Travel time is so close...

We will leave tomorrow to do a great wall of china tour before officially meeting our travel group. Excitement is crackling the air as packing does the same to my nerves. I will try to stay as close to China's lower weigh limits but we may end up paying a little in fees for overage. I'll know more of that tonight when it is all together and ditributed between 2 suitcases and 2 carryons. I confess to being a chronic over packer so this is really hard.
Gary is working today since it is tax season and hard to get away. I am off so all the last minute details can be taken care of.
Luckily our flight is not untill 12:15p tomorrow so our ride isn't coming at any ungodly hour to pick us up. Hopefully I will be able to sleep with all the excitement and nerves.
Our taxes are being mailed today. YAY. One less thing to be concerned about now. And hopefuly refund money soon to help with my unpaid family leave.
In an attempt to make sure we had what we needed for "gift" I probably over purchased. That is weighing down the bags too. Oh well better to be covered. And by Nanjing that will all be gone.
Everyone keeps telling me do laundry in country and we will most likely but ...I still like having what I need. Which has expanded now to diapers , wipe, bottles, toys and blankies for baby boy Ben!
I hope he likes what I have set aside since we will all be in a hotel room for 11 days together before that long pane ride home. 15 1/2 hours is how long that trip direct from Hong Kong is. This will be a crazy parenting challenge with a 16 month old.
So the travel goes like this we fly into Beijing China a day after we leave. We will be able to tour the Great wall and the forbidden city/Tianamin square before we receive Benjamin. We stay here until 3/28 when we transfer to his province Jiangxu, capital city: Nanjing. We receive Benjamin Rui 3/29 and stay here until he receives his passport for travel. 4/2 we travel to Guangzhou for the last of the governmental paper work and medical check. 4/8 we travel to Hong Kong by train and will be flying home 4/9.

Now that things from travel are out of Ben's room there is walking space yay! I can't wait till he is home with us. It will be such a joy to have our little boy home at last!!
We have taken a few classes in speaking chinese but sadly I think I will still be completely lost if someone start speaking fast and in long sentences. One of the women in our travel party speaks Mandarin and we will have guides from the travel agency which will bridge the gap in language.
5 other wonderful couples are traveling with us. Some of them are also receiving their first child. Others are more experienced parents and have gone to China previously for an adoption. All good resources I am sure we will become quite close during this trip. I hope the children can stay friends as well as the parents.

That is all for now I must finish the packing.
Thank you all for your overwhelming support and prayers for safe travel.

Blessings
Nancy

Oh, oh, oh, oh...my little China ... boy

Nihao!

So here we are, Friday night, March 19. The flood waters have receded and the basement is dry once again. It was not a good week in the water in the basement category. Okay, so we didn't get 18" like last time, or even four feet. With the pump we had, we managed to keep it to under 2". Why do I tell you this here? Because while all that was going on, we had to make some travel arrangements because ...

(drum roll, please...)

We're leaving for China on Wednesday, March 24. Holy cow and good God. That's right, kind reader, we are China bound! I'm moving ever closer to the moment of utter dadness. I've never been a dad before (at least not in this lifetime. If I was in a past life, I don't remember it), so this is gonna be (as they song) a whole new world.

There are four other families that will be in Beijing and Guangzhou with us, one of them from Harrisburg, PA. It'll be nice traveling with a small group of Americans as we make our way through a foreign land, the Middle Kingdom (between Heaven and Earth), as it's called.

Arrive in Beijing after a 13 hour, 45 minute flight from Newark (which I way prefer over JFK or LaGuardia). We have our orientation there as well as a trip to the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, and the Forbidden City. We even get to see a silk factory.

Then it's off to Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu, the province where Ben's staying. Speaking of Ben, we are presented with him on March 29. The name of the city where the orphanage is, is Huai'an. I think we'll be getting a tour of the orphanage.

A few days later we're off to Guangzhou for all the bureaucratic stuff. Paperwork, medicals, visas, etc. I'm hoping we have a day to sneak over to the safari park. We're in China, we should see a panda or two, right? We have close to a week there to make sure everything's on the up and up. Ben needs to have all his papers in order.

