That's right...we're a mere FOUR days from being on a plane to China! It has been a ridiculously busy week, and we know that the weekend will be even busier, but it will be SO worth it! We leave for China on Tuesday morning! We will be in Beijing for a few days to do some sight-seeing and adjust to the 12-hour time difference. We have booked a private tour for the three days we are there (ooh...so fancy!), and we will get to see all of the major sites. Then we are off on flight #2 (well, really flight #3 as we have to fly though Chicago to get to Beijing on Tuesday) to Kunming, the city where Hannah is! We'll arrive the evening of March 28, and we are scheduled to get Hannah around noon on March 29 - exactly four years to the day after we sent our paperwork to China! We will be spending a week in Kunming, finalizing the adoption, getting Hannah's passport, and soaking in the sights and sounds of her city. We're excited to have a few extra days here before flying to Guangzhou, the city where the US Consulate is. In Guangzhou we'll be getting Hannah's visa and taking care of all of the paperwork to ensure that the moment we set foot on US soil, she will become a US citizen! We'll be taking the oath at the US Consulate and flying home on April 10. It's a long trip - longer than we had anticipated, due to a few weekends and a minor holiday thrown into the mix (Tomb Sweeping Day anyone?), but I'm sure it will be wonderful. Anyone who knows us knows that Chris is a super traveler and Mara isn't at all (prescription-strength Dramamine = packed!), but it will all be well worth it. And my mantra is that 15 hours in coach is better than 15 hours in labor! :)
This all also means that we will be celebrating Passover in China. Mara has been saying all along that we would be in China for Passover...sure, we thought Passover 2007, but still...Passover. :) "My First Passover" bibs from Auntie Shana, Passover picture books, and a box of matzah are packed. Not really how I anticipated celebrating her first Passover, but Passover in China with Hannah is way better than Passover at home without her.
We're mostly ready to go here. Her room is ready for her, and we are starting to get packed. Sure, the house isn't as clean as I would like (my plan of getting all of the carpets steam cleaned will just have to wait until we get home!), but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that in just over a week, Hannah will be in our arms.
The Countdown is On!
Visas in hand...one step closer to Hannah!
It has been a CRAZY month! It is hard to believe that one month ago we had just seen our baby's face for the first time. As you might imagine, I haven't slept much since we received our referral! Sure, I'm exhausted, but it's good practice (and good to know that I can function on much less sleep than I usually get!). So, what have we been up to? Well, other than being in full-blown panic mode (which Mara has been in for most of the past month), we are trying very hard to get everything ready for Hannah! We had NOTHING ready at all. We have used Hannah's room for storage for nearly 10 years. This was not a great idea. :) So we have cleaned everything out, made many many trips to the thrift store and the dump, and are down to the last few boxes (which have now been moved to our basement!). We ordered her furniture (thanks Bubbie & Zaide!) two weeks ago, and this past weekend painted the walls a beautiful princess pink! Mara will be steam cleaning the carpet tomorrow (that DOES sound like fun, right?), and the furniture arrives on Thursday! Just need to go and buy a mattress, some bedding (we picked out this set), and a bookcase and the room will be ready (well, ready enough) for Hannah! Sure, we don't have a lot of clothes (or anything else yet!), but it doesn't really matter, does it?
We've also been working on lots of paperwork. Mara went to the Chinese Embassy today with DeeDee & George, our new friends and travel partners (they received a referral for an ADORABLE little boy the same day as us from the same orphanage - we will be traveling to Kunming together) and got our Chinese Visas! The visa office for the Embassy is quite an experience, but the people who work there might be some of the nicest people we have dealt with through the entire process. If everyone in China is as nice as the women we dealt with today, we may never come home! :) Now we just wait for our TAs...our Approval to Travel to China. Once we receive our TA, our agency can make our appointments at the US Consulate, we can book our airplane tickets, and we can go get Hannah! I have no idea when this will happen. Our agency thinks it may be another few weeks, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that they are wrong and we will receive them this week (other families with other agencies who received their referrals on the same day as us have been told that their TAs are on their way...hopefully ours are too!). We will travel 1-3 weeks after we receive our TA, so keep your fingers crossed that they are in the mail!! :)
A big thank you again to everyone for all the kind wishes. I haven't been able to email or call everyone back, but please know how much it means to us. This has been a VERY long journey (ugh...whenever a contestant on a reality show says that, Chris rolls his eyes and says "Don't Stop BELIEVING!!"), but it is amazing to know how much Hannah is loved. I cannot wait to tell her how many people were waiting for her!
