Perception is a funny thing. The way we look at something one day can be totally different than how we look at it the next if our perception changes. We all know that we are sad when Monday comes because our relaxing (ha!) weekend is over. There are songs about sad Mondays and happy Fridays. Now that we are right in the midst of adopting AnaLei - I CANT WAIT FOR MONDAY!!! It means work is happening on our adoption which means we are one day closer to bringing her home. My perception has just changed for now. I'm sure by this time next year - I'll be back to dreading Monday morning just a little :)
We had a great weekend! Leslie, McKenzie and Adley came up for a visit. I always feel bad b/c I put Leslie to work. Do you have that super talented family member that can do everything? Well - that is Leslie for us. She can make things and knows where things should go and how they should go. So I find it impossible to resist the urge to get her to help me. Plus, we were getting new carpet so our house had totally been destroyed right before they came - a perfect time to re-decorate :). Olivia loved having her cousins up on her birthday weekend and I loved having them here. They even brought up a crib for AnaLei that we are setting up now. Olivia will keep her own room and we will put our 2 babies together in the same room.
I was pretty somber Friday afternoon when I found out that UPS failed to deliver a guaranteed package to our adoption agency by 10:30am Friday local Washington time. That meant our I-800a wouldn't get to the USCIS lockbox by Monday. However, to my surprise, our case worker sent me an email late Friday stating that although our package got there in the 11th hour - she was able to walk it into the post office and overnight it to the USCIS. What!?! YAY!!! I was so excited! That prevented us from losing an entire day! As fast as we are trying to go - 1 day is meaningful!
Friday was actually busy for us in adoption land. Our agency was finally able to "lock" Zou, Chun Lei's file and they submitted our pre-approval paperwork to China. Danny and I had all of our documents notarized that are a part of our dossier and then drove straight to the post office and had them sent to the MS Secretary of State for authentication. Once we receive those back - I will go ahead and send those to the Chinese consulate while we wait on our fingerprint appointments. That way we don't have to expedite the majority of the documents and that saves money and time. We will go ahead and send those prepared documents to our agency so they will be ready to send off our dossier to China as soon as we do the entire same process with our I-797 (which is simply our fingerprint approval notice). Whew! It's going to be a busy few weeks as the documents start returning. We count it all joy! It's kind of like labor pains - its hard during it, but so worth it afterwards :).
I also have plans to speak to CHOP this week to begin making plans for what we will do immediately upon AnaLei's arrival. We are praying that God somehow prepares her for what is to come. We feel so bad b/c she hasn't really gone through anything medical her entire life - despite her desperate need to! She will undergo a heart cath no doubt immediately upon returning home and currently we plan to have that done at CHOP. We are unsure for now about anything after that. I will know more after speaking to them this week.
There will also be more to come soon on fundraising :). Please know that we know NOT ALL ARE CALLED OR EVEN DESIRE TO GIVE!! Please continue to follow AnaLei's story regardless and pray for us as we follow the call to go. We just pray that God has called some to give - but not everyone we know is! We have applied with Lifesong for Orphans and should find out in a few weeks if we are approved to fundraise through them. They allow people to make tax deductible donations that can only be used for the adoption. There is also a way to give through WACAP just to Zou, Chun Lei's adoption and I will post more details soon on that.
Thanks for reading and for caring enough to still be reading :). It's a crazy road and I know that those of you who ask me about how the adoption is going regret it about 30 seconds later :). Tonight - even Danny said, "I have no idea what you are talking about" as I tried to explain our strategy on sending documents to the consulate. So - from now on I think I will say, "it's good - just complicated" :) At this point - if all is expedited at God like speed - then I think travel could be possible late April but a more realistic timeframe is late May/early June.
Much love to you all! Sorry no pictures to post - we forgot to take any this weekend.
Julie
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