Hello everyone!

Thanks for visiting our blog. We haven't posted in awhile as there hasn't been much to post. On July 28, 2006 we had our Dossier sent to China, and we received out Log-In Date (The official countdown date) on 8/10/06. That is the good news. We are officially "paper pregnant" and waiting for a referral.

The bad news is not really bad, but it's not great either. The wait to receive a referral has gotten longer over the last 6 months. When we started compiling our Dossier, the wait was between 5 and 8 months, but now it has grown to 13 months. There are rumors that the CCAA (China's Adoption Agency) are going to take steps to curb the number of Dossiers they receive to help shorten the timeframe again, but nothing has been announced officially.

They have been receiving about 2000 dossiers a month over the last year, but they can only process 800 or so every month. You can see the problem. Hopefully (for us) they will hire additional staff (not likely) or restrict the number of Dossiers, and then we will get our girls sooner than the current wait. As it stands now, we would be receiving a referral around September 10, 2006 and traveling 6-8 weeks later. We just hope we will have them before next Christmas.

For family members in NY, we will not be coming out to NY for Christmas in 2007 if we have the girls as we want to make their transition smooth. We are coming out this year, and you are all welcome to come out to see us. We will most likely come out over Spring Break or Summer Vacation in 2008.

On another note, we are planning a Walk-A-Thon to help defray some of the major expenses involved with the adoption. Instead of asking our friends and family for money, we thought we would do this. With a little bit of effort collecting pledges and a little time to complete the 5K walk, we hope to earn enough to pay for our travel to China. Because of the short notice (1-2 weeks before we leave), we get to pay full fare, which right now is around 2K per person. We are going to plan this so people in other states can participate by walking the same day as we do out here. If you are willing to help out with this, we would greatly appreciate it. We will give you the details as the day approaches. We don't plan on doing this until the Spring sometime.

Thank you for all of your encouraging email, and please keep this in your prayers.

God Bless,
Gary and Alisha