We have Travel Approval!!

Wow! We received our Travel Approval today. I was just starting to get antsy and a teensy bit worried, which I know I should not do because His timing is perfect, but I was really feeling it this morning. I had just bothered my agency with an "are we there yet" type email when they emailed me back with Travel Approval.

They gave me two options. Hurry up and travel with the September 3 group, or take our time and travel on September 17. Which do you think we chose? Yep, we leave in 9 days. NINE DAYS! We are so excited. The next nine days are going to be crazy! We still have to wait for our consulate appointment to get approved, but it usually isn't a problem.

I have laundry to do, shopping to finish, lists to make, oh my! I'm so excited. We will meet our little Rita in less than 2 weeks.

I want to say "thank you" to everyone who came to our wine-tasting-baby-shower on Saturday. I had a great time. Tim's Wine Market was an incredible host. I think everyone really enjoyed the wine selections. I have a few photos to post, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. I have laundry to finish and packing to do!!

NINE DAYS!

My baby turned 2 today!

Happy birthday Rita!

Was I emotional today? Have ya met me?? My heart was so full today. Partially because my baby turned 2 years old and I couldn't be with her. And partially because I am so excited that she'll be coming home soon.

I couldn't help thinking that if I'm this emotional about a baby I've never met, how is her birth mom feeling today? Surely she knows that this is her daughter's 2nd birthday. It makes me so sad that this woman probably doesn't even know for sure if her daughter is still alive. And unlike me, she won't get the chance to watch her turn 3 or 4 or 5. I'm just overwhelmed by it all. How blessed we are to live in a country where we have choices.

You might be wondering how much I know about her background. The truth is, not much. I know that she arrived at the orphange when she was 7 months old and that she needed life-saving surgery. I can only assume that her family gave her up to save her life. Believe me, if there was a way to give this precious child back to her birth family, I would do it. It feels like a great honor and responsibility to get to raise this child.

Let's talk about her party! Miss Rita had a party in China with a princess tiarra (of course) and a magic wand and a beatuful chocolate cake with a "2" on it made from m&m's! Who could ask for anything more??? I am so priviledged to have contact with Amanda. She is taking such great care of Rita (aka Emily) and is very generous about sharing photos and information with me.

We still do not have Travel Approval. I spoke with our agency today. As long as we get TA from China by next Friday, we will be able to travel on September 3-4. If we don't get TA by then, we won't be traveling until Sept 17 or 24. i REALLY, REALLY want to travel on Sept 4. I'm ready! (Well, i'm not packed and my house is a mess, but other than that - I'm ready!)

We may also have some exciting news about our accomodations in China but I still don't have it confirmed. All I can say is that we have been given the opportunity of a lifetime. As soon as get things confirmed I will share on the blog.

Saturday night is our "Wine-Tasting-Baby-Shower." If you are reading this and live in Orlando, please come! It is at Tim's Wine Market in Windermere. I am looking forward to hanging out with friends and sampling good wines. I am a little bummed that many of my friends cannot make it, but it was a last minute thing. I am very grateful to the fabulous and beautiful Kelly and Shannan for putting this together for me. I love you guys so much!

Did you hear that my baby turned 2 today??

Making Room for Rita!

Well, actually, we are making a room for Lucy, but that is because Rita is inheriting the "nursery." When we started this journey we thought we were bringing home a baby. The plan was to put "the baby" in the nursery we did for Lucy, then move Lucy to her big girl room. Well, we stuck with the plan - mostly. We've moved Lucy to her big girl room (which she loves. and I may love even more. I'm thinking about moving into it) and we are getting her old room ready for Rita. Here are some pix of Lucy's new room.

Also, I have to brag. I've done this all on the mega-cheap and I am so proud! I found the trundle bed on Craig's List. I found the dresser on super clearance at a furniture store that is going out of business. Lucy and I are painting the ugly knobs. I think we are making them uglier, but that's okay because it has been a fun project for us. Oh, and I found the comforter at Homegoods, the storage at IKEA (which rocks!) the rocking chair, which we are going to paint, came from Chris's mom, and the gigham curtains andcanopy thingy came from Lowes on clearance. And, I am really excited to reframe and hang a panting I bought about 20 years ago that's been hanging around in storage. It lookes awesome! (Maybe only to me, but I don't care. I like it.)

I am working to get Rita's room ready as well. We are not putting up the crib because we figured she would be ready for a toddler bed. Turns out, she is currently sleeping in a crib. How do I know that, you ask? Well, it is because amazing Amanda sent MORE pics today! She took photos of our beautiful Rita with the blanket and puppy that we mailed to her. Look how cute!

We've been corresponding with Amanda and learning a lot about our girl. We are also learning a lot about how we might be able to make the transition easier for her. More on that later.

If you have a minute, check this out. www.chinesestarfish.blogspot.com

MORE!!

