We woke up this morning to an email with this new picture.  It was taken just a day or so ago at "The Walk the Wall" event held in Heng Yang China, where Ava is living, www.walkthewall.org, explains a little more about the event. The event raises money for China's abandonded children.  ICC, International China Concern, is a Christian organization that brings love, hope and opportunity to China's disabled and abandoned children and they work directly with the children at her SWI, here's their web sight, www.english.chinaconcern.org. It's awesome to see her newest picture.  Still we can't wait to get her so we can love her like she deserves and hopefully put a beautiful smile on that cute face!

We are still waiting on our homestudy approval and our paperwork to be sent back after being authenticated by the China Consulate.  Both should happen any day now!

Here is a video my friend Linda found for us on Youtube about ICC and the work they do with children at the SWIs there.  Ava appears between 30 - 35 seconds into the video, she's sitting between 2 friends while eating something out of a bowl. Her friend Junie appears around 1:10 into the video. The little boy featured in the video is available for adoption too.  I believe the video was posted about a year ago.  I was going to post 1 more video I found on Youtube that promos "Walk on the Wall", but I'm having trouble downloading it.  If you just go to Youtube and search for "ICC International China Concern", you'll find several videos about this great event.
 

Lessons learned from our adoption process, chapter 1

So, I was on the phone with Amy, Awesome mom to Delaney, Riley, Quinn and Junie the other day.  Amy is the ANGEL who posted about Ava (bye the way, Yun's American name will be Ava Lee) also living at the same SWI (in China, orphanages are called Social Welfare Institutes) as her daughter Junie on LPA's (Little People of America) Adoption list serve.  Amy just brought Junie home in August.  That day, I was a bit frantic because the day before I had sent our dossier documents to the China Consulate in Chicago, BUT had forgotten 2 important bits of information, copies of our passports for identification purposes.  I had realized that the night before and so Brian and I had been worrying about what the consulate would do, figuring they would send it back, costing us more time, and to us, that translates into more nights that little Miss Ava would be falling asleep all alone, not knowing she now has a family who loves her.  I had called Amy to see what her experience was with the Consulate.   As we were talking, I got a call waiting notice.  I ignored it, figuring who ever it was, if they wanted to talk with me, they'd leave a message and I'd just call them back.  So, I continued chatting with Amy about our situation (still worrying inside).  Amy suggested overnighting the copies with a note explaining our situation plus, I had already emailed the Consulate too.   We also talked about Amy's family and how Junie was doing... She's doing WoNdErFuLLy bye the way... I even had a chance to talk directly with Miss Junie, however, she wasn't in the chatting mood.  Even though she wouldn't talk to me, that made my day!  I felt as if I was talking to a celebrity, well, I WAS!!!!  After that, Amy and I finished up our chat and went on with our busy days, she had to run to gymnastics and I had to start dinner.  Have I mentioned that I tend to forget things sometimes.  Well, it does happen.  So, yesterday, after returning home from a fabulous Saturday morning breakfast at the Mineshaft with BRIAN, I came home and checked the house phone for messages and we had one waiting.  I couldn't believe it....it was someone from the CHINA CONSULATE!!!!  They were the call waiting I ignored while on the phone with Amy talking about what I should do about about forgetting my passport copies!  So, this very polite sounding man with a chinese accent had left a nice message about what we should do, GO FIGURE!!!  He said to simply fax the copies to their office. So, I hung up the phone and RAN outside to tell Brian, he was outside with "the boys", (the dogs) Jack and Soyer.  He got himself ready to go and headed off to FAX the copies.  Thank you BABE!!! SOOOOOOOOOOO lesson learned.... while worrying about anything, if you're on the phone talking about what you are worried about and you get a call waiting beep......ANSWER IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Small steps that will lead to some BIG steps

Friday, Beth from Special Children (the adoption agency doing our homestudy) here in Wisconsin, emailed us a rough draft of our homestudy as well as WACAP (the adoption agency working with China).  This evening, I got an email from Jo Ann at WACAP .  She received the draft of our home study and said their 'China Program' (the team at  WACAP that works directly with China) will review it and so will the agency director.  That should only take a few days!  Once our homestudy is approved and notarized, we can send off our dossier to China and our application to US Immigration.   Progress! Yay!!

September Update

It's been a busy few weeks for us here.  We got this great picture of Yun and her friends a few weeks back.  We were told, while Yun and her friends were at a going away party for another friend, she and her 2 friends got up and started dancing...to CUTE! While I've been gathering our documents for our dossier, the kids headed back to school.  Shannon has started her Freshman year of high school and Collin is a Junior this year.  On one hand, I can't believe they are in high school already, but at the same time, I'm getting used to it.  We are all anxious to keep things moving with the adoption so we can bring Yun home!  Our home study is just about complete.  We've been sent a rough draft to look over, we finished our adoption education hours and we have all but one of our documents ready for the China Consulate. Yay!  So, we should be able to have our dossier sent off in a few more weeks to China!  Besides paperwork, Brian's brother Bob has continued working on Collin's new bedroom.  He's got almost all the dry wall up and will be moving on to taping and painting soon.  Collin can't wait to move-in, the room is at least twice as big as his current room....