Hope Introduces Her Brother

I think I'll start off my efforts to bring the blog up to date with a bang tonight.  We introduced Hope to her brother on February 4.  She is going to be an amazing big sister!  I watch this over and over and smile from ear to ear with tears running down my cheeks!  I just can't wait to have these two together.

We took a video also when we first showed Hope Luke's picture.  I'm going to see what I can do in iMovie for a bit with that.  I've never really played with the program.  We'll see what I can figure out and then maybe I can share that one, too.

Here are a couple of snapshots we took that morning too.  :)

~ Proud Sister ~

~ Choosing a Favorite (She picked the one on her right.) ~

~ Hugs ~

Luke's Shower

Lovely Hostesses - Tana and Jody, wonderful friends and amazing moms I admire.  You completely outdid yourselves girls.  You know I'm emotional, but seriously...this morning meant so much to me!

~~~~~

We got to have a shower!!! I never expected that we would be so lucky!  There was an amazing group of ladies and daughters there to celebrate with us.  New friends and old, family and neighbors....it was SO FUN!  Here are some of the special people who joined us for the morning:

Tricia and Lauren - Tricia and I have been friends since childhood and we are Lauren's Godparents.

Cheryl and Malea - Cheryl's husband, Chris, and Ron were classmates at SPC.  Cheryl and I became FAST friends.  She's awesome...and so is their daughter Malea, also our Goddaughter.

Betsy, Debbie, and Luke - Betsy and Debbie are Group 91 Moms.  We love them and their families!

Some of the girls from the BW Class of 1993 

Jen and Claire - Jen and I go waaaaay back to the hospital nursery.  Her beautiful daughter, Claire, is the same age as Hope.

Mom and Pastor Carrie - We are loving getting to know our new friend and Pastor! 

Wendy and Hannah - Wendy and I met in a sign language class at SPC in 1996(?).  We've been close friends ever since, have taken family vacations together, and we are also Hannah's Godparents.

Keri is one of my oldest and dearest girlfriends.  We grew up across the street from each other. 

One of my favorite pictures of Hope and Olivia

We'll leave this picture larger because you MUST see all this cuteness.  :)  These are some of the young ladies who were there.

Some of the Group 91 Girls

~ added the moms ~ 

Even though this is blurry, I love the way Hope and Malea are looking at each other.  (God-daughter-sisters)

Perry Girls - Mom and Andria - Love my Mom, and Love my Sister-in-law!

Article 5

Our Article 5 came today. What does that mean, you ask? Well, it is kind of the final piece of the puzzle. The Article 5 relstes to Luke's immigrant visa and is the last piece of approved paperwork we need before the China Center sill issue our travel approval (TA). TA is essentially China's invitation to us to finally go meet our little boy.

"The Adopted Children's Immigrant Visa Unit (ACIVU) at U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou has finished processing your child's Article 5, and your file is ready to be returned to your adoption agency's facilitator today."

Happy 6th Birthday Hope!!!

Guess what beautiful young lady is having a birthday today! I cannot believe at all that our little girl is already celebrating her 6th birthday!  This is the picture Ron sent to me today.  He took the day off to spend it with his special birthday girl.  They went to Madagascar II 3D so I got to see a picture of the glasses.  Hope said she took them off when the cat came off the screen because she was afraid she'd be allergic.  :)

Sad to miss this day with my girl, but we'll celebrate when Mom get's home.  Glad Hope and Daddy had such a special day!!!

Care Package II

We've been thinking for a while about sending Luke another care package.  Our experience sending a package on our own to Hope was successful so we thought we'd try again.  The wait time is so different this time because we've had Luke's picture/information since January.  We traveled just a few short weeks after seeing Hope's referral so it is extra hard now not to have updated information.  It's been a bit of a bummer that we haven't had a response to the birthday care package we sent to Luke.  We were sssssssoooooooooooo hoping for an updated picture and some information about him, his personality, his hearing, his size, etc.