Here's the cool part (one of the many cool parts): We leave China at 10:25 am on Friday, April 9th, fly for 15 hours, 30 minutes and arrive in Newark on Friday, April 9th at 1:55 pm. You do the math. Planetary rotation and time zones, and flying into the past. Does this mean that if we watch the news in China before we leave, we'll know what's going to happen in the US before anyone else does?

As Linus once said to Charlie Brown: Take consolation that the world can't end tomorrow because somewhere in the world, it already is tomorrow.

That's the travel plans. Plenty of writing time as we cross the country and the Pacific Ocean. I'll wave at you West Coasters as we go over ya!

I'm hoping to upload pix as we go, so you can all share our journey with us.

Talk to you soon.


Peace,
Gary . . .

We received our USCIS clearance today!!

So for all you who have been following along our USCIS clearance update has arrived For all those who can follow the alphabet soup of all of this, that is from the I 600process which is the I 171H clearance.

What this means is, once this form is received in China's consulate, we can make our consulate appointments and set our travel date.
We are a huge step closer to bringing home Ben!!

We will have Ben home before mother's day and Fathers day this year most likely. How excellent is that!!!
I am contacting the agency and sending the faxed copy off in the am so this can keep on moving forward.

There is so much to get done now and some serious packing and baby proofing needs to be moved up on the priority list here.

Keep up the prayers we need them.
Patience strength hope and love

Nancy

China adoption process and information

for any one who has more questions about china programs and adoption
here is a link http://www.babyjellybeans.com/web/do/site/folder?ID=121761&parent_id=121761 to a friends blog she has said it so well I feel it is silly to attempt recreating her information here.
Enjoy.
Nancy

when it all started...china adoption

For those of you who do not know our history. I thought I'd add a little here. After we were unsucessful in 2 domestic adoption over 3 years we decided to re- assess our plan. We decided to explore an adoption through China. The china program was a stable one and had a good history. We were told there were changes coming and luckily we were able to send our dossie to China before they went into place. Our log in date, LID, was 5/16/07.
Then we sat back for the wait expecting it to be 9-18 months before we would meet our daughter. Remember previously adoptable children were predominantly girls.
When the wait time grew and grew many of our friends, family, and acquaintances began asking why we did not change countries or why didn't we adopt from the USA (domestic). Seems someone always takes the opposite point of view to any issue.
We explained you could not be listed in more than one country at the time and that it was quite costly. Also we had an issue with our original agency having to close.(it was a very stressful 2008 while we waited to see if our dream was ending again) When we were moved to Holt it became our 4th agency and we just couldn't go through all that paperwork again! We are grateful to Seedlings for choosing Holt as the takeover program.
Our 4th agency turned into our blessing. Holt has access to the China Child of promise (COP) program. COP is a minor correctable health conditions listing of waiting children. After alot of soul searching we chose to list in this program, as well as stay on the standard list. (Standard program has now matched children up to @april 2006- wait time is 42-47 months and still lengthening) We were told boys were also available and we said we would be open to either a Boy or Girl. Really... think about it if we had become pregnant, God would have choosen then too, so we gave it up to him for finding our baby. We joined COP in August 2009.
After 4 months of nail biting through each listing we received our call. Ben's health condition is truely minor which was another blessing. I think God knew we had had our fill of illness after 2009.
We sent in our LOI to tell China we were interested in adopting him on 12/2/09.
China sent us our Letter of acceptance to confirm this 1/14/2010. Then we waited for the next approval from China - Travel authority (TA). This came as we awaited an update on our home study 2/8/2010. We are currently in a holding pattern for USCIS clearance and update on our prior I-171 approval to include a boy up to age 2y with a special need. Once this arrives our agency will ask for a consulate appointment in China for Ben and we can set our travel dates.

Our referral call

So after the amzing grief our family had experience through most of 2009, a promise for the future came to us on 12/1/09.
When our adoption social worker called me at work to tell me we were matched with a baby boy who had just turned 1 years old, I was floored.
So much was rushing through my mind and heart.
Could we really hope and be happy again?
It appeared we could! We can!
Luo Rui was perfect and I knew then, as I heard his information and tried to process all of this, that he would be our son.
We did all the formal steps, sent in our LOI, and sent the medical information to an international pediatric doctor.
She gave us a good report the next morning!
So began our Journey to Benjamin Rui...our journey of JOY and LOVE to China to bring home Our Son to his Forever Family.