Filling the closet!

I've been shopping!! We are hoping to travel in October at the latest, and found out that it will still be rather warm in all three locations that we will be visiting in China. Probably 70-80 in Beijing and Urumqi, and probably mid 80's in Guangzhou (although not as humid) So this means we need to take summer clothes with us for Ellie!! I'm in heaven because things are going on sale now, as the stores are gearing up for the winter clothes and Christmas decor!! So Saturday Rick and the boys watched me while I perused Target to find something to go with a shirt I bought that says"little girl, big dreams" on the front. I picked up two cute little skorts to match the shirt and a super cute bathing suit for Ellie!! They all were on sale and I love a bargin!! Ellie more than likely will not want to go swimming, but with her big brother Riley partaking she might decide to try it!! I definately want to be prepared just in case!
Now if I just knew how big her feet are!!!!

Getting closer!!

Well I'm still crossing my fingers, but I think our internet is finally back!! Yahoo!! No e-mail or blogging in the comfort of my own home for nearly 4 weeks is enough to push me over the edge! Not that there is much to blog about right now, we are waiting on China to send our LOA. We are expecting it in about 7-8 weeks! Then we should have a good idea when we will travel.

For now we are getting Ellie's bedroom ready, buying some dolls and cute clothes etc. Things I've never really looked at before since we have two boys! It is feeling REAL finally, and every time I think of how close it is my stomach flips over!!! What if she doesn't like us? What if she doesn't want to leave China? What if I don't know what to do with a GIRL!!

Also it's going to be really hard to leave Rorey here, even though he will be in hog-heaven, staying at my Mom and Dad's house! Maybe even going on vacation with them if we travel at the right time!! And then of course there is the flying!!!!!!!!!! AUGH!! I'm going to need medication!!

STILL NO INTERNET!

Well I can't believe it, but we still have no internet service!!! These people are crazy if they think I'm paying the bill this month! Really nothing is happening with the adoption right now as we are waiting for China to approve all of our paperwork. We will be expecting a letter and official referral in late July or early August giving us an estimated travel time. So I will keep you all informed if anything else happens!

YAHOO!!! LID

Well I called CHI after whining in my last post and they had received our LID this morning!!!
Our date is May 30th! So now we wait for China to OK everything and say come get her!
I'm very excited, but also sort of nervous! I'll keep you all updated!

Still No Log In Date!

Well as you can see, we still have no LID. Our internet is still not working correctly, not that we noticed since we had no power after Monday nights storms until Wednesday morning at 7:30. The boys and I went to my parents Tuesday night, since we didn't have water either!! Rick stayed home alone in the dark, and hooked up a generator. Next time this happens at least we will be able to flush the toilets!!
I guess I'll call CHI and try to figure out why there has been no word about our log in date. We are DTC as of May 9th!!! Most people have the LID 3-4 days later!! This is actually what I should have expected since NOTHING else has gone smoothly thru this process. Well I take that back, one thing did go smooth- Picking Ellie- Thank God!!!

Computer Blues

Sorry everyone, our Internet has been on the fritz for the last week! I'm at the library now trying to give you a little something to read!! We are still waiting on a LID. My social worker said today that she would check on it. My friends and I have noticed that surprisingly things seem to be going faster than they used to with the LOA's and traveling dates!! This is good news for us, as we now are only waiting for China to give us the go-ahead!! Of course in the same breath (or typing cramp) my stomach starts to flip over every time I think of it! The flying, the new child, the whole language thing, my boys, the bathrooms in China!! Bathrooms are important to me and I'm in big trouble once we leave our hotel in China!! The good bathrooms in China are like a urinal, but set in the floor! They are called the "squatty potty." The average ones are just like going out in the woods here in the US- in an alley or empty spot behind a building somewhere. This is bad for me!! I can't even go in a porta-potty!! Oh well, Ellie better appreciate my sacrifices!

Sick boy has birthday party!

Today was Rorey's 5th birthday party! Unfortunately he started in yesterday with a fever and complaining of a stomach ache. After sleeping all night, this morning he had a 102.7 degree fever, was crying and saying his stomach hurt again! I had to go to church because I was singing on the praise team for two services so Daddy stayed home with Rorey. I loaded him up with Tylenol and took off! Amazingly he was doing fairly well when I got home, so I loaded him up with Advil and we went on with the party!! Poor little thing had fun opening presents, but didn't eat much cake and ice cream because of his stomach problem. He is such a trooper! What do you want to bet he picked up this little germ at Chuck E. Cheese on Thursday?

