Were so close!

The referrals were sent out and they went up to August 9th. That puts us only 4 weeks from our LID. Looking at the website I review often I would hope we could receive our referral by the end of November. Unfortunately there are some big LID's with a lot of referrals so I am not real sure if that will happen. If we do end up going out to December we would run into the China New Year in the month of January which could make our travels to get Annaka a lot more delayed. I don't think we will know anything until we see who far the CCAA matches the next month. We are getting so much closer than we were 5 months ago. I look at some of the blogs and these families are not logged in until summer of 2006. I don't think I could do it again if I had the choice. It just gets to hard to wait and wait and wait and wait and did I say wait!!
Life keeps our family busy though. That makes time go faster but everyday I go in her room and wonder when she will be home, what she will look like and how she will change our family. I cant wait to see how the kids react to having a little sister. They are so good with my neighbors little girl and my friends little boy. Ally loves to pretend she is the big sister and Andrew gets this high pitched voice when he talks to them. Kind of like how we talk to our animals... Funny.

Matching room

This is an article I found on the matching room process. I thought it might help explain some things. Heck, I even learned some thing from it.
First, they review the baby dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. Parent dossiers were reviewed months before, baby dossiers are reviewed when they arrive and then immediately matched.
So now they have a stack of baby dossiers. They look to see how far this stack will go in the month without sending out a partial day and they pull all of those files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.
Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six babies, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 babies, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date.
And then they start matching individual babies to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s). Some agencies share this information with their clients. Some choose not to.

Update on getting Annaka home

Well, we have passed yet another month of referrals but only made it to July 22nd. That means we are only 6 weeks from our LID. Seems easy enough doesn't it. Then why is China so slow?
I have to say I am out of reasons. You get to a point that when it happens it happens. I can't explain things in china, I will just be glad to have her home and be done with the wait. Right now there are families over there getting there children. Its neat to read about them but also hard. We could still be waiting another 4-6 months if the rumors are right. I will update when we hear how far this last batch of referrals gets. There are rumors it could go to August 10th but I don't have my hopes to high...

This ones for you, SUZI!

My friend Suzi told me after she viewed my blog that I did not have any pictures of Andrew on it . SOOOOO , this one is for you! My friend Kay found this Mr. Incredible costume at a garage sale. Here he is!

First day of school

I am finally getting a post in here. Getting started on the first week of school and getting back into the groove can be hard. All and All this week has gone pretty well. I have only had to email the teachers a couple times about forgetting things.
This is a picture of my neighbors and Andrew's "girlfriend" Jackylynn. She is the one on Andrews left (notice the hand holding). Nex t to her is my friends daughter Kelsey and behind her is her sister Laura. Behind Andrew is Ally.
Jackylynn and Andrew are so cute. There friendship blossomed last year when Andrew would help Jacklynn get back and forth from daycare to school on the bus. Jacklynn was really scared and Andrew helped her by sitting with her and consoling her. The boy has a heart of gold. I really didn't know this was going on until daycare told me what a nice job he was doing with Jacklynn. Since then he has called her his girlfriend and he means it. They even exchanged valentine gifts last year!