Pre-Approval Received!

For those who had adopted from China before you know paper intensive it can be. You also know about how it is such a waiting time. The process varies depending on if you are adopting a healthy child or special needs child. It also depends if you are seeking pre-approval for a specific child prior to submitting your dossier or having your dossier logged in by the CCAA. So, what is a dossier? It is a collection of documents regarding your family and it includes things such as your homestudy which requires 4 visits with your social worker and numerous other things such as medical forms, criminal history background checks, employment verifications, financial statement, certified birth certificates, certified marriage certificates, etc. All documents have to be notarized and authenticated. Just a little education for those who have never adopted internationally. Once we received Abigail's file, we then submitted our Letter of Intent (LOI). This is a letter to the CCAA confirming that we want to adopt her and promising to always take care of her, etc. We then wait for pre-approval from China which is confirmation that we have permission to adopt her. With the new electronic system in place, Ky from AAI thought that we would have the pre-approval in several weeks. Even though we were trusting in the Lord and knew that he had brought us this far, John and I really longed for that piece of paper saying that she was 100% ours. All of our information that the CCAA required for our pre-approval was submitted on March 12th. So we waited for Pre-Approval....... In the meanwhile we had mailed Abigail an Easter packet and as usual, Karen e-mailed us pictures, some of which you see. She is getting chunky! She just turned 2 in October so I sent her a 2T dress. She has it on in the pictures and as you can see , it is almost too small for her! We sent her the doll in the carrier and a book to read. I told Karen to not worry about keeping up with everything to send with us when we traveled to China. We have sent her 3 -4 packages of gifts so far and it will be a lot to try to bring home with us. The call from Ky came on April 17th. We had our pre-approval from China. She is officially ours! John and I were elated. The CCAA gave us a deadline of July 17, 2008 to submit our dossier. Again, a little nervous as our homestudy requires fingerprinting and I had already been fingerprinted twice and they were having trouble reading my fingerprints. Never a dull moment in our adoption journey to Abigail. New a dull moment at home either. Shane is a very happy and energetic little boy. He is also a very strong willed little boy. He has learned the art of temper tantrums. Most of them are over clothes or shoes. When he sets his mind that he wants to wear a particular outfit or pair shoes, it is very difficult to change it for him.