LSC signed and delievered!

Our Letter Seeking Confirmation from Adopters (LSC) arrived at our Provincial adoption agency on Friday afternoon - just before closing. So we had to wait patiently until this morning (because it's labor day weekend) for Cory to stop by and pick up the letter. We have now signed this letter and sent it back to the Chinese government. 

Basically the Letter Seeking Confirmation from Adopters is the formal offer from China to the adoptive parents to confirm their intentions to adopt the child. The Chinese government has reviewed our dossier (home study, letters of employment, health reports, criminal record checks, clearance from our Provincial Ministry of Families, copies of our birth certificates, passports, marriage license ect.) and has determined we have meet their criteria to adopt Mary Dang YunDan. 

We are now on the final step, waiting for our Notice of Coming to Travel to China for Adoption (NoC), where China formally issues an invitation for us to travel to China to adopt Mary. You will also see this referred to as our Travel Approval (or TA). Our agency expects this to arrive in the next month or so, where we will then make travel arrangement to go to China. At this point we it looks like we will be traveling in the beginning of November, we can't wait to meet Mary! Stay tuned!

Care Package Received!

A few weeks ago we decided to send a care package to Mary in China. We used the same service located in China that we did for Sylvie's care package. The business is called Lady Bug's N'Love from Above. It is jointly run by two women, Angela who lives in China, and Kelly, an adoptive mom in the United States. 

In our first care package to Mary we selected a blanket, a kitty stuffy, candy & nuts for the nannies and children to share, and two disposable cameras for the nannies to take pictures of Mary's daily life at Datong City. Also included was 600 word letter translated for us by Angela to the SWI Director of Datong City. We used this first letter to formally introduce ourselves to the Director and to ask for help in preparing Mary for her transition to our family. We also added a short note to Mary and asked that it be read to her as well.

Here is a photo Angela sent to us after she completed her shopping on our behalf...

 We also included a cake in our care package, and the cake was ordered from a local bakery and delivered earlier this week. Today we received these pictures from the Director at Mary's SWI!

 It looks like Mary was surprised! Isn't she adorable?

 And it seems she liked the cake!

We have a few more pictures, but since they have other children from the SWI in them I'm not comfortable posting them online. They are nice to have for Mary to look at to remember her friends from Datong City SWI as she grows. 

We are still waiting for our "Letter Seeking Confirmation" (LSC). From my research it appears 50 days is the average length of time to receive this paperwork. We are on Day 40, so perhaps in the next week or two we will receive it and then begin waiting on our last step for our "Notice of Coming" (also known as travel approval) to be issued. We'll keep you posted! 

Meet...Mary Dang Yundan

We realized we haven't properly introduced our newest daughter-to-be Mary Dang Yundan! 

The first pictures we have of Mary

12 months old - December 2009

Mary is currently 20 months old, and will turn 2 in early December (she shares the same birthday as her new Mama!). She is currently living in Datong City Social Welfare Insitute, in Shanxi province.

Shanxi Province, China

Datong City, SWI

We were matched off of the July Waiting Child shared list. Mary has a bilateral cleft lip, which also affects her gum line but her palate is not affected. Once we return to Canada and get settled in, her lip will be repaired as well as her gum line.

20 months old - August 15, 2010

Our agency told us to expect to travel 4-6 months after receiving her referral, as different paperwork is completed between the Chinese and BC provincial government.

This would mean that we could possibly travel in late November, December or January. Once we receive our Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC), we will have a more accurate picture of when we will travel. We can hardly wait!   

New Pictures of Mary!

We have been very fortunate to receive these new, updated pictures of Mary. I joined an online yahoo group for families who have adopted children from Mary's Social Welfare Institute in Shanxi, China. One of the mother's from that group put me in touch with an American couple who live in China and volunteer regularly at Mary's orphanage.

I "friended" this couple on Face book and asked if they could possibly take a couple of photos of Mary when they were next visiting. Yesterday they emailed us back and sent us these new photo's.

Sorry about the sideways picture, Blogger simply won't let me rotate it at all!

We can't believe how much bigger Mary has grown since the last pictures we have of her (taken 8 months earlier at one year of age)! I have been staring into her eyes all morning, they are so beautiful!

Wordless Wednesday - Fruit Smoothies

More please Mama!

Back from a wonderful weekend!

 We just got back this afternoon from another wonderful weekend camping. This has been our fifth camping trip this summer (sorry, more pictures to come in later posts) and we have been enjoying our family time immensely.We traveled south down to Osoyoos this weekend with our friends and their two daughters.

 We walked, swam, visited some wineries, drank some wine and played. It was a beautiful summer weekend, with just the right amount of rain  Saturday afternoon to cool us all down. We have been so busy these last couple of months we haven't been able to get together for a play date. But it didn't take to long for Sylvie to warm up to Sugar and Spice again.

Gathering up the courage to follow her two friends in...

Mama and Daddy's favorite part of camping...nap time. Usually we are so tuckered out we fit the hay for a little snooze as well.

Our little miss enjoying the sweet life...

These past couple of weeks Cory and I have talked about how our family is going to change when we have two kids to think of, instead of just one. This weekend reaffirmed how great Cory will be as a Dad of two. He is patient (much more than me) and is always willing to give everyone their turns, as evidenced many times this weekend. 

"My turn Daddy, My Turn"

"Me too, Me too!"

 "Me three, Me three!"

 And his good humor continued throughout the weekend...

It makes me think that maybe three might be the magic number for our family! I think poor Cory might have a coronary when he reads this! I guess we'll find out if he continues to read the blog or not!

Where we are now, and the next steps

Some have asked what the process to adopt Mary will look like and how long it will take to travel to China to meet her. So we thought we would outline the upcoming steps and terminology for everyone. 

Overall, we have been advised by our agency that once we accepted our referral of Mary that it would take 4-6 months until travel to China. This is the amount of time it takes for the different paperwork to be completed between the two countries. Since we accepted her referral at the end of July, 4-6 months takes us to the end of either November, December or January. 

We are hoping to travel in November, as Mary turns two in the beginning of December and it would be wonderful to celebrate with her. With Sylvie, we were able to travel at four months, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the paperwork and file reviews go quickly.

The following is an explanation of the next steps that we are going through to complete the adoption process.

1) LOI (Letter of Intent): We submitted our LOI to our agency who translated and submitted it to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). This document informs the Chinese government of our "intent to adopt" Mary and outlines our care and nurturing plan for her.

2) PA (Pre Approval): The Chinese government (CCAA) has assessed and "approved" our Letter of Intent. 

3) LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation from the Adopter): Now that we have received PA, the Chinese government (CCAA) will now take a closer look at our entire dossier we forwarded earlier in June. This includes our home study, letters of employment, criminal record checks, clearance from our Provincial Ministry of Families, copies of our birth certificates, passports and marriage license. CCAA will next issue a formal offer to place Mary with us. 

The formal offer is called the Letter of Seeking Confirmation from Adopter (LSC). It will be delivered to us through the BC government and our provincial adoption agency. We sign the LSC and return it to CCAA.This step can take as long as 90 days to complete. With Sylvie it only took a little over a month, this is what we are hoping for again. 

4) NoC (Notice of Traveling to China for Adoption): CCAA will then issue an invitation for us to travel to China to adopt Mary. The travel date is usually 6 to 9 weeks after we have returned the signed LSC. 

We have a little side bar on the side of the time line it took for all the paperwork to be completed with Sylvie's adoption and we have now added a second bar for Mary's. Hope this answers many of the questions our family and friends have had about this process!