A few steps closer...

It looks like China is not going to "catch up" from that batch they send in the middle of May. Remember, it got sent a few weeks late because of the swine flu scare. We were hoping that they would catch up...send a batch at the beginning of June and get back to sending them at the beginning the month. But the last batch arrived the third week of June, so it's looking like this might be the new normal. Referrals went through March 20, 2006. Ever so slowly, we are moving closer to our date. Our agency keeps telling us that our LID is 4-17-06, and hopefully they are right. I think (hope?) for the first time in this ridiculous wait that we are about 6 months away.

We've been really busy lately. Well, busier than usual. The Red Sox came to town last week for three games against the Nationals and we were, of course, there for all three games. It was so much fun seeing the Red Sox in our "home" stadium though I think we're both feeling the effects of the heat & three nights of eating Five Guys cheeseburgers! (yes, the same Five Guys that Obama went to on the Dateline special...Chris is not pleased about that since it made the line twice as long!) I spent Friday and Saturday at the Great American Scrapbook Convention, an annual tradition for me! And tomorrow we're heading up to Baltimore for, you guessed it, another Red Sox game! Chris is taking a few days off of work, so it will be nice to have some time to catch up on sleep and relax at the pool!

Cancun!

Hello! We are back, tan, and relaxed from an amazing week in Cancun. I am so glad that we went, in spite of fears about the swine flu. Other than the fact that there have been exactly the same number of cases of swine flu in Cancun as there have been in our house (zero), the fear that caused nearly everyone else to cancel was our gain. Our flights in and out of Cancun weren't even half full (love the extra space!) and the resort was no more than 20% full. The weather was perfect and it truly felt like we had the place to ourselves. As we walked around the resort, we kept noticing how many chairs there were - all empty. I imagine that during busy times every single one is full. Not for us. We had a "busy" trip...HA! We stayed at an all-inclusive resort, and barely left the property! We ate breakfast on the terrace each day looking out over the ocean. (I know, rough life...) Then we picked out the perfect lounge chairs to spend the day on (on the deck of the pool looking out at the ocean)...laid in the sun, drank way too much (we would order a drink, and once they saw that we were getting close to finishing it, a new one would appear!), swam in the pool, swam in the ocean, played a LOT of pool volleyball, and lounged on the edge of the infinity pools (made to look like they go on out into the ocean - they had a ledge you could sit on that overlooked the ocean...it was AMAZING!). We ate way too much too - the food was amazing and ridiculously plentiful. And everyone we met was so nice - from the staff (we LOVED the activity staff & bartenders!) to the other guests. I have more pics posted on my facebook page, or you can email me for the link! :)

As for adoption news...well...not much to report. Referrals did come in while we were away - they covered through March 14, 2006. It's a strange sort of situation...we're so close, but we have no idea when referrals will come again, and how many days they will do at a time. I really do think we'll see a referral in 2009, but who knows. The other good news is that we finally got our USCIS approval - third time's a charm, right? The best part of it, though, was the form letter we got with it. The letter states "congratulations on completing the first step of your international adoption..." HA!! If only they knew! :) Hopefully I will have some good news to share soon!

Swine Flu? Really?

Well, I certainly didn't see this coming. If someone had told me three years ago that we would still be waiting for our daughter, I would have been shocked. But if someone had told me that we would be impacted by swine flu? Well...I can't say that I would have believed them. But here we are. No referrals were mailed this month (the last set of referrals went through 3-8-06 and were sent at the beginning of April), and every agency has a different explanation. Some agencies are just saying that they are late this month, and that the swine flu won't impact anything. Other agencies are saying that the CCAA has told them that they will be holding referrals for 20-30 days. Still others are saying that the CCAA is holding things until June. And yet another sent out an email yesterday saying that no referrals will be sent until September. Yes, you read that right.

So where does that leave us? Well, aside from the stress of not knowing anything (and the ridiculousness of the worldwide reaction to the sniffles), I am hoping that we won't really be impacted. The precedence that the CCAA has set from the SARS scare is promising. During that time, all referrals stopped, but the CCAA continued to make matches. Once all of the travel restrictions were lifted, they sent out huge batches of referrals (and more than one batch a month) to "catch up." We weren't going to get a referral this month anyways, so if they send out a larger batch next month, we would be in the same place. But I don't know. The not knowing is horrible, and the number of agencies that say that they have talked to someone at CCAA and have wildly different information is absurd. As Chris often says, we are adopting from a country that doesn't give out information, but this stinks.

As for the two of us, we are laughing in the face of swine flu, and flying to Mexico for our vacation on Monday. Really. Even after United cancelled our flights (would you believe that United has canceled nearly every flight to Mexico until JULY??), we have rebooked and are planning on spending a blissful few days on the beach in Cancun. No internet (so no monitoring the referral situation) will be a good thing. And hopefully we will come home to some good news.

Hope

It's been a crazy crazy month. REALLY crazy. First, no real adoption news. But we do have quite a bit of hope for the future. While the last month had the CCAA only refer 4 days worth of LIDs (so we're now up to 3/6/06...our LID is 4/17/06...), many agencies are saying that things will start to pick up in the next few months. The biggest reason that they are giving is the increase in the required orphanage donation. A few months ago, the donation was raised from $3000 to about $5000 (the new donation amount is in RMB, so it fluctuates a bit with the economy). That's a huge incentive for orphanage directors to get paperwork submitted. More paperwork means more babies available for international adoption and more referrals. So many agencies are reporting this that I am allowing myself some hope that we will finally see a speed-up and a 2009 referral.

