Y'all. I'm freaking out.

Please notice that the title of this post most clearly says "I'm" and not "we're." Nick is cool as a cucumber, as always. The guy seriously just does not get stressed out. EVER. Which is good in a lot of cases (nobody is better suited for emergency medicine than he is!), but it drives me CRAZY. I'm a worrier, and although most moms are, I'm probably a little more of a worrier than most. Nick genuinely tries to empathize with my stress (although he has no clue what the word means), and he's been doing a great job of doing that lately, because y'all, I'm freaking out.

I FEEL my kids' pain, like on a physical level. It literally hurts my stomach when one of my babies is scared, puts a knot in my chest when I know Abbie is about to go on stage for a recital, and gives me goosebumps to see them shiver.  I'm hoping other moms experience this too, and I'm not crazy! :) So now that we're close to travel, I'm thinking non-stop about what our Gia is about to go through, and it's painful. :( She's going to be taken from everything and everyone she knows and loves, and then go through so many new and terrifying things, with only funny-looking strangers that don't even speak her language to comfort her! And I can't even wrap my brain around the actual physical pain that we are no doubt going to cause her as we're fumbling through her bandage changes. I'm good at maintaining a calm façade in front of my kids, and I'll do the same for Gia...I just hope that from day one, she can somehow feel how much we love her, even when we mess up and cause her pain.

Some days I even feel guilty for adopting her. Crazy, right? She seems so happy where she is. And even on the days when I'm most optimistic, I still wish that there was just another way to bring her into our family (maybe we can convince one of her Little Flower nannies to come home with us!) Nick tells me how kids are resilient, and she'll be fine, but I just hate to think that we're adding to the trauma she's already been through. :(

So that's the bulk of my worrying. Don't even get me started on the stress of riding in airplanes for what will amount to DAYS, or being prepared for Gia with the correct medical supplies and doctors appointments, or what her care will mean for our family, or the MOVE TO NEW YORK after we get home from China! Ahhh! 

China gave us the thumbs up!

It's been a LONG time since our last post, but there wasn't a whole lot to report. We spent our summer waiting for China to translate and review our dossier, and then approve us to adopt Gia. The whole process took 60 days, which is a little shorter than most, and our Letter of Approval (or I've seen some call it the Letter of Acceptance, I guess we'll find out when we see it?) is now on it's way to us! LOA for short from now on. ;)

Looking back, this summer now seems so short (and it was, the big kids only had 10 weeks off from school!), but it was fun! Abbie did paddleboarding camp through the Y, Ryan did a nature exploration camp through Oatland Island, all three kids did Vacation Bible School, we took a week-long trip to North Carolina to see Dad and Mary, and Nick completed paramedic school! The big kids have already been back to school for a couple weeks now, and Eli and I start back at the preschool next week!

So what's next for the Hoffmanns? A LOT. We still have several steps before bringing Gia home, but they'll go by fast (more on that later!), and we're REALLY hoping to bring her home at the end of October, but that would be if everything goes perfectly. Why are we hoping for the end of October? Obviously, the sooner the better, but also, the Army is moving us to Fort Drum, New York this fall! Nick's report date is November 10, they already moved it back once from a September report date, and we're hoping they would move it back again if we're not home with Gia by then...but it would be nice to not have to stress about all that! Worst case scenario: Nick would have to move up to New York ahead of the rest of the family, which is survivable! ;)

As far as the adoption process, the next step is to get our LOA, check the yes box (obviously!), and then send it to US Citizenship and Immigration with our I800 application. We already sent an I800A application to them in the spring, when they approved us to adopt from a Hague convention country, NOW we need approval to adopt our specific sweetheart, and bring her home as a US citizen! After that is a lot of crazy steps leading up to our travel that even makes my head spin (and I'm one of those weirdos that likes filling out forms!), so more about that later.

To summarize, in the next three months, we'll be taking a two-week trip to China, bringing a new baby into our family, and packing up our home and moving over 1,000 miles away to upstate New York....just not sure on specific dates for ANY of that! Hang on, Hoffmanns! And hang on Gia, we're coming soon!!! :)

DTC!