Thank You!
It's been a few days since we first saw our little peanut's face, and it's still hard to believe it's real. I don't think I can even begin to describe how overwhelmed we are with all of the messages and calls of love we have received in the past few days. I cannot wait to tell our daughter how many people were waiting for her and were so excited for her to be coming home. She might be on the other side of the world from us, but I think she might be the most loved little girl in the whole world.
We have decided to name her Hannah Christine (since "peanut" isn't going to be great for a teenager!). She's named for her great-grandmothers, who we know would be over the moon with love with her. We now know that she was a preemie - she weighed just under 4 pounds when she arrived at the orphanage (she was found on July 3, just a few days after she was born). She is still tiny - at the end of October she was 24" long and weighed just under 12 1/2 pounds. The health records look pretty good, though I am going to have my doctor take a look at them next week (we're expecting a massive snowstorm starting tomorrow, so it'll be a couple of days before we can get out of the house!). In Kunming, where Hannah is, most of the children spend time in foster care, so it is highly likely that she is with a foster family right now, though we don't know for sure. All we know is that we are ready to have her home now! :)
No News...Still...
Yes, that's right - we still have no news. It's been over a month, and not only has there not been another batch of referrals, there hasn't even been a single rumor. A few agencies think that we may see something next week, and one agency said this week that they are "preparing for matches" (whatever that means), but who knows. With the Chinese New Year coming up, I would guess we will see a batch right before they close for the holiday. I believe that they close for a week...a few days before and a few days after the holiday so that employees can travel home. In the past, the CCAA sends out a batch right before they leave, which looks like what will happen again this year. Traditionally, they like to "clear off their desks" before the New Year (cleaning for the New Year is part of the culture), so they get that last batch out the day before they leave so that they will come back to a clean desk and fresh start. Sometimes the batch before CNY is a little bigger, but not always. I would hope that they would cover at least 2 or 3 days of LIDs, but, once again, who knows.
With the first few days of April LIDs receiving their referrals in December, we've started to think about baby stuff for the first time. Chris and I went to Baby 2 Teen (a ginormous baby super store) last weekend to look at cribs, and I am going to go to Buy Buy Baby with an adoption friend to get some advice next week. It's all so overwhelming...if you have advice on what to buy (or what NOT to buy), I would love to hear it! :) Over MLK Weekend we saw my favorite band Eddie from Ohio in concert with our friends Josh & Annie - an amazing show, made better by the absurd opening band who didn't realize we were laughing at them not with them (truly one of the unintentionally funniest moments in a long long time!) Last weekend we also said goodbye to Chris's sister Martha, who is off to Swaziland for a year. (it's a landlocked country inside of South Africa) She'll be doing conservation research, which sounds really cool, though I can't even begin to imagine living in a tent for a year! (since I won't even stay at an EconoLodge!) And this weekend we are enjoying an unexpected snow storm! Thankfully this time it is all really light and fluffy snow, so even though we have had to shovel twice already, it was a much easier time than last month's snowpocolypse!
Happy New Year!
It's nearly 2010 - so hard to believe that it was 2005 when we first started this journey. And, of course, each and every year I have said "this is our year!". This one just has to be ours, right? It's looking good for 2010...this week the very first April 2006 referrals arrived! It was only three days worth (April 1-3), and only 1 business day in there, but some of our April friends have seen their daughters' faces, which is super exciting. And even though it was a super small batch, it came relatively quickly, which gives me some hope that they will be back to doing a batch every month. Hooray! It also means that we will need to start thinking about decorating the nursery! We long ago decided that once the CCAA got started on April, we would get started on the room, so here we are! I have looked at a few cute bedding sets at Babies R Us, and am looking forward to transforming our spare bedroom from "black-hole-storage-space" to adorable nursery!
