Journey to Double Happiness

2008-04-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

March 24, 2008

2008-03-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

We decided to change the spelling of the babies name from Rhea to Raya. This way everyone will know the right way to say her name. Raya means Friend. I liked that also especially since we chose the name Joy for her middle name. Joy is the name of a very special close friend of the family. She is a very special person with an extra special place in our hearts--Joy Grob!

March 10, 2008

2008-03-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last Tues. we received all of her paperwork. Friday we received the translated version.
Today we signed the Letter of Acceptance that tells CCAA (China Officials) that we want to accept her as our daughter. There are 8 families in our group so now we just need to wait for all the families to mail them in to our adoption agency. When they all have been received they are then Fed-Xed to CCAA. After that our agency can ask for our CA (Consolate Appointment) and TA (travel approval) that is when we will finally know when we will be traveling.
We are very excited!

March 3, 2008

2008-03-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

We got the call at about 1:30pm
It is a girl! We will receive pictures today via email.
Woo Hoo!!

March 3, 2008

2008-03-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

Stork alert!!!!

Families are starting to receive calls with information about their babies!!!!

Feb. 17, 2008

2008-02-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

This has been a very busy month. We celebrated Valentines Day and Jaime's 5th birthday!
Along with Jaime's birthday we are thrilled that Jaime's Gotcha Day is also on Feb. 16th.

It has been a long wait for our second little girl. China is busy working after their Chinese New Year vacation. New referrals should be coming out sometime the first week of March. Our guess is that we should be in this next batch.

We are Next for our agency! But not guaranteed to be next on China's list but we can try to make a good or estimated guess. If we are not in the March batch chances are extremely high that we will be in the April batch. Either way our little girl has already been born and is waiting for us to come and bring her home to her forever family.

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." Ancient Chinese Belief

Jan. 4, 2008

2008-01-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

Wow! Can you believe it is the year 2008. Amazing!!
It is now the 2 year anniversary of our LID. That means our paperwork has been in China for 2 years. When we began this journey our wait was 6 months. The GOOD news is that referrals came out again--they notified families with LID's from Dec. 14th-19th who their babies are. ALSO, GOOD news is that we are NEXT in line at our adoption agency for our referral. Okay so now with all this Good news what is the Sad news? Sad news is that we could still be in for a few months wait because there are other families at other adoption agencies who are logged in (have paperwork in) from Dec. 20th to our Jan. 4th. This time China was able to match 5 days in a Month. If they continue to match babies to families in 5 days each month--well lets just say we will be waiting 3-4 more months.

We are excited to say that we will have our daughter home with us sometime in the year 2008.

We would like to wish you and your family a very Happy New Year!

Dec. 6, 2007

2007-12-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

China sent out referrals and we have not gotten a referral yet but we are now a week closer. Yes, they have now finished from Dec. 7th-Dec. 14th. If they continue completing 1 week at a time we have about 2 or 3 months before we will find out where our littlest angel is. So with this season of holidays I don't think it is too big of a Wish that maybe it will be sooner than 3 months. When we adopted Jaime we received the phone call with all her exciting news on New Years Eve. I am making a Christmas wish that we would again receive that call on New Years Eve and start out 2008 toasting to our newest daughter in addition to toasting to all of our beautiful children.

Have a Wonderful Christmas season. Remember CHRIST is the most important part of CHRISTmas!!!

Merry Christmas from our house to your!!

Nov. 8, 2007

2007-11-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

Referrals came out and yes we are still waiting. They have assigned families from Nov. 30
to Dec. 8th. So they have completed more referrals this time then they have for the last few months so we are thankful that they have this many days completed. We are that much closer to being with our littlest daughter. In the meantime we are trying to keep busy with all the holidays that are coming quickly. We are getting ready for Thanksgiving break. We are also very excited to have company this year for Thanksgiving. Grandma and Pop will be coming to Texas for Thanksgiving--hopefully we will have a warm week.

Hope you all have a Wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

We love you Bryan!!!

Oct. 22, 2007

2007-10-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

CCAA has finished referrals for Nov.25 till Nov. 30. They are now starting Dec. finally! I cannot even start to try to figure out how far they will get with the next batch of referrals. Since our
LID is Jan. 4th we know we will not be receiving our referral in the next batch. The next batch should be arriving around the first week in Nov. Just hoping and praying they will have a larger batch of referrals in the next batch. I will let you know when the next referrals come out and how much closer we have become to being with our littlest Joy.

