A little shopping while we wait

Melissa at work told me about a great recordable photo album. It holds 24 pictures and each picture can have a message recorded for it that is saved in the book's memory. I ordered it from Amazon. We will be boxing it up to send to Holly. Each family member will have a page to put a picture in, and record a message to Holly for that page. I am putting some other things, like pictures of the dogs, of the pond, our car, stuff like that, and recording messages telling her about the things in the picture that will be a part of her new life.

Katie and I went to Build A Bear today and created an adorable bunny, with a button in its paw that I recorded a message on for her to play. It says, Wo Ai Ni Holly Jun, Mama loves you. Wo Ai Ni means I love you in Chinese. I dressed it in a baby sleeper outfit, with bunny slippers and pink bows. I picked up a soft baby blanket and wrapped the bunny in it. I'll toss in some packets of fruit snacks and more clothing items like socks. This will be the third box we send to her, and I will be interested to see if she brings any of these items with her when we pick her up on "gotcha day".

Gotcha day, for those not in the adoption circles, is the name referring to the day we meet her and she becomes ours. Myleigh's gotcha day anniversary is August 3rd.

LOA's came in today, there was one family that only waited 59 days, so, it's encouraging, but, there is absolutely no way to predict when ours will come in. I just keep hoping, keep praying, and keep my fingers crossed.

time goes slowly by

This waiting is the worst part of the entire process. There seems to be no end to the waiting. First it was the paperwork, then it was the LID, now, its LOA. come on, there is a little girl in China that is waiting for her family to bring her home, and she should be such a high priority that we grown ups, both here in the US and in China, would be moving heaven and earth to get her home as fast as possible. It just seems like the whole adoption business is crawling along. I can't imagine that any of the people involved in processing the paperwork have any motivation to get their rears in gear. It's just a job, day after day. To them it's what they do for a living, to us, it's our life.

We sent a box this week to Holly. Tim bought some clothes for her, I put a blanket and some toys and another camera in the box, along with a bag of suckers for the kids in the orphanage.

This week did bring a surprise. A friend from work, Emily, asked if it was ok to buy the DS for Holly that we were planning to pick up to take with us to China. That was such a sweet request, and both Tim and I were so touched that she would want to do that. I know Holly is going to love it.

We got our LID!!!!!

Josh emailed me today with our official log in date. It is August 7th. WOO HOO!!!

Now we just wait for LOA.

I was really expecting a LID on the 14th, so one less week of waiting is fine with me.

With the average wait time for LOA being 70 days, I am projecting a date of October 16th for when we get ours. It could be sooner or later than that, and I am hoping for sooner. It would be incredible if we could get LOA in September.