We are APPROVED!!!! A TRAVEL DATE!!!!

Our final decree has been approved - which means En Yang is legally ours!!!! The adoption has been finalized!!!! We are scheduled to be in Taiwan on September 2nd and our immigration appointment is September 3rd. We are planning to go a couple of days early and stay a couple of days after! Now I need to do some final paperwork, send a check and then find some flights!!!!! Yikes! I am sooooo excited! We all are!!! The bedrooms are all completed and our suitcases have been packed for weeks!!!! Jake's coming with me so he will be missing his first week of 3rd grade. I have to go fill out the forms to enroll En Yang in school - he will be starting 1st grade! And, I still have shopping to do - clothes for him, some more toys and games, some DVDs that will help with his English! Wow! I just can't wait!!!!

Good News!!!!!

Last night, we had our webcam conversation with En Yang! Wow! It was wonderful! He was a little shy at first but once he warmed up we introduced our whole family (even the pets) and he was really excited to see them all. He asked great questions about each of our sons and the sports they play, he had his scrapbook with all of our current photos in it (I send him 2-3 additional scrapbook pages each month for them to help him build his family album). He asked what Halloween was all about and if Richie throws the baseball very fast when he pitches! It was so much fun, it was almost 2 hours! My boys were falling asleep on the couch after a while but it was so priceless. We ended the conversation telling him how much we love him and gave him hugs and kisses and he said I was the best Mommy in the world!!! I will be smiling for months on that comment alone!!!!!

They said they will set up another one of these in about a month! I am beyond excited to hear that he is excited to be coming "home" (even though we don't know when that will be yet)! It was awesome to hear him calling me mama and Heath, Papa and to have him call the boys his older brothers. He even quizzed me on my Chinese (which is very weak but he had fun trying to hear me pronounce some of the words). Happily, he understood most of it!!! The rest was easily translated by the worker in the orphanage (same woman we met who traveled with him to Maryland last summer).

June 4th there is a hearing in Taiwan and hopefully, Final approval will be a few weeks later. Then we have to wait 30 days (or more) for his visa and then we can bring our son home!

Good News - Approved!!!!

YEAH!!!!! We are now APPROVED to adopt En Yang. We just need to send our contracts to FFC and Taiwan and then we go to the last step which will be the final adoption. Hopefully, we will be traveling to Taiwan in May or June to bring him home!

We also found out yesterday (that's when our agency found out too) that he was not returned to his foster mother at the end of the summer because he was too bonded to her and already did well when he came to America for the 5 weeks (he cried for the first three weeks). So when he went back to Taiwan, they told him that he was going to be adopted by one of the families he met in Maryland and that he was going to live at the orphanage until we can pick him up. The orphanage is beautiful and he rooms with another boy in the same situation, but I feel so bad that he continued to grieve for his "mother" when he returned and I wasn't there to help him through it. When we do pick him up, they feel like he will go more easily with us. At this point, he know we are adopting him and knows that the care packages we send every month are from us. So he has lots of toys and books and tons of photographs! This wait is going to be torture for me!!!!

Homestudy has arrived!!!

Finally! Our INTERNATIONAL Homestudy is now completed and is now at Families for Children! I finally feel like we are progressing! Now it will be sent to Taiwan for approval. I don't know what the next timeline is or even what the next step is but having the homestudy to the agency is huge. Merry Christmas to all!!!

Here was a photo of En Yang from Kid Save on the day they either left Taiwan or the day they left the US. He seems to really like ice cream. We are missing him a lot. It's taking a long, long time. I think I am thinking of him more now because it's close to the holidays and I wish we could spend the holidays with him here. Then I just think that next year will just be all the more wonderful!!!

No news yet!

Hi! We are still waiting for our child abuse clearance to come through, which clearly we already have being that we are newly certified foster parents, but the agency has to get it in order to give us the final homestudy. I am going to then have to pray for a miracle that we get it in to immigration and back to our agency, Families for Children, by the end of the month.



We are getting ready to send En Yang his November package, gifts from us. Jake has drawn and colored a picture for him, we are sending pictures from fall (pumpkin picking and Halloween) I assume they don't do Halloween in Taiwan and since they are close to the equator, there is no changing of the leaves or pumpkin picking, as far as I know. So, I am planning to "explain" some of our American, family traditions. In addition, we are sending a bunch of Diego toys, books, stickers, etc... I don't know what he thought of last months gifts yet. I am going to upload another photo (or more, if I can)! Enjoy!