Happy August!

Well, after much struggling with blogger, I am back in the blogging world. Not quite sure what made blogger think that an occasionally updated blog about the trials and tribulations of our adoption was spam, but maybe it is just as frustrated with the wait as we are.

Speaking of the wait...we are a whopping 5 steps closer this month. The CCAA referred through January 31, 2006. To put it in perspective, when we sent our dossier to China at the end of March 2006, they were working on referrals for March 2005. So in nearly 2 1/2 years, they have gotten through 10 months of dossiers. Crazy, isn't it? To give you a sense of how things have been going, take a look at this chart:

When referrals were released	Dossier registration dates of families that received referrals	Total time covered by the group of referrals
August, 2008	1/26/06 through 1/31/06	5 days (4 business days)
July, 2008	1/21/06 through 1/25/06	5 days (3 business days)
June, 2008	1/13/06 through 1/20/06	8 days (6 business days)
May, 2008	1/10/06 through 1/12/06	3 days (3 business days)
April, 2008	1/5/06 through 1/9/06	5 days (3 business days)
March, 2008	12/28/05 through 1/4/06	8 days (5 business days)
February, 2008	12/20/05 through 12/27/05	8 days (6 business days)
January, 2008	12/15/05 through 12/19/05	5 days (3 business days)
December, 2007	12/9/05 through 12/14/05	6 days (4 business days)
November, 2007	12/1/05 through 12/8/05	8 days (6 business days)
October, 2007	11/26/05 through 11/30/05	6 days (3 business days)
September, 2007	11/22/05 through 11/25/05	4 days (4 business days)

(taken from the Pearl S. Buck newsletter)

The good news is that there was a batch at all - there were some who worried that there wouldn't be an August batch because of the Olympics. And I think that the September batch will be equally small for the same reason. But who knows. Things could stay at the snail's pace that we've become accustomed to, or they could speed up at any time. Just keep your fingers crossed for the speed up.

Other than not-very-patiently waiting, we've been doing well. I am a HUGE fan of the Olympics, so I haven't slept much since they started. How can you not stay up till 2 in the morning to watch Michael Phelps and live gymnastics finals? Ok, I guess you could just go to sleep, but what's the fun in that? :) We didn't go on a big vacation this year. We were hoping to go see my family in Boston, but we have postponed the trip for awhile since things are crazy at work for Chris. And in July we went to Williamsburg for three days for our anniversary. Sure, it rained the entire day we were at Busch Gardens, but a rainy day at the amusement park beats a sunny day at home! :) The biggest news of all is that we have a new nephew - Evan Christopher - who was born last month. Anyone who knows us knows that being an aunt & uncle is one of our favorite things in the world, so a new nephew is phenomenal! We can't wait to go to California to meet him!