November 23rd!!!

November 23rd is THE day! The day we will meet Meilin for the first time. We are SO EXCITED to finally be on our way. We will be leaving THIS friday night. We will have to stay at a hotel friday for an early saturday morning flight out of the US. We will be doing a Yangtze river cruise next week and then travel to her city friday Nov 20th. All GOTCHA days in this province are scheduled on mondays, so we cannot meet her until then. We will be in her Province that week to complete the Chinese side of things and then in Guangzhou for a week to complete the US paperwork. We will be home December 5th. Meigan will be travelling with us.

We are in need of all your prayers. Meilin is much older than Meigan was and we are preparing for a much harder transition. She will be 20 months old, and she has no idea what is about to happen. She will be handed over to complete strangers that look funny, smell funny, and talk funny. Please pray that she may be comforted at this time. We hope that having Meigan there will help her. But, having the 2 of them in this situation is going to be a handful. We need all the prayers we can get!

TRAVEL APPROVAL!!!

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Our Travel Approval (TA) is on its way and should be at our agency monday. We should know by the middle of next week when we will finally meet Meilin!!!

And We Wait

Yes, still waiting for our travel approval (TA). A very long and stressful wait. Hopefully this week we will know WHEN we can finally bring Meilin home. Until then, we wait, wonder and worry.

FINALLY, Our Article 5!

After waiting 34 days, we are relieved to announce that we finally have our Article 5! Now what? We wait again for the CCAA to issue our travel approval so we can hop on a plane. The China side of things has been quick this time around, lets hope that holds true.

Care Package for Meilin

We thought we would send Meilin another package. We sent this one through Ann at redthreadchina.com . She always does a fabulous job for us.

Beyond Frustration!

Our Article 5 should have been issued by now, even with the Holiday. Other families with our same cable date(the step before Art 5), are receiving their Travel Approval (TA) this week. We were right on schedule to travel by the beginning of november. So what is happening? The darn US apparently has ONE person who signs these and that ONE person was not only away for the holiday, but he does not come back until today. I begged and begged the people at the Consulate in Guangzhou (not supposed to call), to look up my file last night. Not only is it not signed yet, they are hoping to have it ready NEXT week. NEXT WEEK, its only tuesday! AAAARRRGG!!! As another adoptive mom put it...don't they know each one of those papers in the stack is another family waiting to bring their child HOME! This darn Hague treaty, and the darn US Government.....I have had enough of them!

STILL WAITING

Once again, we are still waiting for the USA to do our paperwork. That seems to be the theme this time around. We are still waiting for them to issue our Article 5 which is the last thing we need so that China can give us travel approval. China's offices are closed until the 8th for their National Holiday, hopefully our papers will be ready by the time they reopen.

For all of you I-600 followers, enjoy it. The other family that has been on the same time frame as us every step of the way is travelling this week to bring home their daughter. We had the exact same dates for everything LOI,PA, DTC, LID, LOA. Just in case you are wondering, I am not a fan of the new I-800!