After months and months of paperwork, our dossier is finally on its way to China! All of our sealed documents, along with several family photos, are now bound in a pretty book with a summary translated to Chinese! I wish I could see what it looks like! :) We are about halfway through the process and it now looks like we will (hopefully!) be traveling to get Gia in October. This is a pretty big landmark, because this is now out of our hands and out of our agency's hands for the time being, and it's now time for China to do some homework! Next we will get our log-in date (LID), the date when the Chinese government gets our dossier, which will hopefully be next week. After that is a very long wait to get our Letter of Approval (LOA). It takes at least 30 days for our dossier to get translated to Chinese, and at least another 30 days for them to review our match and approve it. We already have our preliminary approval to adopt Gia, based on a one-page form we submitted with our Letter of Intent, so now that they have ALL our information, they will give us our final LOA, hopefully by the end of the summer! Our last summer as a family of five will hopefully fly by! :) I know I'm not supposed to wish my life away, but Gia has been waiting a very long time already!

May Updates

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!!

April Happenings! :)

April has certainly been our most eventful month so far! First, and most exciting, we got pre-approval from China to adopt our precious Gia!! :) So as long as we finish the adoption process, she's ours! If everything continues to stay on track, we'll be bringing her home this fall! If you're not already, join our group on Facebook for lots of pictures of our girl, but I'll do a picture post soon on here too! We have a lot of unanswered questions about what her care will entail, but she has already brought us so much joy!

Also this month, we held our big yard sale, which was a huge success! It was a LOT of work, but seeing how much support we have from the local community was so heart-warming and encouraging, that the work was so worthwhile, far beyond the boost to our adoption fund! We even had several customers (who we had never met before) insist on giving us donations beyond what they were spending on stuff! :)

Finally, we sent off our I800a application to USCIS, and this approval is the last document we need for our dossier! Today I sent off 12 documents to our agency so that they can begin to review them, so hopefully by the time we get our I800a approval they can toss it in the pile and mail everything off to China right away! :) So we are finally at the end of all the fees and postage associated with sending 13 documents all over the country to get them certified and authenticated to China's standards!

Here is our savings and fundraising progress so far, it's a little nerve-wracking now that we have a deadline of this fall, but we still have high hopes of getting a grant or two! We heard back from one grant organization, who informed us that they currently have no funds for awarding grants, but they will post our profile on their website for us, more details to come on that!

Adoption expenses left to pay, carried over from last month: $23,885
Paid in April: $450 (dossier preparation fees)
Left to pay: $23,435
April fundraising:
Yard sale: $1,058.50
Just Love Coffee: $49
Necklace donations: $500
Donation from the Moore family: $100 (thank you!!!)
Stella & Dot earnings: $182.60
Savings account for Gia: $11,426.42
We have $10,118.48 to go! SO close to breaking that $10,000 mark! :)

For fundraisers this month, we still have our coffee fundraiser going (and we'll continue to keep that one open until we're fully funded), the website is www.justlovecoffee.com/hoffmann
Our May fundraiser will be a Partylite Candle online show, thanks to Holly Rafferty!! :) She will be donating her commission, 25% of sales, to our adoption fund! Just visit her website, www.partylite.biz/holraff, and then search for me, Leslie Hoffmann, for your hostess! I LOVE smelly stuff in my home, so I will be posting lots of suggestions in the Facebook group! ;) I've ordered from Holly before, and Partylite products are amazing! In addition to candles and beautiful home décor items, they have melts that I use in my Scentsy warmer, and I have officially been converted!
Thank you so much for all your support! This journey has become even more meaningful now that we've been matched to Gia, and we are so very grateful for our generous friends and family! <3

Meet Hoffmann Baby #4!

We got our pre-approval today!! This means that she's OURS!! Meet our beautiful daughter, Gia!

March Savings and Fundraising!

We didn't have any fundraisers in March, but Nick and I are scrimping and saving so we're still making progress! And I have TEN grant applications ready to go as soon as we get our copy of our home study, which was finalized on the 31st!! :) The only fee we paid this month was $125 that goes to the Chinese government along with the Letter of Intent for our girl! We should be getting Pre-Approval (PA) from China SOON, which means she's ours pending completion of the adoption process! We'll have another fundraiser launching as soon as we get PA, selling coffee! If you're local to Savannah, we're also still collecting items for our yard sale, which will be on May 3rd!

Adoption expenses left to pay, carried over from last month: $24,010
Paid in March: $125 (Waiting Child Program service fee)
Left to pay: $23,885

March fundraising:
Donation from Atkinson family: $100 (thank you SO, SO much!)
Necklace donations: $40
Stella & Dot earnings: $153.43
Savings account for Mei Mei: $11,222.67

So we only have $12,368.90 to go!!! And we have about 6 months to get there! :)