At any rate, here is round two.  I was able to find a copy of the address for Luke's SWI written in Chinese and English.  We shopped for some fun things we thought would be fun for a little boy, though I must admit this is foreign territory for us.  Here is what we came up with:

Cozy Blanket Chosen by Luke's Sister

Most of the Goodies

MUSY have a puppy!  :)

Photo Album for Luke and Photo Book for the Workers

This is just a close-up.  These little albums are so great!  We still have the one we sent to Hope.  The SWI kept the original one, but we made her a duplicate so she's always have her first photos of her family.

We also included a couple more one-time-use cameras that will hopefully be returned to us (full) when we meet Luke so we can have some snapshots of his last few months in the SWI.

NVC and DS-230 Packet

Well on the 24th, we got an email from CR asking if we'd heard anything about our I-800 approval.  Of course we haven't heard anything yet.  I won't go down that whiny road though. So, I got on the phone to call the National Visa Center.

Ron forwarded our I-800 approval to CR 5/14/12
CR sent the approveal to National Visa Center 5/15/12

Guess what I was told on the phone!
NVC uploaded our paperwork on 5/18/12!
WHY are we still waiting for a response now on the 24th?  Thank goodness for the lovely helpful woman on the other end of the phone who forwarded our inquiry to her supervisor.  We had the email NVC response in our in-box that evening.

Up next was the DS-230 packet.  Everything was in the hands of the CR liaison in China just waiting for this NVC upload to be complete.  So, on the 25th our NVC letter was sent to China to accompany our packet.  Of course that was Friday of Memorial weekend so our DS-230 was delivered on the 29th to the US Consulate.  Apparently it is supposed to take about two weeks before the Article 5 is issued.  After that is Travel Approval!!!  FINALLY

I-800 Approval

"Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative"

Our I-800 approval came in the mail today.  Our LOA was on 4/23 and so our I-800 packet was sent to the NBC (National Benefits Center) to request this next step in immigration approval.

Nothing has gone quickly, or smoothly it seems, for us in this process.  We missed being DTC by a few days before the new regulations were implemented which in turn added a time and paperwork to our process.  We had issues with our FedEx delivery of documents that had to be sent to the state of WI for authentication.  Once we were finally DTC at the end of October (10/24), it took forever to get our LID.  Nobody could believe that we missed a couple months of updates to the SN list in China because we couldn't be matched without that darn log-in-date.  Coincidentally, we were finally issued our LID on the same date that Katie was able to match us in January (1/16, almost three months after DTC).  We rushed to research and gather information, submitted LOI and did receive our PA in a pretty timely fashion.  But then came the BIG wait.  From PA (1/31) to LOA (4/23) was a whopping 83 days!  I guess this is apparently within the "window" of expected time, but WOW did it seem to take forever!

**UPDATE - Someone told me earlier that that the LOA wait time starts with the LID.  So, if we count back to our log-in-date, that's 98 days!

So, as I voice my complaints about the ongoing hurry-up-and-wait process we're going through, I am reminded again of just how perfect the plan is that we are lucky enough to be a part of.  As frustrating as this journey can be, we are reminded of the holiness of the "wait,"  the grace in God's timing, and the impending joy we'll experience the day we meet Luke.  We're almost there, Luke!  :)

What's next?  Crossroads will forward this approval to the NVC (National Visa Center) so they can upload whatever needs to be in the international visa system on-line so paperwork can be issued for Luke in China.  Once his information is in the system and can be accessed by the US Visa Center in Guangzhou, our DS-230 packet (final collection of all our necessary documents) can be hand carried by the liaison in China to the US Embassy there which will in turn, after about two more weeks, issue the final document (Article 5) prior to our travel approval.  WHEW!  Does that all make sense at all?

P.S.  Nothing heard back from the care package we sent.  We had our hopes up pretty high for some updated pictures and maybe some questions answered from the letter we sent.  It's so hard to wait.  And, let me tell you, it does NOT get easier.