As far as international adoptions go, ours has moved at a breakneck pace so far. Nonetheless, it feels like it is crawling along to us at times. We just started this process at the end of September, and we are hopeful that we will travel in May or early June. What follows is a "play by play" account of our journey so far.

Sometime in 1999 - Cortney started talking about adoption. We hadn't even finished having biological children yet, but she was already starting to press me to get started.

2000-2006 - Cortney continued asking, "Are we ready yet?" I continued to worry about money, when was the right time, and everything else that keeps people from committing to children.

September 23rd, 2006 - After years of discussing the idea, countless hours of studying adoption on the Internet by Cortney, and thousands of delays and excuses by Sean, we attended an informational meeting about China adoption. Due to her extensive studying, Cortney already knew the answers to all of her questions (but she asked them to make sure I knew more anyway). After the meeting, we went to lunch at Tomato Street, and we decided the time was right to get started. Basically, it went something like this:

Sean: "Well, I think we should get started."

Cortney: .............(Shocked expression).........(Choking on her food)..........."Stop kidding me"........."You are kidding, aren't you".......(Fell from her chair)

(This may not be exactly the sequence of events, but it is close!)

Since I wanted to get our finances in order first (still worrying about money), I set a tentative start time for the adoption of next spring or summer---you can already see where this is going, can't you! After further discussion, Cortney convinced me that we could be ready to start by January.

October 16th, 2006 - We started the adoption. Well, it was almost January! After studying the China adoption timelines, we realized that with an average time of 18-22 months from start to finish, we would have plenty of time to raise funds and prepare for the adoption of our daughter. We knew this would be a long process, and we hoped to be traveling to China sometime around the summer of 2008.

October 30th, 2006 - The first step in the adoption was to start our home study. We decided to go ahead and begin this step as it would probably take about 3 months, according to our adoption materials. About the same time, Cortney was browsing the "Waiting Child" list for our agency, Great Wall China Adoption. Waiting children are kids who have special needs. Adoption of these children works differently than the standard China adoption process. The normal China adoption process is to put together a dossier, send it to China, and wait about 15 months for a child referral, then travel to bring home the child. For waiting children the process is MUCH faster (again, you can see where this is going!) Parents can apply for approval to adopt specific waiting children. If approved, they travel to bring home their child as soon as all of the paperwork is processed and they receive travel approval from the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA.) This process typically takes about 8-9 months total. She found a child we were interested in, and she put in a request for permission to adopt her.

November 8th, 2006 - We have our first meeting with a social worker to begin our home study. That night, we paid our first big fee to the adoption agency so that we could begin the long paperwork process to create our dossier.

Friday, November 10, 2006 - While Cortney was at work (she took a job to begin raising money for the adoption), I got a call from Beth at Great Wall. The call went something like this:

Beth - "Hi, this is Beth at Great Wall. I'm calling to let you know that we have a referral of a beautiful little girl for you!"

Sean - .............(In my head I am thinking--who, what, how?)...."Really?"......."You do?"........"Wow!"

Beth explained that she was 14 months old, had a cleft lip and palate, and had lived in the orphanage in Wenzhou since she was about 10 days old. She gave me her name and told me that we would have two weeks to decide if we wanted to accept the referral, and she asked me if I had any questions.

I had a million questions, but I didn't ask any of them because I was still in shock from her news, so I just responded, "Cortney and I have a lot to talk about this weekend!"

Later that day, we received pictures of Meilyn (taken in April, when she was only 7 months old), a growth report that described her personality and overall health, and lab reports to allow us to verify her health status. She had a unilateral cleft lip III, which is a fairly serious cleft, but only on one side. She had a beautiful face and appeared to be a very alert and healthy 7 month old.

Sunday, November 12th, 2006 - After spending the entire weekend talking about it, studying her information, and reeling from this unexpected and life-changing news, we both decided that this was meant to be. We knew that Meilyn was meant to be part of our family. It is hard to explain how we came to this decision so quickly, but neither of us had any doubt that she was ours. All that was left was to figure out how to get through the process and get to her as soon as possible.

So much for a leisurely 18 months; we were now spending all of our free time doing paperwork and studying how to expedite every form and speed up every government agency. For the next week, we frantically worked on dossier documents and scoured the Internet for information about our daughter's city and orphanage. We were lucky to run across a Yahoo group consisting of parents who have adopted from her orphanage. This group was a wealth of information, and would soon prove to provide much more than general information.

