Xing and our travel itinerary arrive today!

First thing this morning I was greeted at the front door by our neighbors, the Ludwigs, and this adorable panda bear who we have named Xing (part of Grace's Chinese name which means "star".....it's pronounced like "Shing")! Thank you girls for such an endearing gift...he will be able to cuddle Grace in his big arms!

The other exciting thing that we received today was our in-China itinerary! We now know which hotels we will be staying in: Holiday Inn - Beijing, Sheraton - Xian, and The White Swan -Guangzhou. Sounds comforting! We found out we will actually be travelling to these 3 cities with 3 other families, although right now we don't know where our travel companions are from or any other details about them. Together we form Group #1614. We will be in Beijing from the 12th - 15th and then fly to Xian where we will receive Grace that afternoon at the Civil Affairs Office! (one day earlier than we first expected!) We will be in Xian for 5 nights and then on the 20th, fly to Guangzhou. This is the city where Grace will have a visa physical and some immunizations. We will also have our U.S. Consulate appointment there on the 24th. We will get Grace's U.S. visa on the 26th and then leave China on the 27th. All that time in-between will be for additional appointments, waiting, touring, shopping, and hopefully - sleeping!

Before we go there is a boatload of paperwork we have to assemble, last minute stuff to buy that somehow escaped my endless list-making, suitcases to pack (and probably un-pack and re-pack a few times)! So.....I doubt that I will post again until we arrive in China. I intend to post an entry with a couple of pictures every day or so ....so if that doesn't happen, then it was due to technical, physical or emotional difficulties!!!

Thank you all so much for the support, love and prayers that you have given us throughout this long process. We ask you to please keep those prayers coming! We will continue to share the trip details and our thoughts with you as we start the final leg of our "journey for Grace"!!

Her very own room!

Well, after 3 months we finally finished creating Grace's room! I can never finish a project without letting it "marinate" for months.... and I guess this was no exception. Many thanks to my neighbor Nancy for the beautiful carved oak head and footboard that is now Grace's bed! Rachel was the driving force getting the decorating completed this week...bringing boxes of books, movies and stuffed animals up from the basement. As she unpacked them there were lots of "Oh...I remember this!" exclamations as she found the perfect spot in Grace's room for all of it. The stuffed animals enjoyed some sunshine and fresh air out on our deck for 3 days as they needed some serious "airing out" after hanging out in the basement for years!

The "pis de resistance" was the string of colored butterfly lights that we tacked up around the window - a little magic....and a great nightlight! Here's some pics of Grace's little corner of our home!

Fed Ex Delivery Yesterday - Tickets to China!!

The itinerary for our trip is starting to take shape! Last week we received the agency email telling us that we have to be in Beijing on Thursday, August 12. We called one of the travel agents that our agency recommended and....let the planning begin!

Our flights are going to be LONG so right now we're trying to accumulate electronics, books, homework (ugh!)) and games to help pass the time! We leave O'Hare at 7am on Wed. 8/11, layover in Newark, NJ for a couple of hours, and then fly over the Atlantic and Europe to land in Beijing by 2pm on Thursday, 8/12. We will stay in Beijing for 3 days, seeing the sites.... and trying to get used to the 13 hour time difference! We will fly to Xian, the capital city of the province where Grace lives, in the afternoon on Sunday, August 15. On Monday, August 16 we will experience the "Gotcha Day" and finally be given our new little girl! We don't know exactly how long we will be staying in Xian..... but once we get Grace on Monday....she'll be with our family from then on! At some point we will fly to Guangzhou, in southern China, to spend a few days and meet with the U.S. Consulate to finalize the adoption.

Our flight home will take us over the Pacific and east to Chicago. So in the end....we'll have flown all the way around the world on this trip! Our itinerary departure and arrival times sound crazy....we leave Guangzhou on Saturday, August 27 at 9pm and arrive in Los Angeles at 7pm...... the same day! We are going to experience going backwards in time! Talk about messing me up!! I anticipate that no matter what time we think it is..... we'll be grateful to stretch, put our feet on the ground, and consume some airport food during our 4 hour layover in LA. We'll leave LA at 11pm and finally arrive in Chicago at 5am on Sat. August, 28. No Grace, we're not home yet..... just a 3 hour drive to Galena left. So if all things go as planned....we should be home by around 9am....just in time for bed (it will feel like 10pm to us!) I'll be posting more details as I get them..... so stay tuned!

