A positive sign

Today Tom and I were working in our shop and our mail person pulled up. We were wondering what needed to be signed for? It was our packet of information from our adoption agency - all the forms that have to be filled out and sent with our LOA when we get it. For those of you who aren't immersed in a Hauge convention international adoption, once a family gets final approval of adoption of a child (LOA) then there is much paperwork to be done to be given permission to travel. The ironic part is that this extra boat load of paperwork is provided by our government, not China. But it has to be completed, sent to China, it comes back here, it goes back and forth several times and finally we, the family are given approval for travel (TA). Today the packet came with a letter saying, now that you are getting close to your LOA, all this paperwork needs to be completed in order to be ready (so not a day is wasted!). Just opening up this pack of forms made my heart beat faster. In the papers was Jennifer's referral, her official notification that she will be our daughter. So I will fill out more forms, I don't mind, it makes me feel like I'm just one step closer to bringing our little girl home.

I have a friend who encouraged me to think 'outside the box' with raising funds for travel so I am in the process of designing some little step stools to sell - something a child could use to brush his or her teeth, perhaps. I would love to come up with some really cute adoption related plaques, i'm working on these too. Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll share them and get opinions from my friends as to whether they think they might make a good fundraising tool, we may need airplane tickets before too long! I spent one day this week applying for adoption grants, praying maybe one organization will think our story is worth helping us bring Jennifer home :)

Lots of LOA's were issued this week - we could possibly get our LOA by the end of April - that would be just amazing. We need to travel, get back home and get settled in before time for us to become grandparents! Jennifer will become an aunt before her first Christmas with us!