LOA

We are very excited to announce that our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) came today, day 35. What does this mean you might ask. This means that China has given their approval for Townsend to be our son. We now need to finish the US immigration side and then China will give us travel approval (TA).  We are hoping to travel in December or January if everything goes smoothly from here.

Update

We received updated pictures this week and new measurements. He is a little guy, but I'm sure there is a growth spirt in his future. He is wearing about a 4T and just turned 6 yrs old. We are still waiting on our LOA from China and then we can finish the US side of things before we can go get him. Our agency is hoping we can travel before the new year but we will see. Townsend is going to school this year at a neighborhood school and knows he is going to be adopted. I am not sure if they have given him our letter yet or not. Sometimes they wait so that the child doesn't have o wait to long but since he knows tht he is being adopted maybe they did. 

Hopefully this will be our new son

It has been a long run with many turns that we did not expect but we are hoping that this will be our new son. XiuXiu was not our daughter after all but we like to think that maybe we were the cog that helped her return to her bio-family. We were then matched with another boy with albinism but in reality he already had a family for his foster grandparents want to keep him and he wants to be with them. I guess we have been helping clean up the shared list. So now we are matched with a six year old boy,for now we will call Townsend.  I think he is really our son, we will have to wait and see but I think he is. He is beautiful and seems to be full of life. We submitted our letter of intent on August 19th and received PA on August 27th. Now we just wait for LOA. 

Pictures from today

Tuesday on the road to and in Valdez

Musk ox farm

In the afternoon on Monday we stopped at a Musk Ox farm just outside of Palmer. It was great for Scottie as there were hands on exhibits and she was able to feed one of the babies.  We are about 40 miles from  Glenallen at the Grandview RVPark. I think it is one of our best camp sites.  

The young couple in the tent next to us are on there honeymoon.  They are from Israel. The Guys name is Alone. It was like an Abbot and Costelo routine trying to explain that to Scottie.   

Fred:  "The man is Alone"

Scottie: "No he's not the lady is with him."

This went on several minutes.  

We are not sure where we will travel to today. So many options.  

The Wedding

We had a great time in Girdwood. The wedding was beautiful and it was great to have the families together. Girdwood is an interesting town. People are very friendly and the resort is spectacular.  We have decided that instead of heading north from here we are going to head back toward Haines.  The troops are getting tired of the driving and by heading  back we take a few days to get there. Sorry Aunt Bot! Here are a few pictures from the wedding taken by Scottie. Also our lunch at the Golden Corral and Scottie's first cotton Candy.