China approves us for travel!

We've been waiting for weeks now for our Travel Approval from China and it finally arrived on Monday! Our "orders" are to be in Beijing on August 12! We will spend a few days there getting used to the time change and doing a little site-seeing before we fly to Xian on Sunday 8/15. The day we've been waiting for will finally arrive on Monday, 8/16 when we will finally meet Grace and welcome her into our family! The adoption world calls this Gotcha Day....how appropriate!!
Right now we are busy filling out Visa applications, getting the next series of inocculations, and trying to line up a decent flight itinerary (I have 2 different agencies working on this for us). All of a sudden, I'm wondering if I will get everything done within the next 4 weeks. I still have to finish painting Grace's room and get it in order! Here I've had 4 years to get ready for this .... and I'm still going to scramble at the finish line....typical me! I should be able to post our exact travel itinerary by the end of the week....stay tuned!

A New Picture!

Wow, we are really getting close now! We got an email from the travel department saying they are expecting our travel orders very soon. We are shooting for departure on August 10 but that is not set in stone by any means! They also sent us a new picture of Grace taken at the end of May...and the first thing we noticed is that she has hair and not a shaved head!! She's gained a few pounds and grown a bit since we last received info. She is now 28 lbs. and 37"....still a little peanut!!

Gift Giving..... the Chinese Way!

One of the things we will need to be prepared to do while in China is hand a gift to every Chinese government person we meet with along the way! That means.... the orphanage caregiver that brings Grace to us, the Registration officials, the Notary Officials, and the Passport Officials. Our agency gives us a list of items that we should purchase (not to be deviated from!) and the total number of gifts we will need to have (we will need 9). They also tell us not to worry about the gender of the person who will receive the gift.....if we give a man perfume.... he'll be just as happy because he can take it home to his wife. If we give a woman a compact tool set....she'll get points with the husband when she gets home from work! The other items on the list are American made candy or chocolate, a nice pen, quality stationary, cosmetics, official sports caps and T-shirts, and scarves! The next rule is - all items must be given in a red gift bag! I've bought all the red gift bags in Wallmart to date and am waiting for the next shipment! I've been accumulating a few gifts - a scarf, a bottle of perfume, and a couple of Chicago Cub hats (again, from Wallmart....their variety of sports stuff is OK - I checked with the agency to see how "official" - "official" meant!) I am being especially careful to buy things that are not made in China (or to remove the tell-tale tag....like on the hats!) as I think this would defeat the purpose of presenting a special "American" gift! Just as I'd never show up at your house for dinner without a bottle of wine....I guess every culture truly has their gift giving mores!

Another step!!

Many of you have asked me if we've heard any more from China....and do we know yet when we are going???? Here's the latest.....

Believe it or not, after 4 years of waiting, we've actually been holding up the process a bit at this point! Once you get the child "referral" (all the info about YOUR child), and all the zillions of pieces of paper are signed, notorized, and sent to the agency.....the agency issues a Lettter of Intent (to adopt). When this letter is documented in China, the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) in Beijing sends a Letter of Acceptance to our agency in Colorado. The agency sends this all important letter on to us . We sign this LOA, as it is called by the ever present assortment of acronyms.... send it back to our agency..... and they send it back to China. I actually explained those steps in an earlier blog entry, but this is a refresher course in case you weren't paying attention!! (Don't worry, there's no quiz at the end!)

Once that LOA arrives in China, the CCAA will send your travel orders within 2-4 weeks. Once you have those travel orders....things really start happening fast! The travel department at our agency contacts the U.S. Consulate's office in Guangzhou (a city in southern China) to make an appointment for us. At this appointment we present the child and make it "official" that we are going to take her out of China with us as our daughter! Once that Consulate appointment is scheduled...arrangments such as flights and hotels are made at lightning speed and we will be on our way to China within weeks!

So....now that I've taken a short story and made it a long one.......our family could not travel until August, so we asked the agency to hold onto the LOA. We didn't want it returned to China right away because we needed to slow down the process by about a month. (Rachel is in a play at UWP that ends Aug. 8th so our target date to travel is any day after that!)

