Thursday, September 22, 2011

what a month…!

GREAT news on our China adoption. We JUST BARELY met the deadline for sending our dossier to China. God is good and enabled us cram two months of down time (while we were petitioning for Zoey and not wanting to add another dynamic to our relationship with the adoption agency) into 2 weeks! That was a crazy couple of weeks filled with redoing paperwork, trips to Columbia, phone calls, multiple Fedex runs and making sure everything was perfect for the dossier requirements - because we only had one chance to get it right. I'm glad that part of the process is behind us. Now, we sit back and wait for baby number 3 to be announced - this could take 5 years or more unless we decide to switch over to the special needs program. Thankfully this will (likely) happen after sufficient adjustment time with Zoey and baby #2!

What else is going on in our world…as if we didn't have enough going on to keep us busy, we decided we need to sell our house and move somewhere more practical (keeping in mind that we will be a family of 5 before we know it). So we did the smart thing and entered a flat fee mls listing (hopefully saving us the 3% sellers agent commission). We staged the house, rented a wide angle lens for photography and the MLS listing went live a couple days ago. Amazingly, we had a showing yesterday and another scheduled for today. Praying we get some offers soon!

Zoey turns a year old on Saturday! First birthdays (dols) are a HUGE deal in Korea so we hope she gets an awesome party with her foster parents and/or at the agency headquarters with the other September birthday babies.

File:Dol.jpg

Just wish we could be there to celebrate. Hopefully we'll at least get some photos and an update soon. We love you, Zoey! We're planning a little miniature scaled get-together tomorrow for our own celebration and baby #2 gender reveal…if it decides to cooperate later today.

Monday, September 05, 2011

(back to) digging to China…

Since everything has been settled with Zoey's adoption *cheers*, we are back to working on our dossier for our China baby adoption! (which, by the way, will be +/- 5 years from now)

Talk about throwing a wrench in things…after some new adoption requirement that our agency in SC does not meet, we are under a very tight deadline to get logged in with China. And we have one chance to get everything right, so please pray it all comes together smoothly in the next week. We go to Columbia tomorrow for State certification and then our courier will take care of the DC authentication. Stressful? yes!

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In "Zoey News"…the day of our fundraiser, we met a local businessman who saw one of our posters in Starbucks and came to meet us along with his son. We talked for a while and exchanged adoption stories (he adopted an adorable daughter). He ended by telling us he wanted to feature Zoey's adoption story in Business Black Box (a really fantastic business magazine in the Upstate). A couple weeks ago, I met his editor in chief and told our entire story which took about an hour. It was so great to meet her and learn about her desire to adopt as well - there is this immediate bond anytime I meet people who share my passion for adoption. Then last week, we had a photo shoot at Fisheye Studios – incredibly talented group and so much fun! I can't wait to see how they turned out. Look for our article in the October issue in the "What Matters" section near the back! 

I really hope our story motivates others into expanding their families through adoption! And what an awesome story to share with Zoey one day.