We're making....

....P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S (one itty, bitty step at a time)

We have signed off on our Financials (being sent same day today) and our Home Study (as per our SW) is being sent to the province by the end of the week - YAY!

From here....the province reviews, then back to our SW with any changes (fingers crossed there are none or few) - then to us to review, then the HARD COPIES are forwarded to the province for some MORE itty bitty steps to eventually get our PROVINCIAL APPROVAL!  (this should take around 2 weeks)

For now...I've been busy with planning Noah's and my March trip break to go visit my family in Ontario (which included getting our van some TLC in the form of $1300 - ouch!) and planning a LONG awaited 40th birthday trip with my BFF at the end of the March. 

THANKFULLY, we booked our trips the night before we found out about the van because I probably would have made an excuse NOT to go on our trip had I known how much our van would cost!!

ANYWAYS.....thankfully during March (while we are waiting for our provincial approval and hopefully forwarding on our file to our agency) I am going to be super busy (which hopefully will pass the time quicker to get to our Log In Date stage)

Found it....

....found a 'tree' for Faith's wall at HALF the price of the original one I found!  YAY!!!  After several hours searching!!!

The one I ordered is the brown one with all the flowers (but I don't plan on placing that many flowers and owls on the tree).  This brown tree will have brown shelves (off of the branches like in the second picture).

OF COURSE, pictures will follow when I get it all set up.

I am SO excited!!

After this, her room is almost complete. 

Only thing left is our lil' Faith GIRL!!

Fundraising

OK...so I've decided that I'm going to do a little fundraising for a specific part of our adoption costs:  the donation to the orphanage (part of the mandatory costs of our adoption).

Our goal: $5,000

I LOVE doing crafts, have tonnes of supplies and need something to to fill my time now that all our paperwork is done and her room is complete.  So....over the next little while I'm going to start brainstorming, creating and start selling some stuff to help our fundraising.   I may also do the Grand Falls Market this summer to help our efforts.

Some ideas:

• Garage Sale with Barbeque in May (possibly) - do you have any items to donate?  let me know

• Car Wash in summer (possibly)

• ALL jewelry and bottle cap sales - will start trying to sell again

I will create a separate page for our fundraising efforts (so it's easily found) as well as a gadget on the side bar so you can see how our efforts are going.

Won't you please share any fundraising ideas you might have, help spread the word, sell some items for us, or possibly donate for a garage sale???

Thanks.

UP NEXT

......or shall I say "hopeful time line" going forward.

I GET that this is BEST case scenerio...but a girl can dream!!!

 For those of you who know little about international adoption (as we did coming into this, actually truth be known I thought I knew a little but I continue to be amazed at how little I actually know), there are many MaNy MANY little steps to bringing a child home.  Each step of the process that we can 'check off' so to say feels like a huge accomplishment, so it IS fun to calculate our timeline and look at what we've done so far.

So now that we are this far, you can read the time line of the work we've done SO FAR on my page called ADOPTION TIMELINE (see the top of the page where it says HOME, Adoption Timeline and Health Progress - click on the timeline to view our dates so far).

And....for those of you that wish to know what lies ahead or what's up next, this is the post you'll want to read.

KEEP IN MIND that this is MY wishful thinking with all of my lack of all knowledge guesstimates!!!  Of course, I will periodically update it to be as accurate as I can.

ALSO, keep in mind that for some strange reason (and knock on wood that something should change) everything in our process is going faster than I had EVER imagined - hopefully, we will keep this trend!

Note our LID (or log in date) is very important because without this, we can get NO referral.
Then our REFERRAL date is next important because this is when we see our sweet Faith's face for the first time!  THIS is when you will all have to pinch me and pick me up off the floor and remind me that this is REALLY real!!!  lol

UP NEXT...

• wait for home study to be written (hopefully by March 1)
• Provincial Approval (hopefully by March 15)
• Dossier to agency - FOI (hopefully by March 20)
• Translation/Notarization by Chinese Embassy (hopefully by Apr 3)
• Dossier to China (DTC) (hopefully by mid April)

• Log In Date (LID) (hopefully by beginning of May)
• Referral (hopefully by mid June)
• Letter of Intent (LOI) (we send this the same day or one day later)
• Pre Approval (PA) (we receive this from China hopefully mid June plus a few days)
• Letter of Approval (from China) (LOA) (hopefully by August)
• Travel Approval (TA)
• TRAVEL TO CHINA to have our sweet baby girl in our arms(hopefully September)

More room updates...

