Three Months Almost

We almost made it to the end of June. CCAA did 13 days this time, so next month they will pick up with June 29, and start praying now that they will go all the way to the end of July. That will keep us at 12 months and the wait will not extend out another month.

I have joined an online group for those who turned their paperwork in to China in March. It is the March LID'ers. I have met so many nice people that will be traveling at the same time as we will travel. They have a great idea to make luggage tags to put on what ever we are carrying so we can spot each other easily when we travel. It would have our logo on it. I am also in a group to swap quilt squares for the 100 Good Wishes Quilt. I am going to try to do another blog for the quilt and put the link on this one so watch for that.

Speaking of quilts, I was with my grandmother this week as my cousin Debra, on the right, was there visiting before being stationed in Germany. My G-mom showed us a Friendship Quilt that was made when she was a little girl. The neighbors and family would each do a quilt block with their family name or a individual name in the middle of the block. Interesting who close that custom is the Chinese custom.

Catch Up Time: How China Adoption Works

Here goes...I will try to explain where we are in the process and how it works.

Roughly how it works:
Referrals (where the adoptive parent recieves a photo and some information about the child they have been matched with by China Center of Adoption Affairs, CCAA) usually go out at the end of each month. At that time the adoptive parent can accept or not this referral. Which of course we will accept with great joy.

Where we are in the process:
At the end of this month referrals will begin with the people who logged their paperwork into CCAA on June 16, 2005 (in the world of adoption lingo this would be "people with a LID, log in date, of June 16, 2005"). A one year wait from LID to referral. Last month, May, CCAA sent referrals out to LID's of June 7 through June 15, 2005, nine log in dates. :) Which is better than last month, April, only seven LID's were sent out then. Which leads to...

Why is it so hard to say when we will get our baby?
As you can see now we do not know from month to month how many referrals will go out at a time. Back in the day (about a year ago) CCAA would send out referrals for a full month at a time and you could pretty much count on the wait, from logging in your paperwork in China (LID) to traveling to China, to be about six months. As you probably noted above each month that referrals only cover part of a month and it is taking a few months to get through one month of referrals it pushes the time table into a longer and longer wait. So we are currently at a twelve month wait from LID to referral. Our LID, which is our place in line in the process, is March 29, 2006, so as it stands now we look to get our referral about that time next year. This is all subject to change of course, and things will happen when God intends for them to happen. When it should happen. We are truely getting a lesson on patience.

This is all new to me!

Wow, I may not be able to do this. This is my first post and am not sure what I am doing. I want to have a place where family and friends can log onto to check the progress of our adoption. It is going to be a very long wait so I will have plenty of time to get better at this whole blogging thing. Our log in date is March 29, 2006. The wait time from log in date (LID) is now at twelve months. So.... since I have so much time, I will sign off of this for now and try again tomorrow to add more details to this blog. I did get a picture in! :)