Day 6!

Today was our busiest day yet.  Although it also held 2 special events...

 

 

 

Emmeline MeiTong Dean is officially ours!!

You have 24 hours to decide if you want to keep your child.  We signed our papers and made her a permenant member of our family.

 

 

 

 

and this guy turned 12!!!

He told us on the bus that this was the best birthday present ever.  We are so proud of the young man he has become.  Since the day was so busy we are celebrating him tomorrow on our free day!

 

This afternoon we went with another family to Kaifeng 1.5 hours away. This is the town that Emme was from.  We had to apply for her passport. She slept the whole way there and was great on the return trip. 

 

 

Elsa has waited a long time for this.

 

 

Our little baby doll!

Gotcha Day!!

 

One final picture of our family of 5!

 

 

 

11 months ago we started this adoption journey.  God lead us to China and then to Emme.  He was faithful every step of the way. We have been dreaming of the day we hold her in our arms and today that dream was fulfilled. 
We met our group in the lobby at 9:30 this morning.  We boarded our bus and drove 20 minutes to the registartion office.  When we arrived, our guide announced that the Kaifeng kids (Emme's orphange) had already arrived.  I teared up before even walking in the door.  When we did we were greeted with this....

   Our sweet Emme was waiting inside.  I love how this picture captured all 5 of us greeting her!

 

                                                          
                                                               Now a family of 6

                         Looking at the photo album the orphange gave us...another blessing!

 

Our picture for our paperwork

                                    
                                                                  My 4 kiddos

We are in love and she has been great!  She even fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel.  She loves the attention from the kids and they love giving it to her.  Elsa is a natural in the big sister department.  We know this "honeymoon phase" may not last so please continue to pray.  Right now we are just enjoying loving on her and making her a part of our family!!

Day 3

We woke up Saturday morning to this breakfast buffet!!!

 

Some of the pastries

 

Max' dream come true...doughnuts AND m&ms!

Then we were off to the Great Wall.  The pictures do not do it justice.  It was so amazing to see.

 Elsa's gymnastics teacher has a little sister adopted from China.  She was so excited for Elsa's trip.  She wanted Elsa to take a picture doing a cartwheel on the Great Wall!

Lunch with our travel group.  It is such a fun group and we are having a lot of fun.  There are 6 famies total, but only 4 were here at this time.

 

Our hotel in Beijing...Sunworld Dynasty Hotel

Day 4

We flew to Zhengzhou.  This is where we will meet our sweet Emme TOMORROW!!  We checked on our hotel and had pizza with some friends.  Then our whole group headed down to Walmart to stock up for our babies.  This Walmart was enormous and had a lot more items than you find in Walmart in the US.

Walmart has 4 stories and escalators that you can take with your carts.

                                                Something you do not see everyday.

 

Check out.  There were so many people there.

 

Elsa and I spend time this afternoon preparing for Emme's arrival.  We have her diaper bag ready to go.  I will leave you with one final picture that has us emotional yet so excited.....

 

 

Tomorrow our daughter will sleep here. Tomorrow is THE DAY.  Tomorrow she will be placed in our arms and become a part of a family. We have talked about her, prayed for her and stared at her pictures for 11 months now.  Please pray for her.  Our hearts break at the thought of what she will go through leaving all she has ever know.

I just hope I can sleep tonight:)

Day 2

More flying!  We arrived in Beijing at 4:40PM local time (or 2:40AM Morton time).  We were met by Jean our CCAI representative. She got us safely to our hotel.  We got some dinner and crashed. 

We did not take many pictures today since we were mostly flying and SO tired.  Here is our hotel room.

                                                                    Our bathroom

 

We had an adjoining room with 2 double beds for the rest of the family.

We made it!

One of the first things we learned in China was 2 websites that are blocked here are facebook and blogspot!!  That would be the reason we haven't posted until know. :)  We did get Adam's VPN to work and we are up and running....

Thursday morning we arrived at the Peoria airport about 8AM.  Here are the happy travelers and ALL of our luggage!!

 

Our flight from Peoria to Chicago went just as planned.  Our flight from Chicago to Beijing started out with a 1 hour delay. 

 

All nestled in for our 13.5 hour flight!  The monitors on the back of the seats were a lifesafer.  The had movies, tv shows and games to play.  The kids each took a bag full of things to do and hardly touched them:) 

 

You could also track where we were in the flight and the time remaining until arrival.  We all got very little sleep and were so tired when we arrived!