In other craziness, we are redoing our kitchen. So it has been construction (and dust) central. A few weeks ago the KraftMaid cabinet truck pulled up to our house (the same truck that delivers to the houses on Extreme Makeover:Home Edition!) and we now have brand new cabinets and countertops! Our kitchen isn't quite put back together yet, but it is amazing to have beautiful new cabinets that aren't falling apart! :)

In even BIGGER news though, two of our closest friends, Shana & Stephen, had a baby at the end of February, and I became a godmother!!! Emily Talia is simply perfect (even those people who aren't her godmother think so!), and I was lucky enough to hold her when she was only 10 hours old! I am in awe of her, and so thankful that we live close enough that I can get my Emmy fix whenever I want!! :)

Other than that (which is quite a bit!), I have been super busy with work - I am working for a CPA during tax season (the same CPA I worked for last year). I really like the people I work with (and the office dog, Harley), but between that and teaching Sunday & Hebrew school...well...you get the idea! And Chris has been working long late hours a lot lately as well. We're also getting ready for softball season to start, as well as Opening Day.

No News...Just More Paperwork

Well, no news. Not even any rumors about the next cut off date. What a bummer, right? :) The upside is that there have been a few rumors about the wait and process as a whole. More than a few agencies are reporting that the mood is good at the CCAA, and several are reporting that things will pick up in the next few months. So while we're cautious about any rumors, we're cautiously optimistic about this one.

The other interesting thing is the website chinadoptionforecast.com. I've played with it some for awhile now, but there are a lot of reports that it's been extremely accurate lately. If we truly are close enough now for the site to make an accurate prediction, then 2009 truly will be our year. It's predicting a September referral, which would mean we would travel before the holidays. I'm hoping that it's wrong - that we'll travel before then, but anytime in 2009 is good enough for me at this point!

On the home front, we're been working hard at renewing all of our paperwork. We meet with the social worker tomorrow for our home study update - once that is done and sent to USCIS, we will have to be fingerprinted again as well. But at least we're in the home stretch of this set of paperwork (it took a LONG time to put it together again). We're enjoying the nice weather while it lasts (it was freezing here at this time last week, and today was in the 70s...supposed to be back down to the 30s by Friday...it's a wonder we're not more sick!). I'm excited to be heading to NFTY Convention on Monday as part of the Youth Workers Conference. And, of course, I couldn't be happier that spring training officially gets under way tomorrow! AND the Red Sox play the Nats for three games here in DC in June - I am ECSTATIC to see my team in my home town!!

Hope and Change

Tuesday was an amazing day. Sitting on my couch, a mere 16 miles from the Capital (yes, that's right, I live 16 miles away, but stayed in my toasty warm pjs!) we witnessed history. There are no words to describe the feeling of watching our 44th president be sworn in. I keep thinking of how our daughter will live in a country where the color of her skin will not be a barrier to her dreams. And I am full of optimism for our country. It truly is cool to be an American again.

In the midst of the unbelievable joy of the Inauguration, it's been a tough week in the world of our adoption wait. Our USCIS (immigration) paperwork has to be renewed AGAIN, and we have to re-do our homestudy (and all its parts...medical reviews, abuse clearances, fingerprints, financial reviews, etc.) a third time as well. It's tough - it's a huge time suck, as well as another rather large and unplanned expense. If all this money was going towards helping kids I would feel better about it. But it's going to our government and our agency. In short, it stinks. And the wait is not getting any shorter. Referrals for this month came out today, and after rumors of a speed-up, this batch covered two measly days. March 1 & 2, 2006. That's it. The rumor that spirits are high at CCAA is still out there, and it's possible that when they come back from the Chinese New Year holiday they could do another batch, but who knows. I continue to hope, but it's getting harder and harder.

I'm still sticking with Project 365...these are the next 9 days of our lives. And we are completely re-doing our kitchen. I thought that would make the universe laugh enough to speed things up (because it would be pretty funny to come home to a completely torn apart kitchen, right?). So our new stove arrived Saturday - our 1970s double oven is no more. And we picked out new cabinets and a new counter on Sunday. It'll be a month or two before they are installed, but we'll do the floor after that. Home improvement has never been so much fun. :)

Project 365

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2009 is to complete Project 365. What is Project 365? It's pretty simple, actually. Take a picture every day for a year. The idea is to capture every day moments - the stuff that I never usually take pictures of. My goal is to become a much better photographer, as well as documenting what a year in our lives look like. I'm hoping that this will be a big year for us, so to see it all the way through will be pretty cool. And I want to be a good enough photographer that I can capture all of our daughter's moments on film (disc?). I will be scrapbooking the pictures as well (hopefully using a Project 365 kit to make it simple), so that we will be able to look at the year for many years to come. As I've been taking pictures, I keep thinking how neat it would be to have pictures like this from my grandparents (I LOVE old pictures - my grandparents' pictures are all over our house!), so I'm hoping that this will be something that our children and grandchildren enjoy. Our first 9 days have been pretty boring. I came back from California with a nasty cold and picked up a stomach bug a few days later, so you can tell I spent a lot of time at home! And yes - those pictures at the top are the past 9 days. My favorite one is day 4 - that's Chris cooking latkes for our annual Chanukah celebration with our friends. That's right - of the 8 of us, the 1 non-Jew is the one who cooks the latkes each year! :)

(a key for those who are interested...1/1 - playing Scrabble with Chris, 1/2 - watching tv in my favorite pjs, 1/3 - Chris playing with Shana & Stephen's dogs, 1/4 - Chris making latkes at the Langels, 1/5 - folding laundry, 1/6 - a beautiful cardinal in the midst of all the rain, 1/7 - 2 cranky rabbits, 1/8 - our backyard in the midst of a 15 minute snow storm, 1/9 - doing dishes in our kitchen)