My New Cruiser

What a great husband I have! On my birthday he parked this beautiful new bike in the garage to surprise me. I've wanted a cruiser to keep on the island and this is just perfect! My dad bought me an old fashioned bell years ago and I've kept it this long, in it's box, until I got this kind of bike. I dug it out and put it on immediately. Now I'm on the hunt for a basket and bike seat for our little one. Oh, the places we'll go!!!

October Referrals

Chinese Adoption Referrals are delivered to agencies across the States, Canada, Australia, & Europe near the end of every month. Every month we patiently wait to see how far the CCAA has gotten in matching families with babies. Since we've started the process they have only been matching around 2 weeks worth of Log in Dates, or fewer. This has slowed down the process tremendously. So, each month we wait to see if the CCAA will match more than 2 weeks, hoping it will be a sign for a speed-up.

We've been waiting all week long for the news and still NOTHING!!! Hopefully early next week I'll be able to post the good news of referrals arriving and perhaps a hint of a speed-up??? REMINDER: These referrals are only for last August. We are last November...so we're still a ways behind.

Our first weekend at the Lakehouse

We had our first weekend up at the lakehouse. We were supposed to leave Friday night but came to find out the ferry wasn't running that day because of high winds. The winds took all the water out (probably to the MI shores) therefore the water was too low for the ferry to dock at either port. We were happy to learn this only happens about 6 times per year. It ended up being just fine because we got up early Sat. morning and had a beautiful ride over to the island.

We unpacked, painted the bathroom, replaced the light fixture, sink, faucet, & toilet seat! George did a lot of tree trimming. I restocked the firewood.

George replaced the outside light fixture, it looks so much better!

Our Adoption Timeline

April 2005 - We decided to adopt. Five months after losing Joy, Madeline, & Anne, we began to have some hope again.

May 2005 - We read many books on international adoption and in one moment we decided on adopting from China. It was that easy. We knew our daughter was there.

June 2005 - We chose our adoption agency, submitted the application with pictures of ourselves and our house. Then we went to Jamaica with our own little secret!

July 2005 - While it was fun keeping our secret, we decided to share the news with the whole family. Then we went to Maine for a week where we I bought a journal so I could begin writing to her and George picked out some handknit lobster mittens for her.

August & September 2005- The paperchase was on! We began to gather every single bit of information about us. Criminal background checks, financial status, proof of insurance... the list goes on and on. We each had to write our own autobiography, submit references, and declare that we will fully love this child and never abuse or abandon her. Then we met with a social worker who asked us about the way we were raised, all about our parents and siblings, asked how we would raise this child, about religion, discipline, etc. Then she came to our house to see how we lived and to make sure it was a clean, safe, and loving environment for a child. Then we were fingerprinted. When those cleared, we had all of the above documents notarized. Then we had them notarized on the state level, and then they were sent off to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for the final authorization.

October 2005 - When all of that cleared, we sent this now complete and fully authorized dossier with passport photos, candid photos of us and our house to our agency headquarters in St. Louis. Once the agency approved that everything was correct, they sent it to their office in Bejing where the entire dossier was translated into Mandarin.

November 2005 - Once the dossier was translated, it was submitted to the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) where we officially became "Logged In." This means we were officially given our place in line (November 2nd). Yeah! We did it!

Now we've spent the past year in the hardest stage of it all....the wait! The wait was initially supposed to be only 6 months but it kept growing longer and longer...for many reasons. Currently, the CCAA has matched babies with families up until last August 9th. We are logged in last Nov. 2nd so we aren't entirely too far off. The problem is there's no way of knowing how long it will take the CCAA to get through those 2 1/2 months until they get to us.
The good news is that our dossier has been reviewed by the CCAA in Department 1 and is just sitting and waiting to go into the Matching Room, Department 2. That's when we'll finally be matched to our daughter. Please watch for updates!

A Weekend at Moone Athy

We just had the most wonderful weekend at Moone Athy, George's family farm in Missouri. We were there to celebrate Annela's 60th birthday. The weather was perfect, the food delicious, the tents freezing, the Chinese piano concert hilarious, the nature walk by Aunt Sarah fun and interesting, the owl watercolors beautiful, the tshirts very cool, the badminton match too sunny, and the skits too funny. What a great time, hopefully we can do it again next year!

In the meantime

We've been looking for a house on the lake for a while and when we went camping in Door County this summer we went back to Washington Island and just knew our house was there. It's the island before Rock Island where George proposed to me 7 years ago. We loved it then and have loved it ever since. We are so happy to have this house and can't wait to have visitors! It needs some work which is perfect to keep us busy this fall and winter while we wait these last months for our referral.



This is the back of the house and this will be our view once we clear out some major trees. The above photo shows how thick the forest is on the shore....our house is there somewhere!

Welcome

Welcome to the Judy Family blog.
Its purpose is to share our journey to our daughter all the way in China with family and friends.
We hope you will enjoy!