Friday, November 17th - One of the members of the Wenzhou group posted pictures that her sister had taken at the orphanage on October 30th. There were about 10 children from this orphanage of about 300 children in the pictures. As we looked at the pictures, we realized that our Meilyn was in the middle of nearly ALL OF THEM!! We couldn't believe it at first, but it was quite clearly her. One picture was a close-up of just her, and we learned from these pictures that a surgery had been done to repair her lip! Her lip looked so good that it was difficult to tell that the cleft had ever existed.

We also learned from the pictures that she was no longer the baby in a stroller from her previous pictures. She was now a full-fledged toddler who was mobile and could even stand with her hand on a chair. In one week our new daughter had grown from an infant into a toddler, had plastic surgery, healed from surgery, and grown her hair. That's a lot to swallow for parents who had only known her for a week!

For the rest of November, we continued to hurry to finish our home study and to prepare documents for the next step of the process. Abby took pictures of Meilyn to school and shared them with her class; she was so excited to tell them all about her new little sister, and she handled questions about adoption, China, and her cleft lip like a pro. Cortney found a network of contacts who would prove to be a wealth of information and support through the adoption. I built an organization system to manage the paper chase, created documents, and planned a detailed budget and timeline to get us to our goal of traveling to China in May.

December 1 - Our home study was completed and we sent our first stack of documents to the Department of Homeland Security. It was fascinating to us that Homeland Security was interested in our adoption, but we learned that they now regulate immigration. Their approval is required in order to adopt an orphan internationally. We knew that this step would take 4-6 weeks, and there is little one can do to speed up the wheels of a large government agency.

December 18 - We went in for FBI fingerprinting. We were fascinated by the activity in a US immigration office. Until that morning, we didn't even know it was there!

Through Christmas break, Cortney worked as many hours as she could while I spent my time at home with the kids. We both checked the mail every couple of hours, just in case our approval came back. Before the paperwork arrived, Cortney had contacted everyone she could think of to figure out how to speed it up, including contacting the office of our senator.

	January 7, 2007 - A mother of a child adopted at the Wenzhou orphanage 10 years ago returned with her daughter to the orphanage for a visit. She took with her a picture book to give to Meilyn of our family. She also took new pictures of Meilyn and a couple of short video clips. She was unable to send them to us while she was there due to the Taiwan earthquake severing internet lines. We received the pictures and found our daughter to be growing and changing so quickly! This just further underscored our mission to get to her as soon as possible.

January 8, 2007 - Our I-171H (the coveted document from Homeland Security giving us approval to adopt an orphan internationally) arrived in the mail! We had anticipated this document for six weeks, and we were expecting it to be something grand and official. Instead, it was one sheet of paper that essentially said, "The bearer is entitled to 1 (one) child." We were less than impressed, but we were extremely happy to have it. The same day, I went in to start immunizations to prepare for the variety of new and exotic diseases we might come into contact with in China. We immediately put together the next packet of documents for the adoption, and sent them FedEx to Stephanie and Eric Smith, who had agreed to rush them to the Washington Secretary of State's office to have them "certified." (This is where they look at the signatures of the 13 notaries who have already notarized our documents and say, "Yep, that's a notary." Quite the bargain at $15 a document.)

January 9th - Stephanie and Eric phone us to tell us that despite misdirections and complications, "the mission was accomplished." They placed our documents back in the hands of Federal Express for a quick trip back to us. THANK YOU STEPHANIE AND ERIC!!!

And that is where we stand at this point. Tomorrow (January 11th), our documents should return from Olympia. We will immediately FedEx them to the China Consulate in San Francisco for "authentication." (This is where they look at the 13 "certifications" from the Secretary of State and say, "Yep, that's a Secretary of State." Quite the bargain at $20 a document.)

When the papers return to us, which should take about 10 days, we will compile all of the documents that comprise our dossier and send them to Texas. From there, they will go to China to be submitted to the CCAA. (I wish I could collect the airline miles for all of the traveling our paperwork will do!) Once the documents are logged in at the CCAA, the average wait for travel approval is about 90 days. With any luck, this will allow us to travel in May or early June at the latest. In the meantime, we will continue to save our money and prepare for what will probably be the most memorable trip of our lives to bring home our daughter.

We'll keep you updated as we move through the next steps.

January 26th - We are DTC ( Dossier to China)! All of our paperwork has now been sent to the CCAA in Beijing. This means that soon we will have a logged in date with China and then our countdown to getting Meilyn will start! The CCAA will translate it, review it, and hopefully approve it. It is taking about 90 days average from the log in date (LID) to get Travel Approval. Travel Approval is when the Chinese government officially approves the adoption and says please come and get your child! We'll post again when we find out our official LID.

