Happy Holidays

I have been so busy getting ready for the Holidays and finishing some of the Yearbook for my boys Elementary School that I have not posted lately.

The yearbook is 52 pages long and I had to finish formatting and adding pictures to 32 pages to be submitted by 01/01/2007. Needless to say I have been at the school a lot in the past few months taking pictures and deciding how to format the yearbook. I finally finished all 32 pages yesterday and submitted all but 1 of them. One page needs some custom fixes (2 teacher photos, instead of 1) and the publisher is closed until 01/02/07. I hope they are okay with 1 page being late so I can ask my questions to get it fixed.

Here are a few pic's I took of my boys while running around the school getting pictures for the yearbook. In Andrew's class the kids (on their own) brought in a tree and decorated it complete with the star that Andrew made the moring of the day before school let out. They put gifts under the tree for their teacher. His teacher kind of felt bad and commented that she should give them more down time for celebrating. I was just impressed that the kids took it upon themselves to bring the Christmas spirit into the class.













In Zachary's class they were busy making gifts for home and doing all kinds of different holiday traditions.











I sure love my boys and it is fun to be at their school so much to see how they are doing and know what is going on. I love it!

Latest referral cutoff, Wacked out dreams

This is the latest posting on the CCAA website that was posted on November 30th, 2006, showing that referrals were given for people with LID's up to September 8, 2005. We are getting closer.

On another note, I had a dream last night that we when got our little girl she was inside a boiled egg (normal egg size) that I had to crack open and peel and then take the rubbery egg whites off and then she was in the middle. (Yes, she was very small) The egg part is bad enough, but then I discovered that she was made out of playdough and one of her arms had fallen off and I had to make a new one for her. In my dream I was mad because our flesh colored playdough had been mixed in with some blue and so the new arm I made her was funky looking with some blue streaks in it. So anyone want to interpret this dream for me. Pretty wacked!

1 year and counting...

Tomorrow it will have offically been 1 year since our Log in Date with the CCAA. (11/18/05) Not really an anniversary we wanted to celebrate, but it does mean we are closer to getting our little girl.
So we are just hanging out like this big guy hoping things get more exciting soon.

More Swap Gifts

Here are a few more pictures.

Swap Gifts

I have been meaning to post pictures of the many gifts I have received over the last 5 months from my Secret pal and swap partners from my Nov2005 Yahoo group. So enjoy the pictures. Thanks again to all my new friends for the lovely gifts.

Progress is Progress and this is better

Well they finally released referrals. The last batch went through 8/9/05 and now this batch is through 8/25/05. 16 days worth of referrals is good this time because it represented a lot of people who were logged in on 8/24/05. Lets hope this is a sign of at least some speeding up.

Happy day for those who will see thier babies faces soon. Congratulations!

Creatures

Just thought I would share some pictures with you of some of the creatures we see around our house. We live in a rural area with abundant wildlife and insect life. For example the other day I was driving down our street and a Cougar (Mountain Lion) walked across the street in front of my car. I stopped and turned to look at him. He stopped and stared as if to say "what are you looking at lady." Pretty cool. We have a lot of snakes, spiders, scorpions, lizards and giant centipedes many of which are poisionous. Fun! Below are some of the not as deadly creatures around us.

Here is a pictures of one of the bats we discovered that were sucking from our Humming Bird feeder at night. We think they are the "Lesser Long nose" mexican bats.









Here is a picture of the spider I saw on our rosemary bush today. It is a female Banded Argiope or (Argiope trifasciata) Not to uncommon but very large and colorful none the less. It was about the length of my index finger if you were to measure from leg tip to opposite leg tip. It was busy wrapping up and eating an ant while I watched. The whimpy male spider I discovered later is about 1/3 the size and just plain brownish, he hangs out on the perimiter of the web. My picture of both spiders is harder to see. I am pretty proud of how this picture turned out. If you would like to pay me $5000 to use it in your magazine post a message.










Here is a picture of a giant moth. We get these hanging out on our porch quite often, this one was one of the smaller we have seen. It was bigger than my hand.









