We Continue To Make Progress! But Slowly!



One of the historic Pagoda's in Zoe's birth city of Kaiyuan

So…since my last post we have steadily made progress in our adoption process.  We submitted and gained our provisional approval of our I800 form (petition to classify orphan as an immediate relative). We sent the I800 provisional approval to the National Visa Center who has since processed the paperwork so our adoption agency will send the paperwork to China…so you might be asking…what is our next steps…

 1. Our adoption agencies Guangzhou staff will review our documents to ensure every detail follows Consulate guidelines. If necessary, they will ask for or make revisions based on changes in Consulate procedures we may not yet be aware of. These steps may take time but are critically important because if they submit forms that do not conform to guidelines the Consulate may not inform us for several weeks that changes are needed. After this careful review, your documents will be submitted to the Consulate.

2. About three weeks after the Consulate accepts the forms they should issue a document called an “Article 5” for your case. The Article 5 will be forwarded to the CCAA and notifies them that the Consulate has accepted our paperwork and invites them to issue your travel approval.

3. After receiving the Article 5, the CCAA usually sends travel approval approximately three weeks later via DHL, an international express mail service like Fed Ex, directly to Holt in Eugene Oregon.

4. When our travel approval arrives Holt International will let us know by email, then double check the paperwork they have to provide to the Consulate to apply for our visa appointment.

5. After consulting our China staff Holt International will apply for our visa appointment.

6. The Consulate usually confirms appointment requests within a few days. When they do, we will identify your travel dates. Most families arrive in China about four to six weeks after travel approvals arrive in our office.

So, we are anticipating our trip to China to meet and take Zoe home is  approximately  9-12 weeks away…

Other news…this Friday Nathaniel  is competing with his middle school jazz band at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He had to be at school at 6:00 pm this morning so my guess is he will be dragging at the end of the day. We hope they do well… While baseball begins to heat up Nathaniel has his last school wrestling meet this next Tuesday. If he wins this match we think he will be seeded 3^rd or 4^th across Omaha among varsity wrestlers which is awesome. He has had an exceptional year in the 105 pound category.  His record is currently 7-2. But most of all he has improved so much. It is a crazy sport and we never thought he would show any interest in wrestling...boy were we wrong. Now, on to the most important thing… next Wednesday is our deadline to decide what high school Nathaniel will be going to. We have narrowed our options to Gross or Bellevue West.  We hope to be able to make a decision this weekend.  We absolutely have to notify Gross by Wednesday of next week….so stay tuned!  Thanks for taking some time today to read our post!

Pictures of Zoe...enjoy the slideshow!

It's been quiet from an adoption front. Sonja continues to have fun working on Zoe's bedroom. Every so often she will go upstairs and spend a few hours piddling around...getting things just right. We did get a call form Holt International...but they just wanted to make sure we had sent out I-800 forms in and they did confirm they had all the paperwork they need to this point. We asked dhow long it would take for the I-800 to be reviewed and approved and Holt felt it would take approximately 2-3 weeks.  So, on Monday, it will have been two weeks.  We did receive a confirmation letter from the USCIS (Homeland Security) confirming they received our forms.  So hopefully no more than another week or so and we should hear back...hopefully we completed all the forms correctly.


Nathaniel had a good week.  He wrestles for his middle school and for a club team.  He wrestled against all the other varsity middle school boys at his weight and he won.  So, for this week anyways...he is the top wrestler at 105 pounds among the three middle schools.  We are so proud of him.  This weekend he wrestled at a tournament at Gross High school and he took home "Gold".  So he had a great week. His cousin Spencer, a senior in high school just made it to state in wrestling...we hope he does well... Nathaniel loves to watch his cousin play sports...Spencer is quite an athlete.  Nathaniel is getting spring fever and is ready to go outside and play some baseball. Needless to say I can't wait either.  It is nice to be outside particularly after so many weeks of snow and ice...heck 50 degrees feels like a heatwave...anyhow...that's it for now...Thanks for dropping by to read our blog!

Go Away! You are not putting this on the web are you? I have no make-up on!



You can leave now...alright...I am leaving!


About two weeks ago Sonja came home with several gallons of paint (brown and pink). Pink? Really Pink?..you can tell I am completely out of my element now that we will have a little girl joining the family. I have to give Sonja credit, the last two days she has barricaded herself in Zoe's room...taped it up and started painting.  I may not see her for days...now that she is focused. For the most part, I have let her go and do her thing...but I had to come up and take a few pictures. I was not welcome at all!  Imagine that! She was less worried about how the room looked and more worried that she did not have any make-up on. Whose going to notice...LOL!  She also told me she was experimenting...so after snapping about 16 shots I quietly snuck back down stairs to stay out of her way. More pictures to come once Sonja completes her masterpiece...

From an adoption process perspective...it's been a quiet week. We are all up to date on the paperwork at this time. We are waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to provide us feedback on our I-800 forms.  The I-800 form was very complex and requesting a lot of information so I am hoping we completed it correctly.  I am assuming all of the forms that we sent to Holt International are in order as we have not heard back otherwise.

Artist at work on Zoe's room...

                                                

Finally, here is another video clip of Zoe...enjoy...Thanks for spending some time with us...on our journey to ZOE!

.