DTC Finally!

It's official, we are DTC as of Friday May 9th!! For thoses of you who don't know the lingo that means we sent our "documents to China." We should have an LID soon. (log in date) Of course the earthquake in China may slow us up, but right now we aren't sure what will happen.

Happy Mothers Day!

Welcome to our Mother's Day "free show." There was dancing, singing, laughing, you name it the boys did it! They looked pretty cute all dressed up in their play clothes, especially Rorey in the sombrero! Riley loves to wear the derby hat that belonged to my Uncle Bob before he passed away. I keep thinking next Mother's Day there will be three little cast members performing in our family room! Can't wait!

Brothers to Be

Well we decided to add a little human interest to our boring blog with some pictures of our big brothers to be! Both of these pictures were sent to Ellie in her little photo album of our house, family, dog, etc. Hopefully they are preparing her for the transition by showing her these photos everyday and explaining who we are!! She may need some extra explaining when it comes to Rorey! This picture shows his true personality! Riley of course is Mr. cool as usual, posing like he is in GQ magazine! All four of us are getting really excited and

a little nervous as this process seems to finally be coming to fruition! The realization that we are adding a new child to our family, and a four year old one at that has caused a little anxiousness but mostly happiness with our boys. We can't wait (well at least I can't) to get some girl stuff in this place!

Ni Hao! (hello)

Tonight Rick, Riley and I started Chinese leasons!! Of course all we learned tonight is how much we don't know! In addition to speaking, James is also going to teach us Chinese cooking once a month. He said Riley "has good tone." In Chinese there are four "tones" and if you say a word in the wrong tone it means something different! Hopefully by the time we go to China we will at least be able to ask for the bathroom! HAHA! We hope to keep Ellie speaking in Chinese, Riley learning and maybe even Rorey (once we get him to speak English correctly!)
It was exciting to start this new "family project", and I feel like a one hundred pound weight has been lifted off of my chest since our paperwork is out of here!

Paperwork off to St. Loius!

Well on May 20th it will be one year since we started this journey and finally, all of our paperwork is done and sent to our adoption agency! I'm so glad that it is out of my hands, and on it's way! It could possibly go out to China tomorrow if they don't need to make any changes and I haven't forgotten anything! What in the world! I'm not sure I would have done this if I would have known the problems we were going to come up against! Of course when we get that little girl in our arms it will all be worth it! One whole year of anxiousness, turmoil, frustration, nervous stomach,tearful days, and sleepless nights. Will I ever be the same again?
Now we start a new period of waiting! Waiting for China to give us our "official referral" and also our "travel approval." As everyone already knows, the Olympic games are being held in China in August. Obviously we DO NOT want to be there right before that! Realistically we are expecting to travel in late September or early October. I'm not sure what I will have to post about while we endure the two to three month wait for word from China! Maybe regular life stuff like Riley's baseball games, or Rorey's allergic reaction to Sulfa drugs!! Let me tell you, even without all of this adoption craziness, there is never a boring day at this house!

If you could see me now!

We have been gutting out all three of our upstairs bedrooms closets for the last week. I spent about 6 hours yesterday ripping, tearing, and shreading the wallpaper off of our walkin closets walls. Today I have been mudding and sanding in all three closets, and painting in the boys. I am filthy and my hair is covered in dry wall dust!! I will never understand why any one would wallpaper a closet, even though it is a walkin and doesn't really have a door. I took a picture of the horrible, ugly, mauve and federal blue flowered wallpaper with my cell phone, I'll see if I'm techy enough to get it to this blog! This will all be worth it when our closets are soooo collected and organized!! Oh yes and another surprise, we found the nastiest old carpet under a built in closet shelf. I have never seen carpet that ugly!! It is yellowy-orange kitchen type carpet with brown pea sized blobs all over it! At first I thought it was some kind of molded old padding or wood-that is how ugly it is!!! Well having an OLD house is never boring!

Express mail to Chicago!

It's Wednesday now and all of my paperwork should be on a desk somewhere inside the Chinese Consulate in Chicago! Hopefully they will have it back to me
by Tuesday of next week. I think I have everything ready to send to CHI
(adoption agency) who will send our dossier to China for us. They send them
every Friday, so I'd like to get it there before May 2nd. If not ,after all of this
waiting what's one more week!!! We are getting really excited now and it is
starting to sink in! We have another child out there! We just want her home.

