Another Acronym...LOI! :)

Today we finally heard from the specialist who we asked to review our girl's file, and she was VERY positive about her condition! :) She said she looks happy, healthy, and any complications that may come up are very treatable!  So we took that as the green light to send our paperwork to China to make her ours!  We wrote a letter (called the Letter of Intent or LOI) that stated that we understand her special need, described the resources and support we have to help us take care of her, told them about her siblings, school, and church, all to convince China that we will love her and take care of her!  We also had to fill out a family information form (since China doesn't yet know anything about us), and pay a $125 fee to the Chinese government, which is fine because I've been antsy to check off a fee or two anyway. ;) We should hear back in a week or so, and at that point we'll have pre-approval which means she's OURS. <3 So be prepared, the next post will be FULL of pictures, exclamation points, and emoticons. :) :) :D

The Month of Waiting...and Waiting...and Waiting...

March has been torturous! No fundraisers this month, but I stayed plenty busy with grant applications. It ate up most of my spring break, but it was worth it to have them finished! However, we need our FINAL home study report, approved by our agency, before we can mail in most of these applications. Our last home study visit was on February 19th, so I had hoped the report would be done by the end of February, and now I'm worried it won't be done by the end of March. So part of me was feeling like we didn't make much progress this month...until...
We found a darling little girl! She's seriously the cutest kid I've ever seen (sorry kids!) ;) Her grin stole both our hearts, but Nick was a little more cautious about her special need, since it's more complicated than anything we had considered taking on before. Another agency has had her file for a few months, but they were unable to find a family for her, so they transferred her file to our agency when we told them we were interested in adopting her. :) We have now sent her file to a physician in Colorado who specializes in her special need, and we're waiting to get her opinion before we file the paperwork to make her "officially" ours. I was ready to snatch her up a week ago, but Nick needs more information to move forward, and I'm so very grateful to have his level-headedness to balance out my emotional messiness. :) In fact, he may kill me for writing this blog post, but I want to be upfront about the whole process that we've been going through. A few of our closest friends know that we reviewed the file of a little girl at the end of January, but it was missing a lot of information, and when we got an update on her, we realized her special need was way more than our family could take on, and they had probably failed to update her file for so long for that reason. The little girl whose file we have now is a very different situation (and a very different special need). She's in a group foster home in Beijing that has provided us with all medical information they have, a couple updates on how she's doing day-to-day, and an album with 1,200 pictures (yes, there are supposed to be two zeros there!). So we have all the information we could ask for, we're just waiting on a professional who knows what she's looking at to give us an idea of what kind of treatment she'll need as far as daily care as well as long-term treatment. Please send up some prayers for us for the clarity to help us make the best decision for this little girl and our family too.