Name Change

If you have been to our blog before you may have noticed that the Journey name has changed, that is because it is official we have a daughter (as official as can be at this step but that's pretty official). Her name is Na Hui (Na Hwee) and she turned 6 on November 26, which is Fred's grandfather's birthday. As soon as our dossier is logged-in in China, the orphanage will tell her that she now has a forever family. We now can start writing letters, sending pictures and movies to Na Hui so that she can get to know her family while we all wait to be together. Fred is writing her a book about our family with pictures of Juneau and family and friends. I hope it is not to overwhelming for her, but how could it not.  The feelings she will go through when she is told she has a family, the excitement of a family but the fear of the unknown.I just can't imagine being 6 years old and going to live in a new family in a new country. She has been in a foster family sponsored by Half the Sky since January of 2009 and what she has known for the last 3 years.  It is such a strange feeling to know that our daughter is in China right now and we have about 6 month to wait until we can meet her.

December Announcement

  We have wonderful news to announce, we have a match!! We are so excited. We just sent our ” Letter of Intent”(LOI) today, which means that if everything works out we should receive a Pre-approval Letter (PA) within 5 to 7 days. Then we wait for our official approval from the Chinese government which is the “Letter of Approval” (LOA). These are taking between 40 to 140 days, with no rhyme nor reason on who gets them in 40 day or 140 days.  We are still thinking that we will be traveling in early June, but it all depends on how quickly the paper work goes through. We will post a picture after we get our PA, but until then we can tell you that she just turn six on November 26^th and she is in Hefei, China and she is adorable.
 

October Up-date

Well it has been a long time since we updated the blog, so I will try to fill you in on the events that have taken place. We did get our finger prints taken by Homeland Security which as pretty cool. It is all on the computer and is then immediately in DC.  On September 27, 2011 we received our I-797 which is the pre-approval to making Scottie a US citizen. The next step is to send our dossier to China, so we have been working on the final papers that need to be included in the dossier.  At the beginning of October, we received an email informing us that the Chinese Embassy would no longer be authenticating any documents that we older than 6 months. This was scary because we had been collecting documents that needed to be authenticated so that we could send them all off as one big batch. Some of our documents were exactly 6 months old so we gathered them together and headed to the FedEx store (these docs can’t be sent regular mail). I am pleased to say that the first batch did get authenticated and now we are waiting on the next batch to return. I believe that we will have only one more batch of documents that need to be authenticated now and they have resent dates. Anyway what my long store means is that hopefully we will be ready to send our dossier to Holt for approval and translation by the beginning of November. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

We do not have a match yet but believe it will happen shortly after our dossier is logged-in in China. We are still hoping for a little girl between the ages of 4 and 6 and the wait is starting to get to me.  I have been doing some therapy shopping lately, mostly looking because we don’t know what size she will be. I have purchased a few items in size 4, but they could end up begin to small. We figure that anything that we buy that is too small we can donate to the orphanage. I was told that most kids are about one size smaller than their age, so 4 is in the middle. I also crochet her a hat. You can never have too many hats in Alaska.

While this has all been going on behind the scenes, Zane and Quade have finished up the cross country and the football seasons respectively. Quade decided that he is now going to play indoor soccer and had his first day yesterday. His team is the Shelter Island Chickens. They won 6 to 4 and had a great time. I had never been to an indoor soccer game before and learned many interesting rules. There is no out of bounds except for if the ball goes to high in the air or hits the basketball hoop. The bottom rows of the bleachers are pulled out for the audience but the ball can be played off of your legs (we moved ours when the ball was coming). I loved the part where the ball was played of the school binder and jacket that was lying on the floor or got caught under the curtain. Anyway it was a lot of fun and Zane has decided that he wants to play as well. I think Fred is planning on signing him up on Monday. Zane will be in the next age bracket but I bet he will know someone on his team and if not, he will soon. 

Fred has been working on his fish for Public Market and they are really looking great. Hopefully he will post some pictures soon. He has also been working on the chicken coop which is now finished and the chickens moved in yesterday. These are not your ordinary Rhode Island Red chickens, these are babied pet Rhode Island Red chickens, but still lays an egg a day each. You can pet them and hold them and they will follow you around the yard. We even had to interview to get them. Anyway they are very sweet and Fred is already having a ball with them.