One more piece of hopefulness...Rumor Queen (my favorite adoption blog, and the source for all things China adoption news...as well as the message board where I "hang out" with all my fellow April '06 LID friends!) posted today that more than one agency has heard that the CCAA plans to have April '06 done by June. THAT means with an April 17 LID, we will have our daughter by JUNE. Let me say that one more time so I can believe it. JUNE. :) Sure, this means that we'll likely have to renew our paperwork one last time, and will make attending the 2 weddings and 1 Bat Mitzvah at the end of May and beginning of June tricky, but who cares. Rob & Anne, Goldie, and Arielle & Steve will understand - that's what makes friends and family so great. :)
Not much else is happening here. December brought one of the biggest snowstorms ever for the DC area, and our house was blanketed with over 2 feet of snow. We stayed home for the holidays this year, as we are hoping to make a much bigger trip soon (and airline prices were ridiculously expensive...$595 per person PER DIRECTION to fly to Milwaukee??? What are they doing on that plane??). And we will be celebrating New Year's Eve tonight with our traditional pajama party and game night with friends. It's crazy to think that 10 years ago tonight we were at a Y2K party, planning our wedding, and hoping that the world wouldn't end. :) 2009 has been a good year for us - we hope that 2010 will be the best yet.
Happy Thanksgiving!
A No-News Update (again)
Yes, it's nearly Thanksgiving and we have nothing to report. Our agency emailed us to let us know that they think we will receive our referral in mid-March (though, they're just doing math - they have no actual information). There were all sorts of rumors swirling around earlier in the month, but still, no referrals have landed. The latest is that an agency in Europe reported today that there will be no referrals in November, due to the new director of the CCAA getting "up to speed." There is all sorts of speculation about this, especially with the already rampant speculation that things are going to stop all together because of H1N1. Just when we thought we were so close, right?
Is That a Light?
It's faint, but I think that we are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Referrals for August arrived at the beginning of the week, and while they covered a measly two days of LIDs, they were big days (a lot of families logged in). Even with the two day batch, however, it is looking like we could see a referral in December or January. The projections are just that - projections. They are NOT in any way based on information from the CCAA. They're based on how many days of LIDs have been processed over the past few years and poll data on Rumor Queen (the best China adoption site ever). Keep your fingers crossed that the CCAA can keep up their current pace (number of referrals, not number of days), or, even better, that they can pick up the pace. When we started this process we thought we would be home with our little girl at the beginning of 2007...now, getting home at the beginning of 2010 sounds heavenly.
In other non-adoption news, we were so lucky to celebrate the naming of my Goddaughter Emily over the weekend. She is so beautiful, and her Hebrew name fits her perfectly. Now, I know that I'm a little biased, but isn't she the cutest ever? :) Also this week, our niece Caroline started kindergarten! It's so hard to believe that she's already in school - it seems like just yesterday that she was born! And last week Chris wrapped up our insane home improvement project - our floor is finally complete! It looks AMAZING! I am working on putting the first floor back together, and will take some pictures when I finally get it done.
It's July...
Yup, it's the end of July, and we still have no real news. Referrals landed last week - they covered a measly two days of LIDs. Blech. The good news is that they were big days (lots of dossiers logged in), so if they keep up the pace of number of referrals, we'll see more days in the coming batches. It's hard to believe that I have been doing this for three and a half years now - each month trying to figure out how the tiny batch isn't as bad as it looks. I still think we will see a referral in December or January, but you never know.
We've been keeping busy...TOO busy. Our softball team made it to the playoffs, so we spent a weekend playing softball - we came in third place in the tournament! We celebrated Chris's birthday with a surprise visit from his brother Jonathan (who had the best timed surprise 1 day business trip to the east coast ever). And we have taken on far more in the world of home improvement than we shoud have. We finally are pulling up the old carpet & lineoleum on our first floor and installing laminate. In a stunning display of us overestimating both our skills and speed, we thought
that I could paint the kitchen on Saturday while Chris installed the dining room floor, and then he could do the kitchen on Sunday. Well...the floor takes MUCH more time then you would think to install. And the kitchen took two days to paint - two days, two coats of ceiling paint, 2+ coats of primer, and 2 coats of green paint. Not sure what was on our walls before, but it ate the paint. Our little townhouse kitchen ate nearly 4 cans of paint and primer. Really. It looks PHENOMENAL though. Chris has been working on the floor every day after work and the kitchen is pretty much done. Hopefully he will have some time this weekend to finish up the dining room and start the living room. And hopefully the new floor will be in by September! :)
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!
