What the internet can do

My husband is so good. I thought I was being a sneaky sleuth a few days ago and tried to find everything on the internet about his orphanage. Thinking maybe I might find a picture or something. Well, I did.  I found a picture of his orphanage and sent it to Jeremy with a note "Look what I found!" He was standing in front of the lowest circular window when they filmed his video for referral.

Well, a few hours later, I get an email from him with the subject line, "Have fun!".  This is what I got when I opened the email.

He is in the tiger coat in front.

Front row, fourth from the left

White coat on the right

Front row, Red stripped coat and red pants

It was like Christmas morning.  I started crying.  The girls were excited to see his pictures. My smart husband had translated his orphanage name into Chinese characters and then googled the Chinese words.  Not only did he send these pictures, but he sent several more attached to news articles about the orphanage. I felt so blessed to have these pictures of him to put in his scrapbook. These children have a forgotten past.  Our goal is to see how many pieces of the puzzle we can put together. Thank you sweety! 

The next step

We received the NVC (National Visa Center) approval for his visa. Which means the agency has notified the Consulate in Guangzhou that he has a visa and that the USCIS has approved his immigration into the United States. Next, the Consulate will notify the CCCWA (aka Article 5) that all has been approved and they need to invite us over (Travel Approval).
We have been working on our Travel form.  Currently we are planning on landing in Beijing and doing three days of touring.  Our itinerary consists of the Great Wall which I am super thrilled about, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace, an acrobat show, and riding in a rickshaw through the Hutongs.  Hutongs are neighborhoods where the houses are placed in a circular pattern with a courtyard in the middle.  Here's a picture of a Chinese rickshaw and a Hutong courtyard.

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Our second stop will be in Wuhan where we will pick up our son and then our last stop will be Guangzhou (GZ).  Three weeks total.

Step 10

It's here!  Our I-800 Approval letter from the USCIS came today.  So technically we are on step 10 (applying for his visa). Thankfully the last 5 steps should only take about 7 weeks.

Getting his room ready

I love interior decorating.  Besides harrasing people about mathematics education, I could sit in a home furniture store for hours.  So when the opportunity came to decorate his room, there was no holding me back.  After decorating with pink and purple for the last 8 years, the navy and gray was so much fun.  It is restoration hardware themed, but many of the elements (shelf above the bed and light fixture) were part of my husbands hunny-do list. Love being married to an Engineer.  Now all I need is a little boy to mess it all up :)

McLaren's 5th birthday!

There is an awesome organization called Ladybugsnlove (see their web link on the right) who connects adoptive couples with their waiting children.  Since his birthday was in April, we ordered a cake and a present (a photo album of pictures).  We got several pictures back of him and his little party.

Our journey begins...

It has been almost 10 months since we first announced we were adopting a little boy from China.  Some steps of the process have gone by so slow (76 days of waiting for the Dossier to come back from China) and yet when I think that we will travel in about 8 weeks, I feel like I need roller skates.

Currently, we are waiting for the USCIS (US Immigration Office) to approve us bringing over an adopted child from a foreign country so that when he lands on US soil, he automatically becomes a US citizen. We expect it back any day. I went to Target yesterday and picked up about half of the goodies needed for the trip. Goodies=medicine for anyone who even thinks about getting sick over there, bandaids, kleenex, fiber bars, you name it, the list goes on. I've decided I need to find a Mary Poppins bag.

Here are the photos we were given when we chose him. How could anyone resist?  Such a cutie! The first three were taken Aug of 2013 when he was 3.  The bottom two were taken in Oct of 2014 when he was 4.