Hallelujah Birthday

I never thought I would say this again, but this was the best birthday ever!!!!! I won't say how old I turned today, but I recieved the best present EVER!!! I came home to find our I-171H in the mail box! FINALLY! Our homestudy has been done since mid October and we finally have all the paperwork we need!!! Tomorrow I will be going to the Sec. of State to have it certified, then immediately to the post office to mail it to the Chicago Chinese Consulate. Hopefully we will have it back and sent off to China the first full week of May!!! Everyone join me in the song; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

SPRING CLEANING!

Spring is finally here and we decided to start working on our bedroom situation, in preparation for the arrival of little miss Ellie. I think if she had come here and seen the complete chaos in Riley's bedroom she may have said "take me back to the orphanage!" Getting some of the cleaning, setting up, and bedroom rearranging done is helping to take our minds off the waiting. I might get the nerve to show a picture of Riley's room before we started! It was that bad! We love him, but he is undeniably the worst pack-rat EVER!!!!! (besides my father) We took two 30 gallon trashbags of garbage out of his bedroom! Not Goodwill items or things to be handed down to Rorey, but pure trash!! I found things and clothes that I forgot he even had, stuffed under the bed, in the closet, behind the bed, you name it , he had it! He is now moved to the smaller bedroom next door and is on a tight cleaning schedule!!! Our next order of business is to re-do the closets (our walk-in included) with more efficient use of space. Since this house is 110+ years old, we are not blessed with great closet space! We have to get things in order because even though we are still waiting, Ellie has enough clothes to fill one up already! Oh, but don't tell Rick that! Anyway, we made a great start on getting the bedrooms ready for our new family member and will be getting some furniture and "stuff" soon.

NO NEWS IS NOT GOOD NEWS!!!

Well it's Thursday April 17th and we still have no news from immigration on our I-171H. Our social worker made a few adjustments to our homestudy and resubmitted it to USICS on Tuesday April 8th. I have been waiting anxiously to say the least, getting palpitations every time I approach the mailbox. Once this form arrives we are ready to get it certified, and then mail all of our papers to the Chinese consulate in Chicago for authentification. (which means I pay them $20 a sheet to stick a big sticker on the back with Chinese written all over it) Then when it comes back to us (7-10 business days) we will send our entire dossier to our agency who will check it over and then send it all to China!!! Then the waiting begins again for China to give us our official referral and TA(travel approval) If there is one thing you need when adopting it is patience, and coping skills!!! augh!!! We are so excited to get her home!

Paperwork Fake-out

As I have said on this blog repeatedly, we are still waiting on our I-171H from immigration. We have been waiting since February. Thursday April 3rd, Rick took the day off of work and was at home. I was out with my mom, aunt Lorrie and Rorey for lunch. I called home and asked Rick to check the mail to see if "the form" had arrived and to call me if it was there. Well two minutes later my phone rings and it was Rick saying there was only one piece of mail and it was from the Department of Homeland Security!!!! I yelled ya-hoo in the middle of a restaurant!! BUT... He opened it and all it said was "please submit the documentation in regards to your I-600A." Of course this pushed me over the edge again!!! And to top it off we don't even know what this "documentation" is that they are wanting! At the bottom it said that a checklist had been mailed to our agency. Rick immediately contacted our social worker who knew nothing about this! I'm hoping it is something that can quickly be sent to them and we can get this paperwork chaos behind us! It's Sunday night and I have been trying to stay calm over the weekend (although I'm not good at that). Hopefully tomorrow we will find out what is going on.

Pick a name any name

We received a video of Ellie last fall, and I think it really showed some of her personality. She was acting so sweet and timid until one of the boys got into her toys, she immediately gave him a sideways glance that was pure mischief. What a scrappy little girl. Having that video helped us to pick a name that we hope will fit her.... Ellie. The other names we had thought about just seemed too passive, shy, reserved? What a great match! God knows what he is doing, because he picked out this little cutie for us. As many of you know, we already have two boys at home who are "full of personality", so I think a little attitude might serve her well here in this family! Who could possibly resist her?

Rorey's Plans

Rorey and I were out and about Thursday when we ran into an old friend. She was asking how the adoption was going and I was telling her it was going to be another 4-5 months before Ellie came home. She asked Rorey if he was excited to get a new sister and he said, yes, and she is going to be my new bath partner!! Apparently he is upset that his big brother refuses to take a bath with him anymore, and has made some plans for Ellie that I am not privy to!!