Our agency emailed me yesterday with the news that we are going ahead with the next step! They feel it's time to return our LOA to China..... so their staff in Beijing will be delivering our LOA to the CCAA office this week! That means that between 2 and 4 weeks from now - we will know when our travel date is !! Then I can officially kick it into high gear and attempt to finish all the projects on my "List of things to do before we go to China"! We can then start the count-down to the exact date when we will hold our new little daughter for the first time.....the end result we've all been waiting for!!!

OUCH!!

One of the many things on my "to do" checklist to prepare for our trip was to get our immunization shots for travel to China. We knew there would be quite a few shots that we each would need so a family outing to the doctor's office seemed to be the best way to get this done! Hepatitus A and B (very serious diseases that affect the liver) are still prevalent in China so shots to prevent those diseases went in the right arm first. Typhoid (contracted from contaminated food and water) was the next vaccine.....into the left arm (as this arm would end up being sore!). We made sure James baseball throwing arm was not affected in this process!! The next disease we needed to worry about was Malaria which we will actually take pills to deter from contracting. We will take 1 pill a week for 6 weeks (before, during and after the trip). The biggest OUCH was the price tag that came with all these immunizations....over $1,000....but obviously staying healthy is worth it!

We're sending a little "care" to Grace in a package!

Recently we were given the info we needed to send a care package to Grace at the orphanage in China. The adoption agency told us that often the orphanage finds out that a child is being adopted with the arrival of a care package from their new family! As I go through my day, I often imagine what Grace is doing right now - sleeping....maybe playing, eating breakfast, getting dressed....Next Monday (if not a few days sooner) she will be opening a box full of toys, clothes, candy, a camera, and her first look at her new family! The coolest thing we put in the box was a book I made for her (with some help from Copyworks) with photos of each of us: Mother, Father, Big Sister, Big Brother, Grandpa, 2 Grandmas....our animals - Oreo, Sherman, Nickle and a picture of our house. I used the computer to translate these "titles" into Chinese characters and pasted the Chinese name next to each photo. I had each page cut to 8" x 6", laminated, and all the pages put together with a spiral binding. The front cover is this picture of Grace on the blog - with the Chinese words for WE LOVE YOU! The agency gave us a "cover letter" for the box, written in Chinese, that asks the Nannies at the orphanage to give her the gifts and explain to her about the new life she will soon have with a new family. The disposable camera in the box is for the Nannies to use to take pictures of the orphanage, Grace's friends, caregivers....anything to document her life in China. Since we won't be going to the orphanage to get Grace, these pictures will be the only ones she will have of her "beginning". Someone from the orphanage will be bringing Grace to the city of Xian to meet us. The cover letter makes our request that they take these pictures and bring the camera with Grace when they meet us in Xian.

Please say a prayer for this little one....a prayer that God will speak to her heart and let her know that this change is a wonderful thing in her life....that she won't be frightened of our white faces and hair that is not jet black.... that she won't mourn too long for the world she is leaving...... As nervous and anxious as we are to meet our daughter, I keep reminding myself that she will be even more uncertain and scared. Hopefully, our "care" in a package will introduce Grace to the concept of family... and show her we are already loving her!

Chinese Legend of The Red Thread

Well, things are progressing at our house....a little more agency paperwork done, another item for the trip to China purchased, more cleaning and reorganizing in the kid's bedrooms...
It's a slow and steady walk to the finish line and I'm trying to savor every detail, every moment of this preparation!

I have also been reading about the Chinese culture and current etiquette and customs. I have to be careful because when I'm on-line surfing around and reading.... the hours tend to fly by and my daily "to do" list doesn't get any shorter!! One of the things I learned from a dear friend (Linda!) is especially appropriate for an adoptive parent and their new child.

She told me about "The Legend of the Red Thread". There is an ancient Chinese belief which states that when a child is born, an invisible red thread connects that child's soul to all those people - present and in the future - who will play a part in that child's life. As each birthday passes, those threads shorten and tighten, bringing closer those people who are fated to be together. Grace just celebrated her 3rd birthday on April 14th...... and 16 days later, the agency called to ask me if I would be her mother! The red thread that connects her to our family is getting shorter all the time as we prepare for our journey!

Turning the house upside down!!