Itinerary

As you can imagine, it is like Christmas Eve here at our house!!  We are all beyond excited to board our plane in the morning. Many of you have asked what we will be doing each day or what our trip will be like.  I figured the best way to inform everyone was to write out our itinerary:

Nov 7th - Fly from Peoria to Chicago, then from Chicago to Beijing!!
Nov 8th - Arrive in Beijing at 3:40PM local time
Nov 9th - Tour the Great Wall
Nov 10th - travel to Zhengzhou - (where we will get our daughter)
Nov  11th - GOTCHA DAY!!!!  We meet Emme for the first time.
Nov 12th - Mitchells 12th Birthday!! Paperwork, go to Kaifeng City to apply for Emmes passport and hopefully visit her orphanage.
Nov 13th - Free Day
Nov 14th - Paperwork
Nov 15th - Free day
Nov 16th - Travel to Guangzhou
Nov 17th - paperwork
Nov 18th - Emme gets medical physical
Nov 19th - Get Emmes tb test read
Nov 20th - Consulate Appointment
Nov 21 - Receive Emmes visa and take train to Hong Kong
Nov 22 - Fly from Hong Kong to Chicago.  Emme will be a US citizen when we land in Chicago!!
Fly from Chicago to Peoria!

As you can see we will have a lot of down time to get to bond with Emme.  Please keep her in your prayers.  While we can't wait to welcome her in our family on the 11th, she is going to be taken from all she has ever known.

TA and CA

On Friday Oct 25th we received an email from our agency saying that our travel approval (TA) should arrive any day.  I am going to write the rest of this post in a timeline to get all the facts in...

Friday Oct 25th - email says if we get TA by Tuesday Oct 29th we could leave the next week on Nov 7th!
Monday Oct 28th - check email a lot - no TA
Tuesday Oct 29th - check email even more - no TA but we did get an email saying they extended our timeframe and if we received TA by Wed the 30th we could still go on the 7th!!
Wednesday Oct 30th - we receive TA!!! They request our consulate appointment (CA) and they have to reply the next day for us to go on the 7th!!
Thursday Oct 31st - We have a confirmed CA!!
We now have 7 days to get our family of (soon to be) 6 ready for a 16 day journey of a lifetime.

Chinese Visas

 

We were thrilled to receive our Visas today.

Another step closer.........

Here she is...

It is time for us to share her cuteness, so here are some pictures of our newest addition! 

(10 months old)

 

The picture that captured our hearts and we instantly knew she was our daughter!

(14 months old)

 

A friend I have met in a FB group went to China in January to pick up her daughter.  She said that Mei Tong's eyes captivated her.  She was able to hold her and said she was the sweetest thing.  She took the above picture of her and shared it with us....what a blessing!

(20 months old)

In July we received an update on her along with this picture.  We can't wait to get to China and get her in our arms!  I have some more friends in China now meeting their new daughters.  They will be visiting Emme's orphanage on Thursday and we will be getting some new pictures of her!

DTC

We are at DTC status!!!  *for those of you not sure what that is it stands for "Dossier to China".

We were starting to get a little frustrated by how long it was taking for our dossier to be approved and translated. I was under the impression that we would hear when it was approved and moved to translation.  So the fact that we still hadn't heard anything led us to believe it was still in the approval process.  We spent this afternoon swimming and when we got home I checked my email (for about the 10th time that day).  We had an email from our agency.  The email said Congratulations, your dossier was shipped to China today!!!  Tears flooded my eyes as I read this. God has been teaching us so much along the way but in that moment He showed me not to worry, he has it all under control!  This is such a huge step and we will keep you posted................we are coming little Emme!!

Dossier is ready!!

 

We didn't think this day would ever come.  Our dossier paperwork is all completed, notorized, certified and authenticated.  Today we mailed it to CCAI (our adoption agency)  Our dossier will be critically reviewed 3 times in hopes to find any little imperfection that can cause problems in China.  Once it is approved at CCAI, it is translated and then shipped to China.

Here are our kids with our dossier, right before it was put in the envelope.

 

We are so excited to be at this phase in the process. Please pray with us that everything will run smoothly as we approach the "waiting period"!

Chicago trip #2

We had to leave our paperwork at the Consulate in Chicago.  Then we also had to make another trip to pick it up in person.  The kids and I headed up after gymnastics (10:30) and drove straight there with no problems.

 

Here are the kids with our authenticated paperwork! 

We picked up the papers, had ice cream at McDonalds and got right back on the road home. 

 

 

We are now ready to send our dossier to our agency in CO for critical review and translation.  We are thrilled to have another step done!!

It was like we were in the movies!

One of the last steps of preparing our dossier is to get all of the paperwork certified and authenticated.  We could get both done by roadtripping to Chicago to the Secretary of State's office and then the Chinese Consulate.  We left early this morning (5:10)!!  Whaat we thought would be a fun day in Chicago turned out to be a bit crazy! To save a lot of time and typing I will do the rest of this post in a timeline of events....

