We're waiting to travel!

We received our LOA (letter of approval) from China so that means we can officially adopt our son LuQuan!

It came in record speed. I've been tracking over 150 families and I think we're one of the only ones I've seen receive their LOA this fast when their dossier hadn't already been through review yet. We were completely taken by surprise. We got the call on day 45 that our LOA was on its way and were officially LOA on day 49 when our agency received it from China. Most families wait around 90 days though we could have started expecting it around day 70.

We are stunned, crazed in a really good way and kind of nuts here with the preparations in high gear!

Unfortunately for us, our travel time may get impacted and slightly delayed by several weeks due to a 3 week trade fair in the city of Guangzhou. That city is the one we have to spend a week in after we spend a week in our son's province so we can exit the country. Jamie gets his medical exam, exit visas and we have lots of paperwork to complete there and embassy visits, etc. During the trade fair it's pretty hard to do a lot of that so our agency usually tries to not have any families there during that time. It is smack dab in the middle of the time we'd probably be able to go over and be in that city so unless we get crazy fast travel approval which is pretty unlikely, we'll probably not be allowed to go over until towards the end of October.

The trade fair ends on November 4th so I don't know if we'll be allowed to be there before then in Guangzhou. :(

Oh well. Even then we are probably not going to have to wait but 7 more weeks before we get to see little Jame Jame. If things go crazy fast, then we'll be leaving in 2.5 weeks but I really don't see that happening. However, I didn't see our LOA coming in 49 days either!!

Surprise for us!

Our adoption agency China program director Josh Savley was going to China in August. That we knew. But he was sneaky. :-) He deliberately *didn't* tell us he was planning on visiting our sweet baby James! Sure enough, he did visit him and we received an email from him with 15 pictures attached! He spent 30 minutes with our son and got updated measurements. What an amazing surprise and tremendous blessing! Often families don't get many pictures at all of their children before going to get them. We are simply amazed! I think these pictures were taken one day after the previous 3 we posted here.

Pictures from August 10th update

Our dossier was logged in to China (1600 family) July 21st and we ordered a care package through a service in China to be sent to Jamie shortly thereafter. It included a small stuffed panda bear, a great musical toy bus w/ animals in different shapes that fit in holes and make animal sounds, 6 small picture books, a photo album with pictures of us and our family and a photo pillow that you see in his hands in the photo. We also send some goodies for the nannies and staff. Oh, and we sent 4 disposable cameras for them to take pictures.

About a week after Jamie got the package, we received three updated pictures! He is 14.5 months old here.

10 days after referral we received these pictures!

They say Jamie enjoys being outdoors. He definitely looks like he's enjoying himself. He is outside of the front of the orphanage here. By the way, he is in Chengdu, Sichuan province in a wonderful Half the Sky program at his CWI (Children's Welfare Institute.) In these pictures he is 12.5 months old.

Jamie's referral pictures

We received our son's referral pictures from China on June 2nd, 2009. They had been taken in January when he was 7.5 months old. Here are the three of them. :-)

Well, here we are in blogger land!

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Okay, so you're still here. Well I suppose you'll be wanting to see the star of the show, Jamie!