Wow, one little 3 year old child thousands of miles away has our whole family cleaning, changing and rearranging every room in our house...and she doesn't even know it!! We decided that James should move into the bedroom on the main level of our house (currently we've been using it as an "office") so that Grace could have the bedroom upstairs near Mom and Dad. Well...first that office needed to be dismantled and all items distributed to other rooms throughout the house...which meant moving "stuff" out of those other rooms to make room for more "stuff"! I'm sure you get the picture - now there are piles of "stuff" and excess furniture all over the house in every room! That's where garbage bags start to come in very handy and the idea that "less is more" takes on new meaning. As you all know....once you get started purging, you become obsessed with cleaning out every drawer, cabinet, nook, and cranny...successfully driving your family crazy! Of course I want to get all of this cleaning and rearranging done overnight because the real goal here is to get to the point where I can decorate Grace's new bedroom! We're going with a daffodil yellow and lavender color scheme....and can't wait to get paintbrush in hand to start the job....pictures will follow upon completion!

Where in the world is Grace?

Grace lives in in the Children's Welfare Institute in Yulin City in the province of Shaanxi. If you look on a map, Shaanxi is squished right in the middle of China...but towards the north of the country. The province is bordered by Inner Mongolia and a desert....which blows 18 sandstorms a year into Yulin City! (I bet she'll be glad she's getting away from that!) We recently found out that we won't be going to get her at the orphanage in Yulin City. She will be brought to the capital of the province, Xian, and we will meet her for the first time there.

We received our Letter of Agreement from China this week. It's a very official looking document (looks like a diploma!) written in Chinese and translated to English. Once that document is signed and sent back to China, the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs will start to process our Travel Approval documents!

When we finally go to China we will travel to a port city (we think it will be Bejing). Then the next day we will fly to Xian to get our little girl from the nanny who brings her from the orphanage! We will stay in Xian about a week while China prepares paperwork, visa's, and a passport for Grace. During that time Grace will be with us in our hotel, getting to know her new family! All that week we will be offered tours to take to see the sites of Xian. James is especially excited to see the buried army of terra cotta soldiers! We're told the adoption agency reps in-country will keep us very busy! In researching on-line we discovered there is a HUGE beautiful shopping mall that I'm sure Rachel will want to check out!

Right now we have paperwork to fill out and get notorized, phone calls to the USCIS to make, and a little girls room to prepare! So from the world of Yulin City, China.....little Grace will make a long, long journey to middle America. From a city of 3.5 million.....to Galena, Illinois....and that's where in the world she will grow up!

What's in a name?

We may call our new little girl Grace, but in China they are still calling her by the name the orphanage gave her - Yu Xing Zhang. They told us she was abandoned at birth on the steps of a hospital....and then taken to the orphanage where they gave her this name. Her name can be translated like this: Yu is her surname, Xing means Star and Zhang means an article, chapter or regulation. We're in the process of deciding on a middle name for Grace right now. I don't think "chapter" is at the top of the list.... although she is a brand new chapter for our family...so her Chinese name is totally appropriate!

Mother's Day was extra sweet for me today and thank you all for the good wishes and blessings!

Let the paperwork begin!

Our agency has graciously given us more paperwork to fill out....that will eventually make it's way to China. In the meantime, we wait approximately 3 weeks for the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) to issue us our "acceptance letter"....a formality really, since our dossier has been approved and sitting in China since November 23, 2006. We will be taking new steps toward our trip to China every so often and I will let you all know where we are in the process right here!

The FUN stuff has begun too! Rachel and I made a pilgrimage to Walmart to purchase our first clothing item for Grace. We've been walking past all those cute little girl outfits for so long...and now we can actually buy something! Rachel picked out a pair of LIttle Mermaid pj's with Ariel and that little yellow fish (how could I forget his name....I must have watched that movie 1,000 times with Rachel???) I bet I'll get to watch it 1,000 more times in the not-too-distant future and then I'll get back to you with the name of the little yellow fish! Anyway...we also couldn't resist getting this cute, cuddly, little Teddy Bear too! (Grace will have multitudes of these once they all come out of storage, but everyone needs one Teddy Bear that's not a hand-me-down!)

Breathe deep!

Time to let the idea that this is finally going to happen sink in! We are really going to travel to China to get a little 3 year old girl to be the 5th member of our family...and we will call her Grace. Her name has been mentioned countless times in our family..."when Grace gets here yadayadayada"...."when we have Grace yadayadayada".....We've bought Chinese chop sticks, baby silverware and Christmas ornaments over the years...while thinking of her. She's been a name without a face for so very long that she's a person we didn't know if we could really ever put a face on.....until now! Now we know who she is and we can start to love her.