Scottie's 8th Birthday

Yesterday was Scottie's 8th birthday. We had an action packed day filled with a small birthday celebration at school, that Dayna and I were able to participate in and then we went to Scottie's favorite restaurant, the dragon inn. When we made it back home we had cake and presents. It was a good day, although somewhat taxing on Scottie as she was asked a lot of questions about China at her celebration at school. Talk about China more often than not makes her uncomfortable. She is getting much better dealing with her emotions and thoughts of China.  

It was fitting that we recived our Article 5 yesterday.  Icing on the cake.  

Waiting for our Article 5

We are now on the last step of the pre-immigration process which means we are waiting on our Article 5. These generally take about 2 weeks so we are hoping ours will be picked up next week some time. Once we have Article 5 China will issue our TA (travel approval). With Scottie, TA took only 7 days so maybe we will be that lucky this time. We are still hoping to travel with the January 3rd group but we wouldn't mind getting our travel approval as soon as possible so that we can buy plain tickets. Our China visas arrived back to us yesterday. We had to send Scottie's China passport in with her US passport so that the Chinese Embassy could cancel her China passport and put the visa into her US passport. We moved Zane down stairs this weekend so that we can get started on Townsend's room, formerly Zane's room. Now Zane and Quade both live down stairs with the boy cave. The boy cave now has a fresh coat of paint and hopefully a more functional layout. By Thanksgiving weekend we hope to be painting Townsend's room. So other than Townsend's room not being ready yet, we are ready to go.