A Wonderful Surprise!!!!

I meant to post this yesterday, but I got so caught up in the daily trudge of life. Anyway, I think this is WAY more exciting the "daily life" so I wanted to share it with everyone!

As some of you know I am a member of a few online support groups. One is a group of parents who have adopted, or is in the process of adopting, from the same orphanage where Noah lives. These wonderful parents often send care packages or camera to the orphanage, as well as take photos of the orphanage and kids while visiting.

Well, in one of the photos online I saw a photo of Noah on the playground! W isn't sure if it's Noah or not because he has a hand in his mouth, and it distorts his features some. But, I look at his eyebrows, eyes, and nose and it looks just like him (but with a LOT more hair)!!
I have this new photo uploaded to the photo section of our webpage, so feel free to take a look. For the website I did cut out the other kids in the photo as I do not have permission from their parents to post them (especially the little girl who was the main focus of the photo).

Adoption Announcement Video

I've decided that we are going to stop moping around regarding our adoption and the problems that we've had. Instead, we are going to go full blast toward this adoption with positive thoughts. With that said, even though we are not LOA yet, we are "officially" announcing our adoption (like a bio baby announcement).

We are getting closer and closer to finishing our adoption process, so we wanted to "officially" announce the adoption of our son. For those of you who want sound, turn your speakers on when you download and play the announcement. If you are usually wary of opening .exe files on your computer, have no fear with this one. This is one that I created and packaged and there is no virus or spyware.

You can go to the announcement section of our family webpage to view it: http://wjlittleton.home.comcast.net/~wjlittleton/announcement.htm

No .... for real?

You've all heard that God can move heaven and earth, but did you know that Sally Wilkinson can move Immigration?? The unimaginable actually happened .... we received an e-mail from INS!! I know, I know, some of you are still heretics and disbelievers. You're thinking things like, "No way! I know that can't be true!", or "The INS actually responded to someone instead of just giving them the run-around?", or even "An actual person e-mailed? It wasn't just some computer generated e-mail?"

Well, let me set the world straight. After spending countless hours on the phone with INS, getting the rudest person on the face of the earth on the phone to help us, and then having that person talk over me just to tell me to send yet another e-mail to INS, I was shocked ... nah, astonished, when we received an actual e-mail from an actual person from Immigration.

The e-mail stated:
"Your paperwork was sent within a date of the approval. Usually it is sent out the same day as your I-171h approval. Another copy will be forwarded to NVC and NVC should receive it by Thursday."

There was no signature and I'm still unsure what the first sentence is really trying to say, but who cares?? The last sentence is the most important of all! The National Visa Center will be receiving a copy of our paperwork on Thursday!

So, a week ago someone in China asked our agency rep. where our paperwork was at, and now the ball is rolling. Now, hopefully, The NVC will put their bottoms in overdrive and get our paperwork sent out to China.

Do you hear it? That's the chug-chug-chug of our train getting a little closer and closer to bringing Noah home. :)

Oh, and Nai Nai ... I did try and call to tell you the news, so don't get upset if you read this first.

Semi-YEAH!!!

This post is short with a touch of sassy!!

We spoke with our adoption agency today and I feel sooooooooooooooooooo much better!!! (Did I have enough oooooooooo's??)

Any-who, our adoption representative told us that she feels extremely confident that our adoption will go exactly as planned. She also confirmed that we are, and have been, officially logged in. I've been a little worried about that because when we found out about our LID it wasn't from the CCAA's website. Our agency rep talked to her contact who then talked to his contact to find out if we were LID and what our date was. That made me worry that later on someone would come to me and say, "So sorry, Contact-Fred was mistaken and that LID date was for another W&J ... not you two."

So, what does this all boil down to? We are on the right track so far and we have met the required LID date!

What's in store for us? Glad you asked! Now, all we have to do is wait for our LOA (Letter of Approval from China), and while we wait we will also need to find our missing visa paperwork. We (the "we" in this is W, myself, our adoption rep., and the special assistant from Chip Pickering's office) just need to find out if Immigration has it still or if it's the National Visa Center that is holding on to it.

Keep your fingers and toes crossed because I feel that we will be moving along again soon!!

The magic of a holiday ....

Remember when you were young and every holiday, no matter how big or small, was magical? It was magical because it was a special day. If the holiday was during the school year, you made special crafts that commemorated that day. If it was during the summer, you did something special that day. Well, that's what yesterday was like for me ..... magic. I don't know how, or even why, it just was.

I don't know if it was the site of the fireworks display, overeating on grilled chicken and frozen hot cocoa, or the love of friends and family, but I went to bed last night with renewed hope. Hope for a better adoption process, hope that my wonderful husband will clean out his band/drum room (which will soon be our son's room), and hope that yes ... we will finish sanding and varnishing our floors before summer ends. It feels good to be back on the mental railway again and not just going through life feeling down in the dumps and not wanting to do anything.

Do I think that everything will really work out? I'm about 80% sure. Has anything really changed? No, not at all ... but it is getting closer to Monday .... Magical Monday! Hopefully on Monday we will speak to Mrs. Wilkinson and she will get us wonderful news about locating our paperwork and getting it on the right track. Also, on Monday we will speak with our adoption agency and hopefully get more news that will make us feel more secure with this whole Hague thing and our adoption process.