Good News

First the fun news. Brian went and bought us a laptop for Christmas. That crazy guy went against all the Christmas present rules this year :-) I'm glad he did, because now we will have a lot easier time blogging during our China trip and can post lots of pictures!

The best gift of all was the gift of our I-171H. Those of you that don't know what that is, it is our immigrations approval to adopt a child from a foreign country. We have to have this current to be able to travel. The lady at the immigrations office had assured me and my social worker that she'd get to our case a week ago today. When we hadn't received it by Friday, I email our social worker and she dropped everything and made sure that immigrations took care of this. We received an email Saturday morning that it was done and sent to the Consulate in China!

We are so relieved, now we should not have anything holding us back from going to pick up Lily. I think we are close to being ready. We found a housesitter for our animals. (A huge load off my chest) Now we just need the travel notice from China and a consulate appointment and we will be on our way. I can't believe we are so close. We are so excited!!!

FRIENDS ARE THE BEST

Having friends that can relate and understand the things that we go through are irreplaceable. Through these past 2 years of going through the adoption process we have met some of the most wonderful people. People that can truelly understand what it is like to be infertile, what it is like to want something so badly and not be able to have it. Understanding the agony of a long wait and having absolutely no control in the process. These friends have helped us so much to get through the wait when we thought it would never end. Well, we have made it far enough that we can see the finish line at the end of the race. What a wonderful prize we will get to keep, the most beautiful thing we have ever laid eyes on. We are truelly in love with our Lily Sihua and we haven't even met, but we know when that day does come when we hold her for the first time we will be head over heels.

Last night our friends gave us a party to celebrate receiving our referral. We had the best time. They served Mexican food and margaritas (they know my favorites well:-). Our friends Kim and Scott were there with their twin girls, which were such fun to watch and play with. They were all so generous to present us with gifts. We had a lot of fun seeing all the great things that Lily will get to enjoy. Thank you all.

The Nursery

We have had such a great time getting this nursery ready for our little Lily. It is an unbelievable feeling to look at her picture and realize that in a months time we will be playing together in her nursery.

Please take special notice of the beautiful rug on the floor in front of her crib. My friend Heather made this rug from scratch on her loom. She did an absolute fabulous job. It looks like we bought it at an expensive department store. Thank you Heather.

Adopting a child is like: Hurry-up and Wait!
We got our referral and we hurried up and got the paperwork done and applications sent out for visas and now, we wait. We wait to get our immigrations approval back, to get our visas, to get our travel notice from China. We just wait. My nerves are on fire and I feel like I can't take a deep breath until this is all done and we have her in our arms. Until then, we wait.

Hi everyone, we got our Fedex package about 11:40am. We were so happy to see these very cute pictures of our Lily Sihua.

Introducing our Daughter

We are proud to introduce our new daughter;

Name: Guo Si Hua
Birthday: Feb. 18, 2006
Age: Almost 10 months old

At the physical done on Oct. 12, 2006
Height: 25.98 inches
Weight: 15.4 lb

She is residing in Foster Care in Hepu County CWI, Guangxi Province.
Right above Vietnam.

She likes to play with plastic toys, stuffed animals and toys that make noise. She sucks her fingers, rolls over and sits steadily on her own. She knows her name and responds to it. She knows the differents between people she knows and strangers. She smiles and laughs out loud.

We are so happy right now, she is such a beautiful baby. We will receive her full packet tomorrow.