Stork Alert!!

No news to report from last Friday or Monday, but today (Tuesday) the long-awaited "Stork Alert" came out from our agency. This means the referrals will leave China soon and be on their way to the agency in Austin, TX....they will actually be mailed tomorrow (Wednesday) They predict that it take 5-7 days for the package to arrive...but they usually arrive sooner than that. We're thinking next Wednesday at the latest...probably Tuesday...but maybe Friday!!! This weekend is Labor Day...so it'll be a loooooong weekend if they don't roll in on Friday!

Another Referral Update!

We now know the number of referrals coming this month...107!! This is a BIG month! As a point of reference, there were 68 referrals last month. These numbers are for our agency only. So....Olivia is one of the 107. WOW!! Wish we'd received more detailed info...but at least it's something! The bad news is that referrals have still not left China yet! More waiting....

Referral Update

We were expecting referrals to leave China around the 20th...but they still have not been mailed. We received an update from the agency today that the CCAA has not completed their work on this month's referrals. Nobody knows what that means! Things are running late this month....ugh!!!....it just had to happen during our month!

New travel plans??

We received some surprising news from Great Wall on Friday (Great Wall China Adoption is the agency we're using..."GWCA"). An email was sent out to tell us about possible scenarios related to our travel arrangements. We should receive our referral in the next couple of weeks...so we expected to travel around the middle of October (based on the typical timeline). The email told us about China's national holiday on Oct. 1-7 and a huge trade fair Oct. 15-31...all government offices are closed during this time so there is no adoption-related travel during the month. OH MY GOSH!!! The shock and disappointment was from the realization that now we wouldn't travel until November! UGH!!! All this time waiting...and now we're finally near the end of the game but just found out we're going to overtime! Our contact at the agency did say they're still going to push for us to travel in September, but I don't think there's any way this will happen...there's just not enough time to get all the appointments scheduled in China. Today is the 14th, and to our knowledge, this month's referrals still haven't left China yet. Even if they leave China tomorrow, they won't get here until Friday 8/19....or possibly not until Monday, 8/22 (it takes 5-7 business days). So everything would have to be processed & appts schedules within 3 weeks...it usually takes 6-8 weeks!....we'd have to be traveling by mid-September in order to get everything in China completed by October 1 (when everything shuts down)....I just don't think there's any way we'll be traveling in September. Looking on the bright side... travel in early November might be better. The weather will be cooler, the timing is good because then I'll be off work through the holidays (wouldn't go back until January)...and in the grand scheme of things, it's only another 2 weeks....what's another couple of weeks at this point??! We were originally thinking we'd travel in mid-October...now we'll travel in early November...we can live with that! We'll see what updates we receive from GWCA this week. I really don't expect to hear that referrals have left China until the end of the week or even next week (8/22). For the last several months, referrals have left China around the 20th and arrived in the US around the end of the month....I really don't expect the timing to be any different this month. In the meantime, we're still working on her room. I hope to get everything put together soon...I'll post pictures as soon as it's finished. ss