On the way to Seattle...

Nerd's paradise: free wifi on the flight. I need to get out more...

We'll be in Beijing in a mere 17 hours or so. It'll fly right by... Ugh...

We have our travel dates!

We are leaving on 8/31! We will have a couple of days of touring in Beijing before flying on to Shanghai on 9/4. "Gotcha day" is set for Monday, Sept 5th. We will meet and take Kaia at either our hotel or the Civil Affairs office. We aren't yet sure if we will be able to tour the orphanage or not.

8/31 Depart Las Vegas
9/1 Arrive in Beijing
9/2 Tour Beijing
9/3 Tour Beijing
9/4 Fly to Shanghai
9/5 Gotcha Day
9/6 Paperwork
9/7 Tour Shanghai
9/8 Tour Shanghai
9/9 Pick up passport and fly to Guangzhou
9/10 Kaia's medical exam and TB test
9/11 Tour Guangzhou
9/12 TB test results and touring
9/13 Visa application and oath ceremony
9/14 Pick up Kaia's Visa
9/15 (open day)
9/16 Drive to Hong Kong airport and depart

MORE Pictures!

I'm sorry but these are too dang cute not to share all of them.  Kaia looks so happy in these.  Her world is gonna get rocked in a month or so.  I just hope Kristin and I can substitute for her little buddies she's sharing the cake with in these pictures.  I mean, we both like cake too...  A LOT.

August 4 Update

We received some new pictures after we had a cake sent to Kaia. We don't know yet if she knows about us. We also received updated measurements so I hope I get the right size clothing. No info on her foot size, so it will be a guessing game on shoes. She is now 42 inches tall and weighs 35 pounds. We are expecting our approval to travel in the next 1-4 weeks

We haven't received any updates yet, but another family was in Shanghai this week finalizing their adoption and they were kind enough to take some photos of other children they saw there. We found a picture of Kaia in there! We are expecting to travel in about 5 weeks.

We are almost there! We have some documents being dropped off today at the US Embassy in China which take about 2 weeks for processing. Then we wait 1-4 weeks for China to send us an official letter inviting us to come and pick up Kaia, with 3 weeks being the average wait time. Once we receive that we schedule our appointment with the embassy and arrange our travel. As of right now, we expect to leave in about 6 weeks or so.

Announcing Kaia !!

It's been a year since we started the process, but well worth the wait. We are pleased to announce we have been matched with, and approved as parents for, a 5 year old little girl. Her name is Kaia and she is currently in an orphanage in Shanghai, China. We are currently waiting on the final immigration approval document from the Department of Homeland Security and permission from China to travel. Our goal is to have these by August so that we can make the 2 1/2 week trip in the Fall to pick her up.

For those of you curious about the process, here is a link to a website that nicely lays out the process from beginning to end.
http://www.china-adoption-online.com/adopting-a-child.html


If you are in Nevada and would like information on a local agency, we used Premier Adoption for our Home Study: http://www.premieradoption.org/

We used Wide Horizons for Children as our placement agency:
http://www.whfc.org/

Many of you probably are wondering how this all came about and why we chose China. We have attempted to answer these questions as well as some others below:

Q: When did you first start thinking about adoption?
A: Jim started considering this after the Haiti earthquakes and seeing all the children without families. Kristin quickly jumped on board with the idea.

Q: Why aren't you adopting an American child?
A: Okay, we know this is a sensitive subject for many, but we will try and clarify. Most agencies and adoptions in the U.S. are for infants. Due to our age, this was not really something we wanted to pursue. We next researched adoption through the foster care system. We looked at this closely, and found out that the overwhelming majority of the kids in foster care are NOT available for adoption. After careful consideration, we decided it just wasn't going to work for us.

Q: Why China?
A: After reviewing several countries, their requirements, their reputation for the care of their orphans, and the children available, we selected the China Special Needs program. Special Needs, in this case. refers to children who will be difficult to place due to medical conditions like heart disease, spina bifida, cleft lip/palate, missing limbs, developmental delays, etc. These are just some examples. There are thousands of special needs children in orphanages in China.

Q: Why are you adopting a special needs child when you could get a "healthy" one?
A: Why not?

Q: How did Kaia end up in an Orphanage?
A: She was found at the age of 3.5 in a train station. Her name, date of birth, and origins are unknown. Unfortunately this is all too common in China given the current laws on childbearing. We are not here to state whether we agree or disagree with the laws or the resulting actions of desperate parents, so please, no hate mail. To protect her privacy, we will remove this section of the post before she comes home.

Q: What is Kaia's special need?
A: We would be happy to discuss this offline, but for her privacy will not be publishing this here. But seriously, please feel free to ask, it is not a big deal and we are fine sharing this with friends.

Q: Are there only girls available in China?
A: No, there are many boys available for adoption in China.

Q: Will she speak any English?
A: Nope. Should be interesting. =) We will be trying to learn some basic Mandarin, but hopefully she will pick up English quickly so we don't embarrass ourselves too badly.