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.
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)
Happy New Year!
Happy 2009! I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. We traveled to California to celebrate with all of the Surridges. We were a little slowed down by a nasty cold that worked its way through the entire family, but we still had a wonderful time. We perfected our skills at Candy Land, learned a lot about trains, read some good books, and truly enjoyed being an aunt & uncle! We had a VERY low-key New Year's celebration, as I am still getting over the 
Christmas cold, and Chris is working really hard to not let it take over his body. We saw "Marley & Me" and went out for Chinese food with Shana & Stephen, then welcomed 2009 in bed! (we did manage to stay awake until midnight, but just barely!)
It's All About the Numbers
Like many of my friends who are waiting to adopt, playing around with the numbers has become quite the hobby. It's all about how many days are referred and how many days are left in front of us in line. Right now, we have 60 days ahead of us. So, if they were to refer 5 days a month from here on out (not totally likely, since last month was only 2 days worth, and March 2006 is rumored to be a monster of a month in terms of numbers), we have exactly a year to go. There's also the math of weekdays referred...there are 40 weekdays ahead of us (because, of course, no dossiers are logged in on the weekends). So if they could just manage to refer FOUR weekdays a month, we will be home with our little one in 2009. Sigh...what crazy math this is. Referrals haven't yet arrived for December, but it looks like they will go through February 23, 2006. 6 days/4 weekdays. By my math, that keeps us on pace for 2009.
Speaking of numbers, many agencies announced today that the orphanage donation (a mandatory part of the adoption) will increase starting in 2009. The donation has been $3000, and apparently has been so for over a decade. It is now going to be 35,000 yuan, which is just below $5,100 at today’s exchange rates. This, of course, means that not only do we now need to find an additional $2100 to complete our adoption, but because the donation/fee will now be in yuan, it could fluctuate quite a bit depending on the exchange rate. Great. The one upside to this, though, is that because the orphanages will be receiving more money per adoption, they may be more motivated to get babies "paper-ready." In order for a baby to be adopted, the orphanage has a pile of paper-work to do that gets sent to the CCAA. There are many stories of orphanage directors who say that the compensation for getting the paperwork together is not worth it - so babies sit in orphanages. If that's the case, maybe this will help.
In non-adoption news, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving. In our annual charades tournament, the men won. I would post a photo from the medal ceremony (yes, I said medal ceremony...we take our charades REALLY seriously!) but it might go to their heads. :) And in two weeks we'll be flying out to California to spend Christmas with entire Surridge clan. 3 kids + 2 aunts + 2 uncles + 2 parents + 2 grandparents = lots of family fun. Be prepared for many pictures of our excessively adorable niece and nephews when we get home. :) And, as you probably noticed, I'm attempting to make our blog look a little nicer. If you know how to fix the strange spacing and the title, please let me know! :)
A Busy Month
Doesn't it seem like every month I have some sort of reason for not blogging more often? Now that we are knocking on the three year mark of when we started this journey (don't stop believing...), it's pretty impressive that I come up with a new reason every month, isn't it? :) This month's excuse? Teenagers. Lots and lots of teenagers. If you don't know, I'm the youth committee chair at our temple. It's not as exciting as you would think (and it doesn't even sound very exciting, does it?), but I'm really proud to do it - we are members of the temple I grew up at, and when I was in high school I was a founding member of our youth group (and it's first president!). It sounds cheesy, but it's really cool to give back to the youth group that gave me so much. And I got to really give back, as our temple hosted NFTY-MAR Fall Kallah a few weeks ago. It's a regional youth group event - from Delaware to North Carolina - and I attended as a high schooler (and LOVED them). We had 210 teenagers attend...so, as you can imagine, I have been very very busy! The weekend was AMAZING - I am SO unbelievably proud of our kids and the weekend they planned!
