Another round of paperwork

Well, we spent the majority of the evening going through another round of paperwork. A placement agreement, the DS-230, a Foreign Travel release document.... yada yada yada.

And let's not forget the last invoice from Holt. (gulp!)

So tomorrow, we'll get a bunch of these things notarized and then it's back to waiting. At this point, I'm thinking we'll hear something within a month. Of course, I totally made this timeline up, but why not? One month sounds reasonable to me.

ALSO - We got a recent medical report showing Melia's oxygen saturation is at 100%. She has a potential heart condition so we were eager to see that she is doing so well. Yea!

Another update

Well, things are rolling now! We received yet another email regarding Melia.

Here are some of the highlights:

I made the orphanage send her to a group home on July 6 this year because I thought she was matched with a family and it would be better to let her experience some family life. She is in a very nice group family. Actually I met all group homes, and all the parents are friendly and very nice to the children and they do really treat the babies as their own.

Please let the family know Xin Ai is doing very well at this group home, she has improved a lot. (I do really think the family is lucky to have her, she is very lovely and is one of my favorite babies. I believe she will bring great joy to them!)

How awesome is that? She is "lovely" and "will bring great joy". Sounds good to me. We couldn't be more excited.

We also watched a webinar regarding the details of our traveling. (Have I mentioned how awesome Holt International is and how organized everything has been with our adoption?)

Compared to our "Wild West" adventure in Russia, it seems that this trip will be a piece of cake. One experienced adoptive family said that their China travels were like "a senior citizen tour" compared to what they experienced in Russia. I'm starting to think the same. They even have optional day tours that we can participate in during our down time. (Down time occurs over the weekends when the government offices are closed).

A fresh start

Hello! And welcome back friends! Yes, it me, Ryan! After a very long gap, I have officially decided to jump back on the Blogging adventure wagon. My long time readers know that this used to be my blog, with Katie occasionally adding her tidbits. Then one day, she started her own blog. Things we're going well, until I abandoned this blog and now Katie is trying to run BOTH blogs! It's not fair, really.

But it's all my fault, I jumped over to Facebook and lost my desire to blog. But today, I decided that I can handle both. Every kid deserves a blog, right?

This is for you, Melia. Daddy loves you, so I give you the story you deserve.

So without further ado, here's today's update:

We found out that Melia was moved to a "group home" this past week. Kinda like foster care. Now that she has a family, it is apparently common practice in China to treat the children favorably and get them into a foster family. We're, of course, thrilled for her and also hoping that things are going well. The report made it sound like she is getting along great. As a matter of fact, so far all the reports make it sound like she gets along with just about everything and everybody. We couldn't be happier for her.

Just a reminder to you all, as far as where we are: We're patiently waiting for a travel date at this point...... so we'll wait.

..... still waiting......

New Pictures!!

Last night we came home to find three new pictures and two videos of our sweet Melia!!!! We were so excited to see and hear about her, but it also made our hearts' ache even more to bring her home. We are hopeful that she will be here before the end of the year, but we are confident that God will continue to watch over His and our beautiful beloved daughter in China until we get to her.

Isn't she a beauty?