More updates for Faith's room.

I found some more deals - the curtains ($10 each panel)

The rugs ($30)

Oh and don't forget the FULL PRICE lady bug that her older brother

bought with his OWN money...just because he wanted his little sister

to have a special teddy bear just like he has...ahhhh. 

Melt my heart!

NOW if I can find this tree decal for a deal (the only one I can find is $77)

I'll PAINT it on her wall before I pay that amount!

This is just about all that is going in there

(except for maybe a toy bucket, toys and a very special little girl -

oh, and of course some more shoes and clothes)!!!

IF.......

...we weren't fully committed before now, we certainly are now!

Financially speaking!

Up to now we've had lots of little costs (around $3000) but today we made our first BIG payment (almost $5000) so if we weren't committed before now (which we WERE) - we are NOW!!!

Another big payment will be coming in the next month....so here we go 'asterity' program (something my grandmother calls when you cut out EVERYTHING in your budget to save for something important)! 

It will be ALL worth it in the end!

Home Study Visits

are DONE!!

Now we wait for our social worker to do the write up (she said about 2 weeks)!

YAY...more progress!

Home Study progress

Well...I had asked you to pray for NO snow so our appointment on Monday wouldn't be cancelled for our home study.

I didn't exactly get my prayers answered because our social worker had to cancel for our appointment for OTHER reasons!

NOT exactly BAD NEWS though!!!  ACTUALLY, it's EVEN better news than we could have hoped for.  She's coming on SUNDAY afternoon and I'm bringing her!!!

When I head home from Fredericton this weekend (from my mother/son and friends weekend) - I'm bringing her home with me to have our appointment then her husband is going to drive up later on to pick her up!!!!  How perfect (well, let's just hope that Jacques leaves the house in 'good shape' for the weekend)!!!

Life just can't get any better - so many positives and few bumps on the road (or quite possibly God figures we've had enough bumps on the road to get to this stage of the game)??

Either way...the process is trucking right along!

So...Sunday afternoon (fingers crossed) we finish everything we need to for our Social Worker to collect all the information needed for us to COMPLETE the visits.  Then PRAY that she can write it up quickly to move us along again!

I'm not asking for much - AM I???

BUT excuse me OUR DAUGHTER is waiting for us ALL ALONE in an orphanage without her Mommy, Daddy and BIG brother to love and spoil her........so YES, I am asking for much!!!

A little snag in our process...

That COULD HAVE potentially been fatal to our process.

BUT...we got it all worked out in less than 24 hours and LOTS of praying!

So apparently CHINA (according to our social worker) will not allow people that have had cancer to adopt.  (I don't think it's this harsh - but according to our social worker, had this been the case she would not have continued with our home study).

You see....

in 1997 I had some issues with my cervix and 2 ways of calling what I had are 1.  severe dysplasia or 2.  adenocarcinoma in situ - but of which are the same things.  BOTH are the PREcancer cells.

SOOO...the doctor wrote this 'adenocarcinoma in situ' and the social worker took this as I HAD cancer - but I DIDN'T (don't worry)!

She told us we couldn't continue and that we would have to choose another country UNLESS she had the approval of the Adoption Supervisor, WHO, I couldn't get a hold of :(

When all was said and done, I spoke with the Adoption Supervisor who told me that I would have to have the doctor to re-do my cover letter.

ALL this had to be done before Friday OR ELSE our scheduled apt on Sunday to complete our visits for our home study could NOT happen :(

I called our family doctor at 8:40 am and explained to the secretary (and not the usual secretary) our situation.  At 10:00 am, the secretary called us back and said that the letter had been typed, signed AND faxed.  SAY WHAT???

I was utterly impressed and SO overjoyed....we brought our doctor and her staff a potted flower, chocolates and Noah bought a cute little teddy bear with HIS own money that says 'You're SWEET'.  He told Dr. Allie that it was the least he could do to save his Mom some stress!!!

