Just when things were looking good...

Well the plan was to finally be DTC this week. I guess plans are meant to be broken because it's not happening! Our agency called yesterday to say we had a few issues. The first one being that Rusty's passport was not signed. No biggie he could sign it and we could email a copy to them. Of course it's pretty funny that this is the same passport that Rusty went to China on and no one ever noticed it was not signed! Oh well easy fix. The second problem is that since we have started the process they now require the Homestudy agency to notarize the letters of reference and our agency had not sent them. So HOPEFULLY they will forward those onto our adoption agency ASAP! And the final problem which of course had never happened before was that the Consulate had authenticated a copy of my birth certificate and not the original! We have no idea where the original is and can only guess that it is at the Consulate and our courier refuses to ask them is they have it! So now we are starting over with the Birth certificate! Because my mother is so WONDERFUL she got a new birth certificate issued and got it certified by the Secretary of State withing 3 hours of me getting the call from our agency! Thanks Mom!!! Today she overnighted it all to the courier and she will have it by tomorrow. Once it is authenticated correctly we hope, it will be forwarded to my adoption agency. The agency has let me know that once they have everything it will be sent to China! So if everything goes the way it should we should be DTC the end of next week! Please let that happen!

We have a party animal on our hands!

I was so happy to get an email from my new friend Kim who is also adopting from Zhoukou and from the same agency and we are on the same timeline!!! We are both hoping to travel together to get our cuties. This morning she got an email with tons of pictures of her little girl Lucy at her birthday party. And lucky for me one of the little party guests just happened to be Warren! I now have 25 more pictures of our little guy!

From the looks of it he is not a fan of the birthday candle!

Love these pictures of party girl Lucy feeding Warren cake!

He looks so sad in this picture but I think it was after a melt down where he was trying to eat someone else's cake! Once he got cake for himself he was ok!

I am so thankful for these pictures! Thank you Kim! After seeing these pictures, especially the ones of him throwing a fit(which I did not post) I think they may be right when they described him as being naughty! Boy are we gonna have our hands full with this one!

Dossier complete!!!

I am so relieved to say that my Dossier is now finished! As a matter of fact it is on the way to Colorado right now and the agency should have it by 10:30 tomorrow! I am so relieved to be done. Now we will wait for our agency to send our Dossier to China. (I have high hopes that will be Friday!) Of course I had to take pictures of all the paperwork that I have been working on for the last few months!

And of course I had to take a picture of Jaden holding all the paperwork in the Fed-ex envelope before it left our hands!

Oh and one last picture of Jaden after she ate the Kit Kat she got for being so good while mommy made a million copies of the dossier!

And now I am going to sit back and relax for a few days! I think I deserve it!

Oh happy day!

So yesterday ranked pretty high up there on my happy day poll. It started because I had found the picture of Warren when he was only 6 months. And it ended when I checked my email last night and found a major unexpected surprise! And what was that Surprise you may ask? Well it was this...

Yep! An updated picture of Warren!!! He looks so grown up! He looks 5 instead of 22 months!!! The shock of it was that we had never asked for an update. I mean we asked for one 3 months ago and we got it but this one was not expected!!! I try not to bother our agency often so I decided I would wait till after LID to ask for another update. Well guess I didn't need to ask!!!

An early picture of Warren!

Ever since we have started this adoption I have been looking for a picture of the Zhoukou orphanage! I knew that it was new but no one had ever seen a picture of it. I have looked and looked on all the Chinese sites and never found it. Last night I decided to try a new Chinese search engine. It didn't take long until I finally saw it! I was shocked with how nice it was because I was expecting the worst. And then something else caught my eye! Most of the pictures were outside the orphanage with the older children and I could see the playground in the back where Warren's new pictures were taken. The last picture made me catch my breath! There was one picture inside the orphanage and inside the baby room. The caption read "A very cute baby"! And staring back at me was our little man!

He always had the same serious look on his face. I can't wait to get him home and put a smile on his face! The pictures were taken in January 2011 so he was 6 months old. I have never seen the babies bundled up like this in a sitting position. He looks very warm! So happy to have another picture of him!(I had a few friends look at it before I posted and everyone said it is him no doubt!)

Off to the Consulate!!!

After a week with a trip to the notary, a lost homestudy in the mail by UPS which was later found, Having to call and remind the county clerk that they have to mail the homestudy back to me, two trips to the county clerk because they forgot to stamp two forms and one trip downtown to the Secretary of State, I finally mailed all of our papers off to the Chinese Consulate today!!! Well they are actually on there way to the courier who will take it to the Consulate! It feels great to have this all done. It does not feel so great to have my papers on a Fed-Ex truck with out me being there though! I will breath a sigh of relief when they are back in my hand! Next step will be on to our agency! I have to say that Jaden was there with me EVERY step of the way! And in every office that we went in and had to sit and wait I was told that she was so well behaved so in honor of that today she got to go and pick out her hearts desire! Another mermaid!

And she is now sound asleep holding tightly to her new Mermaid! I have to send out a huge thank you to my friend Kelley who went with me downtown because I am terrified of driving downtown. As a matter of fact when I had to drive to downtown Nashville to the Secretary of State's office for Jaden's adoption I ran into the side of the building and dented our van. I was so scared that would happen again! I am happy to say we made the trip with no dents this time!!!