Here is a picture of a giant stick bug these are so cool and almost too amazing to belive. The
hand in the picture is my 10 yr old son's to get a perspective.

(All pictures in this blog are copyrighted by the blog owner and cannot be copied or used without a large cash payment. At least enough to buy plane tickets to China for 4 people)

September Referrals

Well, this month they managed to get through 18 days worth of LID's. They matched July 23 - August 9th. Double the number of days matched last month, but probably not a great improvement in the actual number of referrals given out.

If they are able to keep at this pace (# of days referred at a time) we will get our referral in March 2007. Our LID is now 101 days out from the last date matched, August 9, 2005. In order to get our referral this year they would have to match 34 days of referrals for the next 3 months.

The CCAA is saying nothing and the agencies know nothing and so we (all of us waiting to adopt) just try to go on each day hoping someday it really will be our turn.

Finally Out of review

I can't believe I have not posted for a whole month. Sorry. I have been preoccupied with school starting and with being bummed about the wait.

The good news is that we are finally listed on the CCAA website as being out of review. What does this mean? Well not too much really, except that they have reviewed our dossier and that our file will now be moved on to the next step which is matching us with a child. Unfortunately we are at the bottom of a huge heap O' files.


On August 25 or so, they sent out referrals to those with LID's of July 14 - July 22, 2005. Again we are Nov. 18, 2005 so you can see how far away we still are.

Over the last year, they have only averaged 12.33333 days of referrals per month and at this rate we will not see our referral until June 2007. Needless to say we are praying and hoping for things to speed up. Either way we are in this for the long haul, our baby girl is in China.

On a lighter note, the Nursery/Guest bedroom is basically finished and I just have not had the heart to post pictures yet. I guess with the slow down and other bad rumors, I have been guarding my heart. I will show some pictures soon.

Camping Trip

Over the 4th of July weekend we went camping with my immediate family in Utah. We went to a lesser known State Park called Goblin Valley. Click here to find out more about it. http://www.utah.com/stateparks/goblin_valley.htm This was a very cool place to visit although I would recommend going in Spring or fall as it was very hot. My kids loved exploring the weird rock formations and it seemed almost like you were visiting Mars or something. The movie Galaxy Quest starring Tim Allen had scenes filmed here. Go to http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800021959/photo/36368 and view the picture , see the background. This was filmed at Goblin Valley.. very cool.










My boys with their cousins

The campground was complete with a built in rock formation playground and cliffs behind it to climb.


Needless to say, the boys had a great time.

We then went on to Captiol Reef National Park. http://www.nps.gov/care/ We got rained on and checked into a Hotel (Yes we are wimps) The canyons are beautiful and we hiked to a natural bridge called Hickmans Bridge. We had picnics and even stopped and picked fresh apricots in Fruita which is an old pioneer village in the Park where they planted orchards of apples pears peaches cherries and apricots. We had a very nice trip and enjoyed being out in nature. We drove back through parts of Dixie National Forrest and Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Park. The views were incredible and the weather was stormy and cool. When you go to places like this you realize what a beautiful and diverse, incredible world we live in.

August 1st Update

GUY

On July 10, we had a tragic loss in our family. My step-brother Guy passed away. He was a wonderful person and we will miss him greatly. My boys are especially sad as he was a favorite Uncle. If you would like to learn more about him, e-mail me for his website.

We had just gotten back from our camping trip to Utah a few days earlier and so I had not taken time to download pictures and post. Since the funeral on July 22nd, I have just not had the motivation to write much.

THE LONG WAIT

I'm a lot frustrated about the wait and the slow pace of referrals. They just matched June 29 - July 13 LID's on July 29th. This is a very small improvement over last time. Last month it was 13 days worth, this time it was 15. I am so thrilled for those families who received referrals this time, but for those of us still waiting it was a big bummer that they did not process more.

I calculated that there are 128 days between July 13th and our LID of November 18th. If you divide 128 by 15 days per month it comes out to 8.53333... SOOOO if they keep it at this pace then we won't see our referral for at least another 8 months, meaning March 2007. AHHHH!!

It is good to have somewhere to write and share my frustrations it does help. Well enough of all this sad news. So I will end this post and start a new one with our camping pictures.

