.

So that is why there is not picture of Chu Chu yet.  Oh yeah, Chu Chu is her Chinese name. We will probably use it as nickname because we like it. ;o)  So on this blog I will refer to her as Chu Chu.  We already have a western name as well for her, but because I have privacy paranoid issues about the internet at times ;o)  I do not want to put her name out into the blogosphere.  I am kooky like that. ;o)

Stay Tuned!  We should be able to post pics soon!

1+1=3

The hubs and I are ready to make it official.  We are adopting a baby girl!  We are over the moon. 

It has been a roller coaster ride of emotion.....mostly good emotion.

I won't go into too much detail.  Obviously our close friends and family have been in the loop for a while.
We started the process back in February, after a trip to Cambodia.   God just touched and opened our hearts to the need of homes for orphans around the world.  We literally came home that weekend and googled an adoption agency in the U.S that works with expats living in China and started the process. 

I cannot tell you how God has grown me during this process.  I had moments of impatience, frustration, sadness, more impatience, more frustration and then I would realize how selfish I was being and give it to God and He would totally give me something to help me get through to the next step.  Things like paperwork getting processed faster than normal, getting logged in faster than normal and now being matched faster than normal.  I have not even met my daughter yet but she has already given me the best gift she could ever give me, a stronger relationship with God. 

As I stated before, we started the process in February.  We had to gather A LOT of paperwork.  It took us until about August to complete that process.  We were told it could be over a year before we got matched, but God had a different plan.  We found our girl on our agencies special focus list.  That is a list of children who are harder to place either because they are older or have more serious medical issues.  These children can be matched with families at anytime.  And that is where we found our girl. 

For privacy reason I won't be writing a lot about her here.  This is mainly where we will be posting pics for our family and friends.  And anyone who knows Michael knows he love photography.  And anyone who knows me knows I like to shop and will be dressing my girl in the cutest stuff I can find. ;o)  So this blog is going to become filled with pics of our baby.

Sorry to anyone who was reading the blog for our travel adventures.  But the positive thing is there should be more frequent posting. ;o)  But there will still be posts about our adventures in China.  We are actually heading to Vietnam in a week for October Holiday.  So we should have some great pics from there.

So that is what has been going on with us.  ;o)

Praise God from Whom all blessings Flow!!!!!

painting update

here I painted the scales...it takes forever or what seems like forever

then I do a more solid color over the scales....this pic would not let me rotate it....sorry.  you can see how the white of the flowers stands out more when the fish are colored in.

Cuccidati.......

When Michael and I go home we have lots of friends and family to catch up with.  My summer holiday usually consists of flying into Detroit solo, while Michael stays in Nanjing and works.  I stay with my friends in Detroit for a while and then drive down to my friend Barbara's in Ft. Wayne, IN.  After Barbara's I come back to Detroit and Michael usually is on his way into town by this time.  We stay in Metro Detroit for a week, while Michael works out of his office in Detroit.  We then proceed to our parent's houses.  My parents live up North and Michael's family lives in the Buffalo, NY area.  Needless to say, we get around.  We see lots of people and eat lots of yummy American food! ;o) 

Michael comes from an all Italian family.  His parents are Italian.  His grandparents are Italian.  His great grandparents are Italian and so on and so forth.  So we get lots of yummy food in Buffalo.  Both of Michael's parents can cook really well and I have learned lots of tips and tricks from them on how to improve on my own cooking. 

This year Michael's mom baked some traditional Italian cookies called CUCCIDATI., for us to bring back to China and share with my family.  The only way I can think to describe them are like fig newtons but 1,000 times better.  They are really yummy and not the easiest thing to make.  They are pretty labor intensive.  I have made them once and have not attempted them again.  When I move back to the U.S. maybe I will start up again as figs and dates are not anywhere to be found in Nanjing. 

Michael's mom made a lot of cuccidati.  We took some to my family and they ate them up in a hot second.  We also carefully packed some to bring back to China and share with Michael's co-workers.  They were a real hit. 

Chinese do not really eat sweets.  And if they do eat sweets, they are not really sweet.  At least not by American standards.  But they really liked them.  Here are some pics to prove it.

Cuccidati....they look pretty good for coming all the way to China in a suitcase.

Yi Ning...our driver

Hmmm...what do we have here?

Yummy to my Tummy

I love Italians!

ummmm....Do I really have to eat this? ;o)

The classic Chinese pose when having your pic taking...fingers in a V shape...stands for Victory or so we have been told.  Kids from 1 year of age to adults do it. 

Haochi....means good food or delicious

Did you just take my picture?   I was not ready ;o)

Thumbs up for Cuccidati!