Sept. 3, 2007

2007-09-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it is referral time again. So the families that are logged in between Nov. 21 and 25 will be receiving their information about their babies. Novemeber is supposed to be one of the biggest months for families logged in. But we are still getting closer with each month. Still waiting. Just reminding ourselves that God has a plan for our lives and the little girl that he wants to add to our family. Hope your families are safe and well.

August 3, 2007

2007-08-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well it is referral time again. The families who were logged in Nov. 14-Nov. 21 have received
the information about their little ones. It seems that they are referring about 1 week each month so we still have a pretty good wait left. We are just keeping busy with decorating and
organizing the house. We will be getting ready for school to start soon so that will be keeping us pretty busy. I am just thankful that China is referring a week at a time and not a day at a time like they were doing a short while ago. So, we are looking at it like--WE ARE A WEEK CLOSER TO BEING WITH OUR LITTLE GIRL.

July 12, 2007

2007-07-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe that it is already July. We have been busy traveling to visit family and friends all over the place.

Referrals came out for the families logged in from Nov. 7 - Nov. 14 so we still have a pretty long wait. Our log in date is Jan. 4th so if China continues to put out referrals a week at a time we are looking at a referral for us around 6 months from now. It seems like they are making the referrals sometime the beginning of each month. My biggest concern is that we will be traveling in 2008 and the olympics will be in China in the year 2008.

We will have a better idea again of the wait time again around the first week in Aug.
Until then keep our little girl in China in your prayers. Please pray for God to watch over her and keep her safe, warm and healthy.

May 29, 2007

2007-05-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

We have our updated I171H. So now we are just waiting for China to get to our Log In Date (LID) in their piles. Things have been very slow in the process but we know one day we will find out were our littlest daughter is. When you find out who your child is that is called a Referral.
So we are now waiting on our Referral. New Referrals for the families that are Logged in before
us should be known possibly next week. I will try to get better at posting how far they are in
the process. As of now they have referred up to Nov. 1, 2005. We have a LID of Jan. 4, 2006.
We are thinking and hoping for a Referral around Sept. 2007 sometime.

March 13, 2007

2007-03-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Here is our latest news for the day.
Kristin is the goalie for her soccer team--now she has 4 chips in her teeth. We now have to look for a good dentist to fix her teeth. But the good news is we finished our paperwork and sent it all too USCIS and we went for our fingerprints. So now we are all done with our update. We now need to wait for our updated I171H.

Mar. 7, 2007

2007-03-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

Well we are still working on our paperwork. Our homestudy update is finally complete. Now our next step is to send it in to the Oklahoma office and go to Dallas for more fingerprints to update the rest of our USCIS papers. Hopefully they will speed up with referrals so that we will not need to update all the paperwork again. We did have to update paperwork when we were adopting Jaime also. When we went through the process the first time it took 14 months from the time we were LID. The timeline now is about 18 months. We are thinking we will have our referral around Aug. or Sept. 2007. When we started the process the wait was only 6 months from LID. It is amazing how life can change so quickly.

Nov. 28, 2006

2007-03-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

We just had our fingerprints redone today to update the our homestudy. More to do just for the update.

Nov. 15, 2006

2007-03-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

Well, the wait has been so long for our adoption that our United States permission papers are going to expire soon. So now we need to start redoing some of the paperwork. So we are updating our homestudy.

Oct. 2006

2007-03-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

Okay I am a little worried. Our oldest daughter; Brittany now has her license to drive a car!!! Yeah- Brittany!!

Sept. 2006

2007-03-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

School is going great for the kids! They are all still settling in but doing very well.

Aug. 2006

2007-03-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

This is a very busy month for us. Packing and moving to Texas. Dennis received a transfer to Texas. We are all very nervous and very sad. We will miss all the people who are special to us all in NJ. BUT, we will be back to visit.

Jan. 4, 2006

2007-03-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Another big day--We are now--- LID !!!
What is LID?? Logged In Dossier. The date that China says they received our dossier.
This is another really big milestone. One of the really important dates to follow where your paperwork is in line in the process.

Dec. 16, 2005

2007-03-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

We are now---DTC !!!
What is DTC---it is 3 great letters that a person adopting from China could hear!!
DTC means all the documents you have been getting together are all done correctly and have now been sent to China. (Dossier To China)

Oct 28, 2005

2007-03-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

Received I171-H

June 22, 2005

2007-03-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

Received I600A
This is an important paper from the Department of Homeland Security--USCIS that states we are allowed to bring an orphan into the country.