I received an email back from Amanda at Starfish. She sent me some precious photos that were taken this month! Aren't they just precious?

I struck gold!

Where do I even begin?

When I spoke to Carol about this beautiful baby in June, she referred to her as "Emily from Starfish." Okay, I get that they call her Emily, but what is Starfish? I breifly googled starfish back then but never really found anything.

Yesterday I heard back from the woman at "Blessed Kids" about my package to Rita. She told me that her father called the orphanage in Yulin City (up north) and was told that she was actually in a foster program in Xi'an. (capital city of Shaanxi which is in the southern part of the province.) This morning in the shower (the ONLY place where I think clearly) it hit me. Starfish is probably a foster care system in Xi'an. I googled, and here is what I found.

http://www.thestarfishfosterhome.org/. I opened it up and there she was! My daughter is currently being cared for by some of the most amazing people on planet earth!

A woman named Amanda, who I personally believe is an angel, started this facility. They take high-risk children who need surgeries from orphanages who are not equiped to handle the special need, they raise $$ for the surgeries, she personally goes with the child to the hospital, they care for these children and prepare their dossiers so that they can be adopted through the CCAA. Most of the children are cleft lip/cleft palate or have heart conditions.

But wait, there is more!! She keeps a blog!!

I read through her blog and found precious pictures of Rita! When I saw the picture of her in an animal print halloween costume, I knew for sure that this little fashionista belongs in our family! I also found the cutest photo of her with her little friends. (she's the peanut on the far left.)

Then I found several blogs talking specifically about her medical condition, her surgery and her recovery. This is more information than I ever expected to know about her. Apparently her tumor was actually a parasidic twin. It extended from her bottom into her little tummy. If it had not been removed when it did, it would have killed her.

Amanda took her all the way to Shanghai for her surgery. She expected a 3 hour surgery and a 20 day stay in Shanghai. It turned out to be a 6 hour surgery and a gruelling 44 day stay in Shanghai. How do you ever say enough "thank yous" to someone who had done this for your child? Do you see why I think this woman is an Angel?

While in Shanghai, little Rita met Stephen Curtis Chapman and his wife Marybeth. I have the photo to prove it! Brenda - I'll bet you are cracking up right now!

I am so thrilled to have found this. I can't believe this information had been available on the internet all this time!

I sent an email to Amanda and hope to learn more about Rita before we go. Specifically, I'd like to find out what things we can do when we first meet her that will make her feel less afraid. Maybe we can even email her some video clips. Wouldn't that be cool?

Oh yeah, and I have to post something that she wrote about Rita. I loved this: I have no doubt that she is going to be a daddy's girl. She loves men with big voices. I think that she is going to have her dad tied around her finger. She would often fall asleep when they were holding her.

Here is a piece from her blog about the surgery: Her surgery was a really big one. The teratoma (parasitic twin) was clearly visible on her butt but what we did not know was how far it was into her stomach. The surgery took six hours and that was a long time to wait. They expected it to be three hours so you can only imagine how much you worry. Dr Wu did some laprascopic surgery on her stomach first and then opened up her back to get the mass out. It was as big as her head, the doctors told me. She was healing well when I found the blood in the bed which I wrote about. That took a really long time to heal properly. I went to the hospital everyday since we checked out on May 3 to clean the wound out, drain the fluids (It was still really deep) and to change the dressings. Finally we got the go ahead to come home. I was so happy about that!!!When I do these trips there are so many people I would like to thank:

1) I am so grateful for the skills of the doctors, especially Drs Wu and Hong who did such a great job with Emily. It was a really unusual surgery and one that was very unpredictable.

2) I would also like to thank the two sponsors. As you might remember I went to a fund raising in March when the high school kids, and with the help of Interkom, raised 20 000RMB for a surgery. It was during that weekend that I first found out about Emily. A few days before I left, I heard from Lisa who is from the Casa de Epsana, a group of Spaniards who raise funds by having parties. They donated 10 270RMB. We then had the exact amount of money we needed for Emily's surgery.

3) To the army of volunteers who made sure I was fed and that the laundry was done. The most delicious meals arrived and I felt so spoiled. I am so grateful for the use of your drivers and your resources. The way you supported me is just awesome and I am very grateful. It made being at the hospital so much easier.

4) To Emily's fan club: I loved watching you all lay the love on thick. She really is a charmer and so many people were just enchanted with her. Thank you for your prayers on her behalf.

5) To the Kedls who put up with me for a week soon after they moved into a new house and did not need the added stress: Thank you for being so welcoming and helping me so much with Emily.As if going through the surgery was not enough, Emily started teething then. She has got the biggest white spots on her upper gums. Poor kid!!!I did see her finding ad in the newspaper with all the other babies. So we are on our way with the adoption process. There was also four foreign families in Shanghai who expressed interest in adopting Miss Em.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of Lucy's new big girl bedroom. It is awesome!

