May was definitely a hurry-up-and-wait month...so frustrating! As far as our progress on the paperwork trail, we are DONE with our dossier on our end! We have compiled everything China needs to tell them about ourselves so they can determine if we will be fit parents for Gia (and our agency is great, so we know that there is no reason for it to get denied once it's in China!) We were waiting for our approval from USCIS to approve us to adopt, so I sent everything EXCEPT that approval to our agency back on May 2nd, in hopes that they would be able to get all that reviewed ahead of time. Then we got our USCIS approval on May 6th, and had to send that document through the sealing process that all the other documents had already been through (notarization, certification by the County Clerk, certification by the Secretary of State, and authentication by the Chinese Consulate in Houston). We rushed and overnighted it through all that and our agency received it last Thursday, on the 22nd! .....and now we wait..... Because we live in Georgia, we first send everything to our agency's branch in Atlanta. It's there that all of our documents are critically reviewed, and because they weren't able to get around to reviewing our other documents (that had been there since May 2nd), they FINALLY got started on our critical review last Thursday and said it would take 9-11 business days to get it done. So everything is STILL sitting in Atlanta. Blah.
So what's next? Hopefully next week it will get mailed to our agency's headquarters in Denver, and there it will be translated to Chinese, bound in a fancy book, and then overnighted to China. They only mail dossiers to China on Fridays, so fingers crossed they can get all that done next week (IF it ever makes it off that desk in Atlanta!!) Then we have the longest and most unpredictable wait in the entire adoption process, the wait for our Letter of Approval (LOA) from the Chinese government. It can take anywhere from 30-100+ days, and there's really no way to tell where in that range we will be! Prayers please for a quick LOA!
We haven't gotten any new pictures of Gia in a few weeks. We are very, VERY spoiled with having her at Little Flower, because most adoptive parents with children in Chinese orphanages only get a couple pictures total...but it's still hard. We are very attached to our little Chinese dumpling already. <3
Fundraising is going great! We received very generous donations from friends here in Savannah, the Benton family and the Pederson family! Thank you so very much! I have also made a good amount babysitting, and Stella & Dot has been a huge blessing as well.
Adoption expenses left to pay, carried over from last month: $23,435
Paid in May: $2,450 (second agency fee)
$790 (fee to China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption - or CCCWA)
Left to pay: $20,195
May fundraising:
Necklace donations: $60
Donation from the Benton family: $100
Donation from the Pederson family: $100
Stella & Dot earnings: $266.54
Savings account for Gia: $10,790.46
We have only $8,878 to go!! :) Still hoping to hear some good news from grants soon! I applied to ten grants, we've heard from two organizations so far that told us they couldn't help us at this time, but that's eight more possibilities to go!
Next month I will be focusing on using my Stella & Dot business for fundraising! If I can sell $2,308 in one month, my commission gets bumped from 25% to 30%, which means I'll make close to $700! I've hit this goal once before, so I know it's possible, it just takes a good amount of shows! So if you are willing to host a show for me, in-home or online, please let me know soon (you could also be making 25% in hostess credits!) Also, Nick has a manly fundraiser in the works too, more details to come. ;) And guess what folks, I think by the end of June we will be DONE fundraising! We have been totally OVERWHELMED by the amount of support we've gotten for little Gia, thank you so much!!
