Busy Week

It was a busy week for me this week.
First, I had registered for an SEI class that I need to renew my teaching certificate (Sheltered English Immersion). It was 4 days for 4 hours each evening from 4-8 p.m. It was a fairly easy course, everything was done in class.
But, I also taught VBS from 8am-2pm every day. The kids had their challenging moments. Brandon stayed with me until noonish. Hannah went back to our house with my mom every day. The kids were just too loud for her. After lunch my mom would pick up Brandon and take the kids up to her house.
Brent would pick the kids up at about 5 - well, he would go to my parents, eat dinner with them, swim and come home. It worked out nicely for them.
I missed everyone. I hardly saw Hannah because by the time I got home she was usually in bed. I got to spend time with Brandon at VBS but with lots of other kids - there wasn't as much "Mommy" time as he would have liked. I hardly go to spend time with Brent because by Tuesday evening I was exhausted and sick. Yes, in the midst of this I feel terrible. General stuffiness mostly but not sleeping because of it.
I liked the class - talking "education".
I liked working with the kids.
I missed my family.
I'll be glad for tomorrow when I only have VBS and no class.
I'll be glad for the weekend when I can spend time with the kids and Brent.

Big Plans

I'm getting ready to put up a new blog with Sarah's quilt squares and wishes on it. I took pictures of all the squares (140 of them!) and the wishes that went with those that had wishes. I'm going to post them several at a time - I just have to get going on it.

If you sent a square and not your wishes yet (there are quite a few of those)you'll need to post a comment to that particular post. If a square doesn't have a wish attached to it I'll not that on the post and if you'd like to add a wish for that square you can post a comment as well.

I've really slacked on getting a book together with all the wishes so I figure this will work too. When I've posted all the squares and wishes I'm going to figure out how to print each one.

All these big plans - I hope I can get it all done!

I love you

Hannah

Brandon

China information in review:

So, I thought the first post should here should be a review of the information we have received so far from our agency about Sarah.