February 2 - We received new pictures of Meilyn today! The parents of one of Meilyn's playmates at the orphanage in Wenzhou received pictures of their daughter, and they noticed that Meilyn was in a couple of them. They are in Pennsylvania and will be picking up their daughter in March. They sent us these pictures of Meilyn and of the room where they sleep. As you can see from the picture of the cribs, they are not lonely at night!

March 7th - We have our Log In Date (LID). It was January 30th! That means we have been logged in for 36 days already! We learned today that our paperwork is currently in translation to Chinese. It will then be reviewed, and hopefullly quickly approved! On average it is taking about 90 days to get travel approval. We are already a third of the way there! In the meantime, we already have most of our bags packed (thanks to Cortney

March 10th - We are now 39 days into our wait for TA (travel approval, for those who do not spend their time talking adoption online!) We are very busy, which makes the wait easier. In addition to celebrating our birthdays this week, we had a couple of notable pieces of news about the adoption. First, we were notified that we received a $1000 grant from the Ibsen Adoption Network to assist with our costs! This was a great surprise. We also received these two new pictures of Meilyn from a parent of another child adopted from the Wenzhou SWI.

By now, we figure the nurses at Wenzhou are starting to wonder about how Pin'ai has become such a celebrity. Every few weeks another American visitor shows up asking to take pictures of her and give her gifts!

April 19th, 2007 - It has been over a month since our last entry. We have been waiting very patiently for 79 days (just don't look at Cortney's fingernails), but today we have big news. We got an e-mail today from our agency letting us know that tomorrow we will have our "Letter Seeking Confirmation." In China adoption code, this basically means that the CCAA is finished reviewing our file, and they are ready to issue our Travel Approval. Judging from the typical timeline, we should be traveling to China in 4-6 weeks to bring Meilyn home!! Now things get very busy as we send for Visas and prepare for our journey. We'll likely be posting more very soon.

May 2nd - Our Travel Approval arrived today!!! We are nearly ready to travel. All we have left to do is get our Visas, buy our plane tickets, pack our bags, arrange care for the kids, prepare the house, make arrangements at work, buy gifts for the orphanage workers, prepare and gather our documents, find $5000 in crisp new $100 bills, learn Chinese, set up insurance for Meilyn, finish fundraising, and handle several hundred other small items that must be done before we go. We are really excited, and somewhat busy.

Our travel dates are set--we will leave to China on May 29th and return on June 13th. It looks like we will meet Meilyn on Monday, June 4th. We are so close, and we can't wait to get on our way to Meilyn!

May 17th - We have new pictures of Meilyn! She is growing so quickly--she isn't a baby anymore. It is amazing to see her growing, and it makes us even more anxious to bring her home!

May 20th - We have our itinerary!  Here is the schedule for our trip:

5/29 -	9:30 a.m. - Leave Spokane
5/30 -	9:30 p.m. - Arrive in Beijing.  We will be staying at the Poly Plaza Hotel.
5/31 -	We will have this day to ourselves to relax, recover from jet lag, and do a bit of exploring in Beijing.
6/1 -	Visit the Summer Palace (an emperor's palace from the Qing Dynasty), Lake Kunming, the Panda House at the Beijing Zoo, and the Temple of Heaven.
6/2 -	Sightseeing Tour to the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Tian An Men Square
6/3 -	Flight to Hangzhou.  We will be staying at the Hangzhou Hotel.
6/4 -	9:30 a.m. - Pick up Meilyn at the Civil Affairs Bureau!
6/5 -	Shopping for Meilyn
6/6 -	Sightseeing tour to Xihu (a region of West Lake in Hangzhou)
6/7 -	Sightseeing tour to a local museum
6/8 -	We'll complete INS forms, get Meilyn's passport, and fly to Guangzhou.  We'll be staying at the White Swan Hotel.
6/9 -	Photos and medical examinations for Meilyn
6/10 -	Sightseeing tour to Chen Family's temple.
6/11 -	Our guide will be completing documents at the American Consulate.
6/12 -	American Consulate Interview, and we get Meilyn's visa in the afternoon.
6/13 -	8:20 a.m. - Leave Guangzhou 11:55 a.m. - Arrive home in Spokane

There it is.  We are counting down the days, and we are ready to start posting on our "China Journey" page!