She thought I had gone above and beyond with our gifts...but on the contrary, I think SHE went above and beyond!

Love is in the air....

MOST importantly....I can't stop thinking about our Faith and LOVE.  She has the love of our family and she doesn't even know it yet.

Sweet hugs and kisses for my girl on this day of Valentine's Love tonight!  xox

Some additions to Faith's room!

Only a few more additions to Faith's room.

Her room has be SO easy (and cheap).

I had an idea....and when I'd be browsing for items to decorate they'd just BE where I was looking and on sale or inexpensive.

These butterflies - Dollarama....and perfect!

Chinese lanterns - Dollarama - in all the right colours and inexpensive.

This little toy box - on sale for more than 75% off AND it fit perfectly at the end of the bed.

All that's left now is curtains, an area rug and

possibly a new crocheted blanket

(in the pinks, blues and greens) to match the lantern colours!

All in all, I have spent under $100 to decorate Faith's room.

I am beyond thrilled!

Home Study

Our SOCIAL WORKER rocks!  She is SO quick.

We had an appointment yesterday afternoon from 1-4:30 pm and we are about 1/2 way done our home study visits.

Next appointment is scheduled on Monday Feb 20.  This time she will be coming to our house (from Fredericton) so PRAY, PRAY, PRAY there is no bad weather that would prevent her from making the trip.

Jacques is out of town from that Tuesday to Friday, so we'd have to bump our next apt for the ENTIRE week (which would devastate me)!

She really feels that after the visit on the 20th, she would only be a few days to a week of having our home study written up!  Then she would forward it for us to gain our provincial approval...WOOOHOOO!!!

Here's our hopeful timeline:

Up to this point we were hopeful for an end of April LID (or log in date, when China has our file and we wait for our referral) but this could mean a MID April LID now!!! 

WHICH MEANS....we 'could' (and I use this term loosely) get a referral by the end of April at the VERY earliest (again, I say this with MUCH hope!!!)

We continue to make leaps and bounds moving forward!

On a side note, my retail therapy came in the form of 3 pairs of tights and the cutest little t-shirt for Faith (from The Children's Place) and 2 t-shirts for Noah from his fav. store - Aeropostle!!!

Faith's Room

There are still a few more decorations I want to add but for now,

this is the progress on her room!

Something needs to go in this corner....I have in mind some home made string balls hanging from the ceiling.

I made this for Faith....it perfectly sums up what I feel!

Here's my Retail Therapy - waiting for Faith

(this is only a part of what we have bought already).

Can we say 'SHOE FETTISH'??? 

6 pairs of Robeez before she even comes home!!!

Some waiting time fun

On the right side bar, notice I've placed a little pole called:

'When will we get our referral for Faith?'

Take a stab, have some fun with us while we wait!




As well...leave a comment to guess one of the below 4 categories and you could win a prize (if I remember - could one of my closest friends remind me about the whole prize thing in the end, I'm assuming I may have 'new mommy' brain by then)!!!

Referral month and Age & Weight at time of referral: 

Birthday (month and year only): 

Gotcha Day: 

Here's my guesses:
Referral month and Age & Weight at time of referral:  
September 2012, 18 months & 18 lbs

Birthday (month and year only):    
November 2010

Gotcha Day:  
Dec 15, 2012

Our homestudy is beginning....

....Thursday Feb 9.

Our SW is allowing us to 'double up' on appointments so we can do it in 2 visits rather than 4.

WHICH MEANS.....

we should have our home study done in 1/2 the time (but the end of Feb, 1st week of March at the ABSOLUTE latest)!!! 

AMAZING NEWS.

Aside from the fact that I'm dreading sitting there for 3-5 hours going over every last intimate detail of our lives with a stranger - but it's to bring our sweet Faith home, so BE IT!

(more) Little gifts...

I am SO lucky to have such amazing friends.

Faith got ANOTHER gift from a friend yesterday!  Isn't this teddy ADORABLE???

She is one lucky girl and she doesn't even know it yet!  As soon as she is home, oh, she'll KNOW IT!!!