• December 22, 2005 ~ The dossier from the following families have been sent out to CCAA. They are in Group 123B, total 6 families. J******** Adam
• February 12, 2006 ~ Hello. We should be receiving your LID sometime this month or early next month. Unfortunately, referrals have been taking longer and longer. Recently referrals have been taking about 11 months. However, the time does keep getting longer. Ugh! I will email you as soon as I receive your LID and later your group number. Hang in there! I know it is hard to wait so long. Janice
• March 13, 2006 ~ Hello. Your LID is Jan. 13, 2006. With lots of hope and prayers we'll have a referral by the end of the year! Janice
• March 15, 2006 ~ Your DTC was Dec. 23 Adam
• April 12, 2006 ~ Group 115 - 116A (May 30 submission) got their referrals recently. The average age is 8.5 months. Adam
• May 22, 2006 ~ The wait is getting longer at about 11 - 12 months now. But to be specific about which date which group is going to get referrals is kind speculative. CCAA is aware of the waiting time and will try to speed things up. Adam
• May 23, 2006 ~ The question has been coming up as to why the referrals by the CCAA have become slower. Here's Adam's answer: The question why things are slowing down has been presented to CCAA many times and by many agencies. CCAA never gave back a specific answer. (No really, We did not see anything wrong, these are the typical answers). You can see this by seeing no agency can tell why it is happening. I think that it is combination of many small factors that lead to this and should get better down the road. There have been 2 major holidays, ther have been several major conferences, there will be a move, this is the first part of the year and so on. Hope this will help. Adam
• July 18, 2006 ~ CCAA is in the middle of a move which will take about a week. I have been told that the "fallout" will be two weeks. It seems like the referrals are currently taking around 11 to 12 months from the LID. I talk to quite a few China families and the 11 to 12 months seems to be the consensus. Janice
• September 1, 2006 ~ Dear colleague, Group 118A got their referrals! The average age is a little over 10 months. Adam
• December 1, 2006 ~ Dear colleague, According to CCAA website, the cut off date is Sept. 9 for this group of referrals. Unfortunately our Group 119B does not meet this requirement. Adam
• January 10, 2007 ~ As soon as your home study is complete, you should resubmit for your I-600A. Do not wait until March as I am not sure how long it will take the Arizona branch of the CIS to issue your I-171H. You will need to submit everything again (taxes, birth certs, home study, etc.). Either ask your home study agency or the local CIS office if your local branch will allow you to submit the I-600A now and then submit your home study when it is completed. They should be able to use your current fingerprints, but ask to be sure. Also, ask how long they take to issue the I-171H once they have everything. Referrals seem to be issued from Sept. LIDs. If the CCAA proceeds as they are now, you probably won't be traveling until summer. However, I'd rather you have your I-171H just in case. Janice
• January 18, 2007 ~ I am finishing up your home study report today and I plan to put it in today's mail to the court. I called the court and your fingerprint results are in. We should receive the court certification back within the next two weeks. Catherine
• February 4, 2007 ~ Your certification is back from court. I will mail out all your paperwork Monday. Catherine
• February 28, 2007 ~ You should be receiving the brown envelope in the next few months. Once you receive it, please email me your GUZ#. As it stands now, if my calculations are correct, you may receive your referral in August. China will be extremely traveled from July through September. So, if it's any consolation, flights will be easier to come by in October after the Olympics. Janice
• March 17, 2007 ~ Dear colleague, Group 120 got referrals recently, 16 babies total, 10 months in average ages. Adam
• May 4, 2007 ~ Dear colleagues, You have been alarmed probably by the waiting time for the China program. I felt the same. During my recent trip to China, I tried to get a clearer picture for the future for the China program. It have been a normal practice that orphanages would approach CCAA asking for favors so that their children could be assigned to foreign families sooner. The situation has completed reversed recently. Orphanages do not have that many children for adoption. More and more Chinese families are adopting directly from the orphanages. CCAA have seen that and got really concerned with the decreasing #. Less adoption cases means less staff, less founding and so on for them. CCAA will organize a national adoption conference in June. One of the proposes I believe is to encourage or push orphanages to go through international adoption process more. There are some bigger provinces that have never keen on international adoption. Get them on board is important as well. However, the results of this conference will take time to show its effects. So I suspect that the referral will be slow as now for a period of 3 - 4 months and then pick up. Adam
• May 4, 2007 ~ Did you receive the brown envelope from the US Embassy in China? If not, please email the Consulate in Guangzhou at http://us.f535.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=GuangzhouA@state.gov You will need your GUZ# and your original I-171H when you travel to China. Janice
• May 7, 2007 ~ Dear colleague, Group 121A just got referrals recently. The average age of the children are little over 11 months old. Their dossier were submitted in Oct. of 2005. Adam
• May 14, 2007 ~ Thank you for your email. We got a new approval with your new address and new fingerprint record from CIS. The case number we created is: GUZ2007134021. Sincerely yours, Adopted Children's Immigrant Visa Unit (ACIVU)
• May 14, 2007 ~ If you haven't received the brown envelope from the US Embassy prior to your travel, then please take this email with you plus your original I-171H. Thanks. Also, while you are waiting for your referral (Sigh!), you may want to download the I-600, I-864, and I-864a forms from the BCIS (INS) website. The I-864 and I-864a forms need to be notarized and are precautionary in case one of you must return home for an unforeseen reason. AHO will also send you a travel packet once you receive your referral which will include a Power of Attorney form giving power to each spouse. Again this is precautionary, but I recommend the POAs and the I-864s. Janice
• May 15, 2007 ~ I know Adam was hoping that the referrals would pick up, but he's aware of the limited number of orphans. The Adoption Conference is in June, so we'll see what transpires. Janice
  

Adam is the man who translated our dossier after we completed it. He is also the one who is in charge of our travel groups. When the CCAA sends our referral it will go to Adam first. He will translate everything, send it to our agency who will in turn send it to us. We will send our letter of acceptance (LOA) back to him and he will send it to the CCAA. He and his brother, LiPing (most likely LiPing) will be our liason when we get to China.