After sleeping for a week (and trying to get over the really nasty cold that I got), I have been catching up around the house, continuing to scrapbook pictures from our Paris trip (yes, I'm still working on the pictures from 2006...we took 880 pictures...I'll be scrapbooking for awhile...), and FINALLY working on our quilt! After several unsuccessful attempts to sign up for quilting classes (seriously, why won't any of these people take my money??), I really thought I could do it myself (but not totally sure...have you seen how clumsy I am?). Thankfully, Shannon (a friend of a friend) stepped in and showed me how to get it all assembled. I have some "practice" fabric that I bought over a year ago, and she helped me get it all cut into squares! I laid it out tonight, and tomorrow I'm going to actually start to sew! Holy cow! So if you still want to send me a square for the "real" quilt (PLEASE do - I am short a few squares!!), now is the time! :)
Oh yes - you probably want some adoption news, right? Well, I have very little to report. The CCAA did 2 days worth of referrals in November, which is like doing nothing at all. This brings them to February 17, 2006, and brings us to exactly 2 months of LIDs ahead of us. It's all about how fast the CCAA works...it's hard, since when we started this journey (don't stop believing...), we saw them referring full months at a time. So even though we haven't seen more than a week in a LONG time, I know that they can do it. Hopefully they will soon.
Shana Tovah!
Happy 5769! We had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We had nice dinners with my parents, and enjoyed break fast after Yom Kippur with friends. Holidays always make me a little sad that we don't have our little girl, but thankful that we have such wonderful family and friends. Hopefully 5769 is the last year we spend without kids!
In the middle of the holidays, China did send a batch of referrals - they got through February 15, 2006. So, a little movement forward. And there were some random referrals sent last week for February 16 (but not every agency got them). Hopefully next month will bring a huge batch, but if this pace keeps up we have less than a year of wait ahead of us. Some basic math...if each of the next referral batches (all the way up to ours) is only 6 days, we would get our referral at the end of August 2009. If they slowed down to 5 days a month, we would be at the end of October. But if they did 7 days a month it would be the end of June! Hopefully they can do at least a week of LIDs a month, and we can travel before Sherri & Ira leave Shanghai! :)
Not much else going on with us. I have been very busy working on Fall Kallah, a big regional youth group event that our temple is hosting at the end of the month. I am the chair of the youth committee, and it turns out that planning an event for 225 teenagers is more work than I thought! I'm really excited about it though, since I went to these events when I was in high school! We are also having a great season in softball. Our team is 7-3, and Chris has made a couple of spectacular plays in center field this season (and we are both hitting much better!). And, of course, I am losing sleep with the Red Sox in the playoffs! (TOTALLY worth it though!)
Tropical Storm Hanna
Well, the good news is that we are dry. The bad news? Tropical Storm Hanna hit our neighborhood hard. There is nothing quite like seeing your street on the news, or hearing that the news of what happened in your neighborhood was broadcast around the country. We are lucky enough to live by a lake. Lake Royal is a man-made lake that was created by a flood control dam. It's really lovely - a couple of miles around - and is a nice part of our neighborhood. Well, yesterday's storm (and over 7 inches of rain) was more than it could handle. The lake flooded, the dam didn't totally hold, and the county rushed in and created emergency spillways which saved the bottom part of our neighborhood. There was a voluntary evacuation of the bottom section (we live at the top of the hill), but the country spokesman said on the news that they were very close to a mandatory evacuation, which may have included us. What an adventure! Chris and I went for a walk today to see what it looks like, and it was incredible. I'm posting some of the pictures below, along with a screenshot of an aerial image of our neighborhood from google maps (with some labels from me) to give you some perspective. It's very very strange to see the fitness trail and path that I like to walk on under several feet of water. But we are dry and thankful to be so.
A view of the new waterline from the path in our neighborhood (the old waterline used to be beyond the trees):
The "big tree" (see the map above to see where it is!):
And see where the old spillway and the tractor is on the map? This is the spillway now - full of water!
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 | | 5 days (4 business days) |
| July, 2008 | | 5 days (3 business days) |
| June, 2008 | | 8 days (6 business days) |
| May, 2008 | | 3 days (3 business days) |
| April, 2008 | | 5 days (3 business days) |
| March, 2008 | | 8 days (5 business days) |
| February, 2008 | | 8 days (6 business days) |
| January, 2008 | | 5 days (3 business days) |
| December, 2007 | | 6 days (4 business days) |
| November, 2007 | | 8 days (6 business days) |
| October, 2007 | | 6 days (3 business days) |
| September, 2007 | | 4 days (4 business days) |
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!