At the Speed of Summer

I have so many things to add to my blog and I am not ready to post them all because I keep running out of time to get them ready.

For not really having too many plans this summer, I can't seem to find time to do much. We took a sort of planned, but unsure we were going until the week before, trip to Utah to visit with my family and have a reunion and go camping. I have some great pictures of this trip but alas I have not downloaded my camera. Hope everyone is having a good summer.
I promise I will post everything very soon.

The rumors out there for the wait time just keep fluctuating. Some are saying things are really going to speed up. Others say things are going to continue to slow way down. So we are playing the wait and see game still. We will know by about July 25th what the next group of referrals is going to be. Please pray for things to speed up. We and all the other waiting parents are about to go NUTS!

Below is a puzzle for you to solve. If you can figure out what these characters say, e-mail me to see if you got it right.

Dana

I'm Throwing you a Bone

Progress in Meili's room:

Here are two pictures, me taping and me doing some touch-up painting. So now you can see the paint color change. From drab white to a warm color called "Oat Cake". By the way did you notice the nice derriere? Believe it or not it may just be my nicer side in these pictures as I was wearing no make-up and just looked lovely. Vaavaavooom

Well the room is actually almost totally done, but but but I just cannot reveal it until we have everything in place, sorry. You will just have to be patient and wait.

I'm getting really good (not really) at waiting. The CCAA (CHINA government agency) just matched babies with people whose paperwork (LID) was dated June 16 - 28, 2005.

Reminder: ours is dated 11/18/05. Yeah we're in for a long haul. Pray for us and everyone still waiting. Congratulations to those who just got matched!

Go to http://www.junejitterbugs2005.homestead.com/index.html (takes awhile to load because of all the cute pictures) to see some of the sweet babies matched with families recently.

Thanks for following along.

Dana

Meili's Room

Thanks to the help and work of an incredible designer Lissette, I am making progress (in fact its almost done) towards completing Meili's room. I am not going to post any pictures until it is completely done, however I will post a before picture and maybe some of the in progress pictures. This way you will be waiting with baited breath and checking back often to see if I have posted the "reveal" pictures.

We kind of pulled a "WHILE YOU WERE OUT" (show on TLC) on Burt (DH) and all but finished the room last Friday. I was hoping for more of a recation like a few tears or even a big WOW, or Ho Wa, (inside joke) but Lissette warned me not to expect much. After all, men just flat out don't really care that much about decor. He did say that he had never lived in a house with a room like that and now we need to do the rest of the house and if we did it would sell really fast if we had to sell. Lissette told me this was very complimentary and so I am glad he likes it. Really I guess what matters is that I like it and that I think Meili will like it.

• Do I like it? It has a lot of pink and green my favorite colors. ( I have been forbidden by Lissette to buy anything else in these colors)
• Do I like it? I too have never had a room in any house I've ever lived in like this.
• Do I like it? I have to keep going in there to see if its really there.
• Do I like it? I had a hard time controlling my emotions all day while we were painting and decorating.
• Do I like it? I love it and can't wait to bring home our sweet baby girl to a room as beautiful as this.
• Do I think she will like it? I hope she will, and someday she will see the pictures and read the story of how I was so excited for her to come that I decorated a room just for her that is more beautiful and unlike any room that either her father or her mother ever had in any house they ever lived in.

Thank you Lissette for helping to make this part of my dreams come true.

Here is a before picture, hope you will come back to see the progress and finished work.

Dana

June Secret Pal Gift

I received a package this week from my DTC November 2005 Group Secret Pal. A selection of very cute baby board books and of course a wonderful card.

Thanks Secret Pal!!

Hair Bow Swap

I joined the DTC NOV 2005 Hair bow swap to exchange hair accessories with some other waiting Moms. This is the awsome package I recieved from my Swap buddy Brandi upon our return from San Diego. I love it all and getting packages with little reminders of who is on the way makes this wait a little more tolerable. Thanks for your great hair gifts Brandi.

