TA!!!!!!!

We received our visa appointment and travel dates today! We have to be at the US Consulate on December 15th at 9:00 a.m. We are leaving on December 2nd and will be back December 17th. We will be in Beijing for 2-3 days and then to Ciarra's Province, Shandong and will end up in Guangzhou. We were hoping to leave a little sooner but are excited to finally have definite travel plans. We ask for your prayers over the next month as we patiently wait a little longer to go pick her up and that she stays healthy and well cared for.

Updated info on Ciarra Grace

We received updated information today on Ciarra Grace. She is 21 lbs, 28 1/2 inches tall and has 6 teeth. She is active and busy and has a ready smile. She likes to sing in her tune. She gets along well with other children. She can walk well and knows to cooperate when the caretakers put on her clothes. She can imitate when other people are talking. We are so excited to have more recent information and hope to have travel dates in the next week.

Referral and LOA!

We started the process to adopt a little girl from China in April, 2006 and on August 1, 2008 we completed our paperwork to consider a waiting child as a referral. On 8/15/2008 we received the call from our social worker that we had been matched with a 13 month girl from Shandong Province. We locked the file on China Center of Adoption Affair's (CCAA) portal and submitted our Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt. Her Chinese name is Chen QianXun and at about 8 months old she weighed 16.1 pounds and was 25 inches tall. She is currently in foster care and we are hoping that our agency will be able to get updated measurements and photos soon. We received our official Letter of Acceptance (LOA) on 9/25/2008 from the CCAA and are now able to post her photo. We are now waiting for travel approval (TA) from the CCAA so we can finalize travel arrangements. We are so excited and cannot wait to bring her home. We have created this blog to post updates while in China. We hope you will follow our journey.