Finally, I made the final batch of "make up" cookies to send out. I don't mean to brag, but they are simply spectacular! Land 'o' Lakes butter and I are a great team!

So much to blog about!

It's been busy week, but so many wonderful things are happening! Today we got some really great news. We received our immigration approval in the mail! If you haven't done this before, that may seem like no big deal. Trust me, it is a BIG DEAL. We've been waiting to hear from our agency about travel. In the back of my mind I kept thinking "What if we get travel approval but can't go because of immigration?" Today, those fears are gone!

I can remember just 3 months ago, the first of May, that Chris and I didn't think we would be able to move forward at all. We had some huge immigration road blocks that we didn't think we could get past. (Long boring story that I won't go into.) It was so frustrating! We finally got approval to move forward, just in the nick of time. Even then, we had to jump through a bunch more hoops. To get that piece of paper in the mail today was amazing. I guess we appreciate it so much more because we had to work so hard to get it!

The rest of this week has been BUSY! This weekend, Chris and I painted Lucy's new room and the girl's play room. Basically we are both covered in pink and green paint. Chris is going to work on Lucy's closet later this week. Hopefully we will have the house in order within 2 weeks. Lucy is very excited about her new pink room. Once we get it done I will post some photos.

Last weekend was cookie-baking weekend. I thought I had the recipie perfected. I didn't take into account that different brands of butter would respond differently. Who knew? Apparently store brand butter and Land 'o' Lakes butter are not created equal. Batch #1 was perfect. Batches #2 - #4 were not the cookies I had hoped for. But, I boxed 'em up and mailed 'em out anyway. Hopefully they got to their rightful owners before turning to stone! Oh, all except the cookies for my sister Mary. I mailed them to an address that she moved out of over 7 years ago. Slowly. Losing. My. Mind. Oh well, I have to bake new cookies again this weekend because UPS accidentally mailed my double-batch to the wrong address. I knew this was not going to be a well-oiled-machine.

Speaking of, if you happened to purchase blueberry bread from me at the church bake sale only to discover that it was a nastly pile of uncooked goo, please let me know. Apparently one batch was severly undercooked. I'm willing to make good with a fresh batch of cookies made with Land 'o' Lakes butter. (Far superior to Publix butter!)

Are you thinking that I should just get out of the kitchen and stay out? Yeah, me too.

We are making enormous progress toward the adoption finances. I don't even know where to start! I've always known in my heart that God would provide for us. He's proved himself to be so faithful! But I will admitt that there have been moments of panic when I couldn't see clearly how that money would come. I guess that is why we are to walk in faith, not in sight. I have to record some of this, mostly for my own sake, but also because people have been asking how things are going with the fund-raising, and what types of expenses are involved with a Chinese adoption. (If you don't like to read about finances, skip this part!)

We held the ebay auction to raise the required $5000 orphangae donation. After it was all said and done, we cleared about $5200. Thanks to EVERYONE who had a hand in this!

When we got our Referral Approval from China, we had to send our final orphanage payment of $1800. Thanks to the donation of my wonderful friend who started all this, we were covered for the payment. (Thank you wonderful friend!!)

After doing some research, it looks like our flights to and from China will cost around $5500. We found out this week that our tax returns for 2008 will be, you guessed it, just over $5500. I am SO HAPPY that we filed an extension on this. And to think that I was frustrated with my husband earlier this year for taking so long getting all this information together. Silly me. The timing on this is perfect.

We need another $2000 to take to China to pay for legal fees, paperwork, immigration etc. Guess who just found some old Starwood stock valued at just over $2000? Yep, that's me. We will cash this in to cover those fees. I had completely forgotten that I had this.

Did I mention that we need $460 for our Chinese Visas? Good thing we raised $400 at our church bake sale!

The only other fee that we need to come up with is $5000 for in-country travel (hotel, food, flights inside of China etc.) Some of this has come our way through donations of friends and family. We may hold one additional small fundraiser to wrap this up. We'll see. We are just so excited and grateful to be this close to our goal this quickly. Its more than I ever hoped for. It makes me think of a quote currently on the white board of a co-worker. It goes something like this: "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." (Tarre - feel free to correct this if I've stated it wrong!) Or, as I like to say, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28.

One more thing before I go to bed. My dear friend Jennifer gave us an awesome little photo album. It is soft and cushy for a little one. Last week we filled it with photos of our family. Then Lucy and I went to Target with the gift card Jen gave us and Lucy picked out a pink blanket with red lady bugs. We packaged it up with one of Lucy's stuffed animals and mailed it off to Rita. We used a serviced from www.blessedkids.com. Very cool service. Rita should have a package from us early this week. We hope this will help her recognize us on gotcha day.

Now we wait to hear from our agency for a travel date. Maybe tomorrow...