It came! It came! It came! A simple little piece of paper titled "Letter Seeking Confirmation from Adopter" (Some things just don't translate so well).
It's hard to believe how life-changing one little piece of paper can be. But I guess, most of our life-changing moments are marked with a piece of paper -- a marriage license, a birth certificate, a certificate of death...
Anyway, the one we've been waiting for came today. And I have to read it to you. :-) It says,
Based on your application and in accordance with the Adoption Law of the People's Republic of China, the China Center of Adoption Affairs matched a child with you. Herein, we sent the information about the child to you. You are kindly requested to make your decision, sign in the proper place below, and deliver this letter as soon as possible to the adoption organization which submitted your application file, HAND IN HAND INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION.
Obviously I checked the box that says We accept the adoptee mentioned above and delivered it "as soon as possible". :-) (Nah, I thought I'd sit on it for a week or two.) Actually, I signed it in the office and handed it right back over.
So...our agency is trying to get our appointment at the US Consulate as soon as possible after Chinese New Year. Everything closes for the holiday, but she's hoping we'll leave the end of February.
It's funny how these things work out. Some friends we knew 4 years ago celebrated with us when we came home with Emily. We lost touch with them for a couple of years, but one day they called and asked if they could talk to us about adoption. We met with them, showed them all our pictures, and told them everything we knew about adoption from China. They ended up working with our agency and have been waiting for over a year now on the non-special needs list for a daughter.
When they learned of the new special needs program Hand in Hand has with the Nanjing orphanage they switch over and were matched with a beautiful 2 year old girl. In the meantime, we decided to adopt Cooper through the same special needs program. All this time we've been talking about how cool it would be if we travelled together, but knew it wouldn't happen because they were so far ahead of us.
They received their "Seeking Confirmation" letter on Thursday and we thought we were still a month or more from getting ours. I couldn't believe it when our agency called today. Doug and I were in a group of 5 families who were expected to get our letters about the end of February at the earliest. We were the ONLY one of those 5 who got it today. So I get to travel with our friends. How cool is that?
And just for the heck of it...cute kid pictures.
1 comment:
Congrats!! You have to be so excited. What a wonderful addition to the Withrow family. The girls look like good cookie bakers. They will be flipping pancakes in no time. That was Brian's favorite.
Talk to you soon, Cathy
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