Well I believe the next post should be around the end of October / beginning of November and I hope I will be saying that our dossier is on its way. So again keep your fingers crossed, pray, whatever it is you do that everything falls in to place and we can be traveling to China by spring.

Biometrics Appointment

Yesterday we received our awaited Biometrics appointments. This is basically the fingerprint appointment with Homeland Security for our I-800a. We are very excited to have gotten this appointment so soon because they only come to Juneau a few times a year. So on September 2, 2011 at 1pm we will report to  the USCIS Juneau with appointment notice, ID and fingerprints in hand.
Dayna

While I Was in the Kitchen Canning Candied Jalapenos

On Thursday the 18th while I was in the kitchen canning candied jalapenos, I received a call from Holt International who is the agency we are useing for the addoption.  It was a lady named Marsha May whom we have talked with in the past about what types of conditions we are are we willing to accept in a child.  This time she was calling about a possible match.  I had to ask her if I could call her back in a few minuters as I was in the middle of filling the jars and not a a stopping point.  She laughed and said no problem. 

I filled the jars as fast a I could and started the hot water bath for the jars and called her back immediately.  She started to tell me about a girl who had been released to only Holt and was not available for any other agency or their clients.  I started to get an excited felling in the bottom of my tummy the kind you get when you find out you are getting a new gun or are having tacos for dinner.  The felling was short lived however as I soon recognized the condition and age of the little girl.  It was a girl who had been added to the Holt web page just a day or so earlier that Dayna had read the profile to me just the night before.  I explained to Marsha that she was just a little to young for us and we really wanted to have a child who would be starting Kindergarten or First grade when she gets home with us.  Marsha said she would keep looking and give us a call when they had any other possible matches for us.  I let her know we have talked about possibly adopting a second time, but the travel cost would most likely be the determining factor for not being able to.  I asked if it could be possible to adopt 2 children at the same time.  She said in some occasions if we were to adopt a younger child as we are looking to do and then found a child who was going to age out of the program, that it could be done.  I told her to keep a look out for such a situation.  (  I know, I know..... Dayna and I really are the kind of folks that tend to go all in.  Don't judge, just support us and nod your heads.  It's just a thought at this point)

So we will continue to go about our business and wait for the next call from Holt, maybe the next time it will be the call we are so anxiously waiting for.

Fred

USCIS has received our application

We received a letter today from the USCIS, aka Homeland Security, that they received our application. This was just the notification that they got our information and that they will be sending us an additional letter indicating our biometric appointment (finger prints). It took 13 days to get this letter from the time we mailed off the application. I know I shouldn't count the days because it will only make the time seem longer. We have a friend who is working on getting her US citizenship and she has been waiting a couple months for her biometrics appointment. We were joking that maybe we could go at the same time. Being that she has been waiting so long it could be a good indication that the finger print team could be coming to town soon. We can only hope.

We went camping this past week with some friends of ours that just recently returned from China with their second daughter. We had a great time and I really enjoyed getting to know their new daughter, Li Ming. Not only was it special because it was some indication on what it will be like for us when we bring Scottie home, although Li Ming is older, but Li Ming will also be in my class this year. I learned a lot on how to communicate without having much of a shared language. Li Ming speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin, but we do not know what language Scottie will speak. Today a friend of mine, Suzi and I spent some time doing a Mandarin introduction lesson while Fred napped. (He claims he picked some up through his dream.) We learned parts of the body. We laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. I am looking forward to sharing with Li Ming the new words I have learned.

Cheers
Dayna

Getting the Blog Together

Thanks go out to those of you who have been my Guinea pigs with the organization of the blog. I now believe it is ready to go public. For those of you just joining us, this page was set up to follow the Weiler family's journey to their new daughter from China. Fred and I will try to keep the blog up to date so that our family and friends can share this journey with us.

In the way of the adoption process, nothing has changed since I last wrote, but we have been working on a name. I think everyone in the house is getting tired of calling her "the girl" or "the daughter". So anyway at this point ( and you know with us, things can change) her name will be "Etta Scott (what ever her Chinese name is) Weiler. We are referring to her as Scottie for now. Zane and I have been having fun thinking about how we will change his old room into Scottie's new room and Zane has decided that we should now call that room Scottie's room and he will keep it warm for her while we are waiting for her to come home.