4:21 Max up
5:10 Leave Morton
8:45 parked and walked to Sec of State office.
9:47 we find out 1 paper had an error - It was Adam's job verification that his boss had to sign and notorize.  Adam calls his boss, asks him to get another one made and notorized.
10:45 - new paper is ready at CAT
Adam's dad was in Morton while his car was in the shop.  Adam called his dad, who borrowed my grandmas car, picked up the paper from CAT and headed to meet Adam half way to Chicago. The kids and I stay in downtown Chicago for lunch and some shopping.
12:20 - Adam meets his dad at exit 217. His dad hands the paper to Adam and Adam gets right back on the interstate.
1:35 - Adam hands me the paper out of the window, our 2 youngest hop in the van and Mitchell & I run the paper back up to Sec of State office.
2:07 - We have the paper certified from Sec of State. Adam takes paper and takes off running to the Chinese Consulate. (Leaving me to drive the van, with the kids, in downtown Chicago :)
2:16 - Adam gets a ticket in line at Embassy....they close at 2:30!!!!
2:30 - Consulate closes
3:05 - All paperwork is successfully turned into Consulate for authorization
3:06 - we are ready to enjoy Chicago!!

Having lunch at Subway, overlooking the river!



Max & I on the bridge.



The kids at Buckingham fountain.

 

 

Elsa & I at Lake Michigan.

Home Study Approvals

Our homestudy was completed back in March (March 8th to be exact)  On that day it was sent to our agency in CO to be approved.  Our social worker thought it would take about a week.  Fast forward 4 weeks to April 8th and we received notice that our homestudy was approved.  On that same day it was sent to DCFS for approval as well.  This process was to take 2 to 3 weeks and "yay for us" it was approved in 1 week!!  Adam and I completed all the paperwork involved to file our I800A with Immigration and overnighted it today.  This next step could take 6 to 10 weeks.  During this time we will be given an appointment to get our fingerprints taken.  Once we receive approval from them we get to take ALL the paperwork to get notorized, certified and authenticated and then our dossier will be ready to send to our agency and then to CHINA!!!   We are coming sweet Emme, a step closer each day!!

It's A Girl!

As most of you know, on March 8, 2013 we said "Yes" to a beautiful little GIRL!! 

Here is how it all happened.........let me start by saying we were starting to adjust to the idea that we would most likely get a boy as they really out number the girls right now.  Periodically, I would check the waiting list profiles on our agencies website.  One day I saw a little girl named Mei and thought I would ask about her, couldn't hurt right??  They responded saying that another family was looking at her file and she would add us to her "lenghty list of waiting potential parents" I took that as code for slim chance that will work out :)  A couple of days later she was listed as a matched child, but it was then that I saw Pei.  I asked if we could be added to her list and they said again a family was looking at her file and they added us to her list.  A few days after that I checked to see if she had been matched and I SAW TONG!  Other adoptive moms had told me that you would just know when you saw him or her and they were right for you.  Well, I had that moment as I looked into her sweet face.  I have been praying ever since we started our adoption that God would clearly show us the child we should bring into our family.  I emailed our agency asking if we could be added to the list to see Tong's file.  Within a few minutes her whole file was emailed to us!  I get chills and tears every time I think or talk about it.  This all happened on Thursday Feb 28th.  We had 1 week to talk to medical specialists and make our decision.  After all three of the physicians saying that they didn't see anything that concerned them, we said yes!!!  Emmeline "Emme"  MeiTong Dean is currently 15 months old.  We cannot wait to get our hands on her and welcome her into our family.  Our whole family of 5 will be traveling to China for 2 weeks when the time comes.

 Here is where we ask for prayer.  Plese pray for patience for us as we wait and pray for safety and comfort for Emme as she waits.  She will be 2 on Nov 2nd and we would love to have her by then.  God has been with us each step of the way and we know His timing is perfect. 

*Due to legal reasons, we cannot post any pictures at this time, but once we have her we will make up for that!

Homestudy and Physicals

I know it has been awhile, but there hasn't been too much excitement on the adoption front.  We had our 5th and final homestudy meeting last Friday.  The last meeting is a family meeting where she "interviews" the kids, tours our home, and has us fill out even more paperwork.  It all went great.  We love our social worker and things continue to run smoothly.

We all have to get a physical for the homestudy.  Mitchell is the only of our kids that had to get one due to the fact the the other two have been recently.  They did the normal routine check up and asked if I wanted him to get his shot :)  Oops, didn't see that one coming.  He got it and said "that was it" when she was done.  They wrapped his 6th grade physical and adoption physical into one.....the only problem I had with this is HOW IN THE WORLD IS HE GOING INTO 6TH GRADE??!!

Adam and I have 12 hours of International Adoption training this month and our homestudy will be complete.  Once we get the homestudy approved we are ready to move on to the next step!

The Paper Chase

We are now fully submerged in the great paper chase!  We are waiting on some paperwork (in the mail) so we can take all the paper work to get notorized and then send it off to be certified and authenticated.  All of this before we send it to our agency to be approved. 

So far we have been incredibly blessed as everything has gone smoothly. 

Adam is (as I type) at our 3rd Homestudy meeting.  The 3rd and 4th are individual meetings so I didn't skip out :)   We have 5 meetings total, with the 5th being a home visit/chat with the kids. 

We then have 12 hours of International Adoption Training, physicals, more paperwork and lots of waiting. 

With each step we are getting more and more anxious to find out if we are adding a girl or boy to our family and see his/her precious face! 

Please pray with us as we work through this paper phase and for patience as we wait!!