San Diego

We just returned from San Diego on Monday 5/29. Our Nephew Lashley got married last Thursday and we went to the wedding and then stayed for the rest of the weekend and took the kids to Sea World and Lego Land. Overall it was a nice time. A few very wet moments and unhappy moments but overall we had a good time. Coming home was a long day and we took one of "Burt's Great Adventures" and went the back way through Ajo and Sells. They are about as exciting as their names and about as big as their names are long. Yawn.

The Famous, Mysterious "Brown Envelope"

We received our "Brown Envelope" two days ago. It is dated 11/22/05. Where has it been for six months? Nobody knows. It is nice to have it, at least we know that our paperwork went through the Consulate's office. What will everyone call this if they run out of brown envelopes and change to say manilla, just won't be the same. Manilla is too common.

Also, click this link www.meili100wishes.blogspot.com or the one to the right for 100 Good Wishes Quilt to see the first few quilt squares we have recieved. Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend.

100 Good Wishes Quilt

We would like to invite you to participate in helping us make a 100 Good Wishes Quilt for our daughter.

A tradition exists in the northern part of China to make a Bai Jia Bei (a.k.a. 100 Good Wishes Quilt). The family invites friends and family to contribute a square of cloth along with their wish for the baby. Part of the square goes into the quilt for the baby, and the other part goes into a scrapbook with the wish for the child. It is said that the quilt contains the luck, energy, and good wishes from everyone who contributed a piece of fabric.

We would be honored if you would contribute a quilt square and a wish for our daughter to be. This tradition will show our daughter just how much she was loved before she arrived home, and it will become a special heirloom for her.

To participate please give or send to us one 7 x 7 in. square of fabric of your choice. The fabric can be new or something you already have. It could be fabric that has special meaning or just something you like. The fabric should be 100% cotton or a high quality cotton blend so it can be sewn, washed and will fit together nicely. To see some examples go to: http://www.originalquilts.com/100_good_wishes_quilts.htm

Along with the square, please send a 3 x 5 or 4 x 6 card with a small square of the material on it and your wish. The wish can be just a heartfelt thought you dream up, a famous or not-so-famous quote, song lyrics, scripture passages, a family recipe, …whatever you would like to say. It can be as plain or as fancy as you want to make it. You can hand write it, computer print it, use scrapbook supplies, scan the fabric and color print it on the paper, use cardstock, use stickers, use stamps.... it is completely up to you. (See example above)

If you will be mailing the square and wish, just fold the fabric in half and put them both in a business envelope and it will only cost you a 39 cent stamp to mail them. To get my address to send to, press the link to view complete profile on the right. On the profile page click the email link on the left hand side to send me an email requesting our address to mail a quilt square.

A link is provided on the right for these instructions once this post is old and no longer in view.

Thank you so much for helping us with this quilt. I will post pictures of it when we are done.

Trying to try not to try to obsess about the wait

This is a computer image (am I an artist or what) of me trying not to go "choco loco" as the wait seems to be extending beyond my lifetime. I think this might be another one of those "you need to learn to be more patient" lessons in my life. Just when I think I am making strides towards more control and patience with my kids and those around me, things happen to make me feel like I really have made no progress at all.

I honestly have to say that I am one of those little girls who has always wanted and dreamt about having my own little girl. With that in mind, I absolutely adore my boys, think they are the coolest most wonderful males on the earth, (next to my husband) and cannot imagine life without them. So now having waited around 37 years to have this dream come true I am losing patience. My dreams of pink and ponytails, my hopes of dolls and dressups and lip-gloss are oh so near and yet seem to be getting farther away as I write.

I am trying to be optimistic, but for those of you who know me well this is not easy. The wait for those who put in their paperwork in May of 2005 (ours is Nov 2005) is now at 11 months. SOOOOO unless things miraculously speed up who knows when we will be holding our bundle in pink. Please pray for things to speed up or at least for me to have the patience to make it through the wait. Thanks for listening to me rant..........

The Long Wait

I spoke with the Director over the China program at our adoption agency last Friday. She told me that she was predicting a 10 month wait from the time we were logged in at the CCAA in China. She also said that she was optimistic that things would start to go faster soon. So with this in mind we are hoping to get our referral by September or October. I am preparing myself for a 12 month wait just in case. Thanks for keeping in touch.