Janice is the courier from our agency. She collected our dossier paperwork from us and drove it around to all the places that it needed to go before heading to Adam for translation. I'm glad we didn't have to do all the traveling! She will also help us in getting our visas when it comes time to get them. We contact her with any questions we have regarding the process versus contacting our agency directly.

Catherine is from the home study agency here in Arizona. She did our home study, got it court certificated. She will probably help us out when we do the re-adoption after we bring Sarah home. Hopefully we will not have to do a home study update - this would happen we don't get our referral before our home study expires.

New site...

I found a new site by reading another blogger adopting from China. It is called China Adoption Forecast.

You plug in the LID (1/13/06 for us) and they give you a "guesstimate" of when you will get your referall.

Here is what it said about us:

Our prediction for LID 2006-01-13

Our best guess - a weighted average of recent CCAA velocities, guessing that CCAA will perform about as well in the future as they are performing now, but might return to previous trends: 2007-11-06That's our best guess for when you might receive your referral. Just at a guess, we can suppose that the CCAA either speeds up or slows down significantly, and show you those dates.

If they speed up: 2007-09-25. And if they slow down: 2008-08-25.

Since China generally sends out referrals in a batch about once per month, your referral date could easily vary +/- one month depending on whether you just get included or just get missed in a particular batch.

They also give math to back up their guess. At this point I don't particularly care how they get the numbers it is just nice to see them. If you want to look up how they do it the link is: http://chinaadoptionforecast.com/about.php.

They also have a historical view of what the CCAA has done in the past 2 years. While very interesting I sure hope there is a speed up! What a great birthday present on H's birthday (well, right after!) At least according to this site we should have her picture by Thanksgiving but we will likely travel in January. If they slow down as much as this says I may cry - hard.

CHINAADOPTUSPARENTUS

Someone posted this on a group I read:

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, there is only one animal with a longer gestation than an Elephant.
Here are its stats:
Scientific name: CHINAADOPTUSPARENTUS
Habitat:Ranges from all climates, locations. (Often found lurking aroundcomputers.)
Dietary requirements:Large quantities of ice cream, cake, chips etc. These are often consumed tearfully in a ritualistic fashion near the above mentioned computer.
CAUTION!! If this behavior is observed immediately remove any nearbyscales. CHINAADOPTUSPARENTUS may become further agitated by the mere presence of these simple machines....

Summer fun....

Aside from swimming this is what the kids have been doing this summer:

We signed Brandon up for the Summer Reading Program at the public library. For every 6 hours he reads he earns "prizes". The first prize was a button - not too exciting. He started the program on the 24th and read 6 hours by the 31st. Today he will have his second 6 hours completed. He will get a pencil, eraser and a Desert Museum pass. Hopefully we will be able to use it when the weather is cooler. He loves to read to Hannah and Riley. He has a bunch of books checked out from the library but he is currently reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on his own. I think he said he was on chapter 4 last time I asked which was yesterday. He reads anytime we are in the car. He is reading to himself every night before bed and throughout the day I will find him curled up somewhere (on the couch, in a chair, in his bed or our bed) with his book. I love that he loves to read!

Hannah had a naked tea party at Gram's yesterday afternoon with Kate. (Kate was not naked - she is way too old for a naked tea party!) What a mess she was! The kids had just gotten out of the pool when they decided to have the tea party and I decided not to dress her knowing how messy she can be. Notice where her hand is in the picture - yup in the cup. Every little cup had to have the tea, creamer and sugar. Not just a little sugar, two, three or more spoonfuls. They also had strawberries. Very messy but very fun!

How do YOU eat a cupcake?

First, lick off all the frosting... Then, show everyone your icing goatee... Lastly, skip the cupcake all together and ask Bubba for icing on a plate.