LOA!!!!

The roller coaster of international adoption has been quite a ride the last two days.  We have been waiting to receive the Letter of Acceptance(LOA) from China.  This is the official matching of Claire to our family.  It is the document that we sign saying yes, we will adopt Claire.   We have been waiting on LOA since April 15, 2011 when all of our documents were sent to China.  The average wait time is about 50 days.  That is counted from the date the documents are logged in with China.  Our log in date(LID) was April 29, 2011 so as of yesterday we were at day 61.  There are several other families with our agency that are also waiting on LOA and we were all commiserating about how long it was taking.

Yesterday a post to our list serve stated that all documents had to cross one person's desk in China and that person was on vacation.  We were told this is why everything was moving so slowly.  You can imagine our frustration.  We are so anxious to get Claire home and sometimes this journey seems so arbitrary.  Sometimes it feels like the people who are making the decisions don't care that the slower they are, the longer a child waits for her family.  We had been anticipating that LOA would come this week, but after this list serve post we knew that wasn't happening.  Sara at Madison Adoption Associates(MAA), our agency, was so empathetic yesterday when I sent an email saying I had to vent a little bit.

This morning while I was at court, I saw a post come from Kerry at MAA saying one family had received their LOA.  As I walked back to the office I knew that it wasn't us because if it was, they surely would call us right???  And no one had called.  I sat down at my desk and started up the computer.  There, low and behold, sitting in my inbox was an email from Kerry that it was our LOA that had arrived!!!

I've been giddy all day!!  This means that we are so much closer to making our trip to China to get our daughter.  Now we will fill out paperwork to go to Immigration asking that we be allowed to bring her into the US and documents go to China to ask we be allowed to travel there to get her.

Everyone is so excited.  Luke's words were that he is super excited Claire is going to be his sister and is rightfully taking credit for the whole thing.  Luke is definitely the red thread that binds us all together.

Hold on Claire, we are coming!  We can't wait to see you, hold you and bring you to your new home.  Just a few short months to go!!  Now to press forward to TA!!