Dana

Making Hemp Necklaces

The boys are on Spring Break right now. Since we are trying to save money, (wonder why), we are not going anywhere. We bought $1.00 kits at BIG LOTS (a favorite haunt of mine), and made Hemp necklaces and bracelets. Yes, I was born in the 60's. No I am not a hippie. However, I hope my boys think I am sort of hip and not an old fart (even though I am sort of). Anyway they had fun and I did most of the complicated work of knot tying which amazed me as I am not in that state of mind. Now I know why some people give up real life and just make and sell necklaces and stuff. It was kind of relaxing. Don't worry I will stay in reality, for now anyway. If this China adoption wait gets any worse like the rumors predict, well, I can't make any promises. Anyone looking for some cool Hemp jewelry?

Secret Pal Gift

Look what I received in the mail today from my secret pal. I belong to the DTC November 2005 Yahoo group of people adopting from China who turned in their paperwork at the same time as us. I have a secret pal from my group who sent me these cute toys. What a fun surprise. Thanks Secret Pal!

Snow at our house

It is snowing today at our house. It started snowing while we were in church and then stopped. By the time we got home it was snowing at our house. We had huge flakes and it even stuck for a few minutes. The boys were thrilled!

Dana, Burt, Andrew (10) & Zach (6) Christmas Day 

Welcome to our Blog

This blog was created by Dana, to share with you, our family and friends, our journey to China for our daughter Meili Renee. (this is the name we have chosen).

Mei is the phonetic spelling for the word beauty or plum blossom in Chinese, Li means beautiful or jasmine.

We first started thinking about adopting from China when we visited there in 1999 as part of Burt's BYU MBA program international business trip. So we have had a daughter from China in our minds for a long time. Finally we decided we are in a position to do the international adoption. This is a very long and expensive process.

We started researching in in April 2005 and chose CASI Foundation for Children in Boise, Idaho as our Agency. We had to re-do our home study as the one from LDS Family services can not be used for International adoption. We got that done and then started the additional paper work needed which included fingerprinting with the CIS, medical exams, financial statements and employer letters, and a local police background check. We also had to get certified original copies of our birth certificates and marriage licence. All of the documents then had to be noterized and certified with the state seal. Needless to say, this put us out a few thousand dollars and we finally got everything finished and sent to the agency in October 2005.

The agency then sent our paperwork to DC where it received the US seal to verify the state seals and then on to the Chinese embassy to certifiy the US seal. This whole package of paperwork is our dossier. Then it was finally sent to China on November 2, 2005. This is our "DTC" (dossier to China )date. Then a few weeks later on November 18, 2005 our dossier was logged in at the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs). This is our "LID" (log in date) and is the date we go by to see how soon we might receive our referral.

Our referral will be pictures and information regarding the child that has been matched with our family. Currently the wait time from LID to referral is 10 - 12 months. When we first applied, the wait time was 6 - 8 months. Unfortunately we happend to be applying just after a few months where the number of applicants was double the normal number and so there are delays trying to match the families who applied during these months. If we are lucky, they will be able to catch up somewhat in the coming months as some of the later months have fewer than normal applicants. Right now the families who have LID's in May and June 2005 are being matched. If the time frame stays as is, we are expecting a referral in September or October. We will be thrilled if it comes sooner.

Once we receive our referral, we will then send back an acceptance letter and then wait 4 to 6 weeks for travel authorization. Part of waiting to travel is getting an appointment with the US consulate in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. We are planning on taking Andrew and Zach with us as we feel it is important for them to be part of the whole process and be able to meet and bond with their new little sister (mei mei) right away. We will be in China for 10 to 14 days. We will either post our daily journal here or on another web site specific to adoption journeys.

We will be having some kind of fundraising event to help us earn some of the money we need for all of us to travel to China. We will let you know what that will be so that you can contribute if you want to. Our deepest thanks to those of you who have already made contributions. We cannot thank you enough.

I will post any updates or news as received and I will post things of interest. Thanks for visiting and please return often to follow our journey.

Please feel free to leave comments here or to email me. As you can tell, this is my obsession right now.

Dana