They found our $

Our agency found our money and documents. Said they were sorry. They sent them to China on 3/22. That was a 12 day delay in us getting to China. But at least they found them.

We are now waiting to hear from our agency that the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China has processed our documents (Article 5) and they are on their way to the Chinese government (CCAA) for them to process our documents and issue our Travel Approval. All this will happen probably in the next month. OMG this waiting is so slow!

Oh the drama.......

Here's one for the Bailey drama records!
Our agency lost our immigration paperwork and $5,160 worth of checks!
I sent this payment and paperwork to them on 3/10/10. I sent it Express Mail through USPS and requested that they sign for it. Thank heaven I did! They said they got some of the paperwork I sent them by an email sent to us on 3/11/10 (the travel portion part) but they emailed us last night asking us when we were going to submit our immigration paperwork (for Abbey's visa) and payment. The other stuff I sent them on 3/10! Of course, I open the email after business hours. so I have to wait until Monday to deal with them. Needless to say, I was not very happy. It took quite awhile before I calmed down. Still woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it. I just CANNOT BELIEVE THEY LOST IT!!!!!!!

This will most likely delay our travel, depending on how quick we can resolve this problem. I'm not very happy with them right now!

More OK's needed.....

If you look at the sidebar of our blog (to the right) I have created a timeline of milestones on our adoption. For this adoption we have to jump through many more hoops to get all the approvals needed for the Chinese government to issue our travel approval. It's the US government that's the hold up in going. We just got our NVC (National Visa Center) letter last week telling us that our I-800A immigration approval was sent to Guangzhou, China to the American Consulate for our next approval. But the American Consulate have yet to receive our 230 document from our agency in the USA. They need this document in order to issue our Article 5 that is then picked up by our agency representative in China and taken to the Chinese government (the CCAA) for them to issue our Travel approval. Have I put you to sleep yet? Could they have made this any more complicated? I think not. Will keep you posted on the status of all this hoop jumping.

FINALLY.... An American name for our daughter!

It seems as though it has taken forever to come up with an American name for our daughter. Almost every name Dave liked, I didn't, and every name I liked, he didn't. We tossed around more names than I can even believe we tossed around. Nothing seemed to stick, other than "Wennie". For those of you who like the name "Wennie", sorry. The name isn't Wennie. Some people have informed us that the name we chose is pretty, but there are tons of little girls with this name. She will be one of many with the same name in her class at school. Well, so be it. Having a last name that starts with a letter that happens to be close to the beginning of the alphabet she will most likely be #1 of this name. That works. Am I just dragging this out too long? OK, a drumroll please............... scroll down please........

Abigail Wen Bailey

(Abbey)

Waiting for our I-800A preapproval....

There are many changes with the way immigration handles international adoption now. We are waiting for our I-800A preapproval to come. Even though we haven't adopted "Wennie", we had to fill out an I-800A form with immigration to classify her as an immediate relative before we go to China. When we got Meigan we didn't fill that form out until we were in China. Then there's another approval we need after that one, called an Article 5. Don't really know what that one is, but we will find out after the I-800A preapproval comes. We are pretty sure we will be traveling to China sometime between April and June. They way time flies, we will be going before we know it!

We got LOA!!!!!!!!

On Monday evening emails starting coming in. The first one told us that we would be receiving a Fed-x package on Tuesday from our agency's accounting dept. Just the tracking information for the package. Then we got an email congratulating us on our LOA but it was addressed to someone else but sent to us. We emailed our agency back and questioned what was going on. This of course was after they closed for the day. So we waited for a response and figured the story of what was going on would be evident in the Fed-x package. So we get the Fed-x package and it's our Letter of Approval to adopt "Wennie"!



Late Tuesday night (about 10:00 pm)an email comes telling us that the info they sent us from the accounting dept was intended for us. Later (like 11:00 pm) an email finally comes congratulating us and telling us that we would be getting our LOA by Fed-x on Tuesday before 4:30 pm. How weird was all of that?



Here's the cool part to the story. We got our LOA to adopt "Wennie" on the same day that we received our referral for Meigan exactly three years later! What were the chances of that?

Dang Qing Wen pics

We finally received our Pre-Approval to adopt Wennie (nickname for now - still grapling with her American name). Here are a few pics of her. We are on track to travel this spring (we hope).