New Pictures

Shout outs

I just want to give a shout out to my older brother and his girlfriend Amy who recently gave birth to their daughter, Avery Olivia. I can't wait to see and hold her. Another grandchild for the parents to fawn over.

I also want to say Happy 50Th Birthday to Chris's Mother. We are all very thankful she agreed to come to dinner where we were all waiting to surprise her.

Lastly, I want to express our sadness with the departure of our agency coordinator, Rachel. She has been a great comfort to us in times of uncertainty and of course, a joy to speak with in times of joy. We will greatly miss her and wish her all the luck in her next adventure. We will miss sharing our news with her.

Have a great turkey day. Don't eat too much. Good luck to those who plan to shop the next day.

Eats and walks well

I received a great email today from the agency. They were able to give us some details about how and what Nhi is doing in the orphanage. The wife of the director of the agency visited the children in our province on Sunday. She was able to send back some information on how he is doing. I'll just cut and paste her email.

Son Nhi is a handsome boy. He is the Vice Director's favorite so she threw a birthday for him awhile ago. He eats well, sleeps extremely well. He takes a long nap (4-5 hours straight) during the day and sleeps thru the night. He is active and plays a lot with other kids. He also likes to go outside. He is very sweet. He eats very well too. He can walk very well, his fine motor skills are good too. He likes to pick up dry leaves and play with them.

Now we know why he was outside with the motorcycle. This was a great email to get since we had no idea where he was developmental. Now, it's time to think about gating the house up before we go. LOL. We still have not heard anything about travel dates but we hope it will be resolved soon.

New Pic

As you can see we received a new picture of our boy. He is getting bigger but it's hard for me to really tell without seeing him everyday. I'm not sure where the picture was taken but apparently near a motorcycle. We joke that he is so smart that he was working on the motorcycle when they took his picture. From this picture I feel like there is a good possibility that he is walking or starting to try.

There is no new news at this point for travel. We continue to wait and that's all we can do. The agency has been through these blockades before and gets through them but it requires patience from the families and the agency. We are dealing with another country's governmental system, they are not as organized as ours, or efficient. We are basically taking one of their citizens from them and before we do so they want to make sure everything is legal, ethical and right for their citizen. We have to trust that they will do the right thing for Nhi and his fellow orphans and let them come home to waiting, loving and caring families.

I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers you have sent our way. It's been hard to deal with knowing he won't be here with us for the holidays.It's hard knowing he won't get to meet our families and friends during this time but with good distractions and understanding we are able to make it through each day.

Flooding

There has been very intense flooding occurring in Vietnam in the last two weeks. Several families from our agency have been there during the rains and lived through it. Some of them sat on buses for hours in deep water trying to get their new babies back to the hotels. Here is a link to some pictures of the flooding.

http://vnexpress.net/GL/Doi-song/2008/11/3BA080EE/

http://www.vnexpress.net/GL/Xa-hoi/2008/11/3BA080FF/

It's pretty wild to see how well they have adapted to dealing with the flooding.

No baby in 08

Yeah, you read it right. The agency said with the police hold up in our providence, travel seems unlikely this year. Even if the police signed off in the next week our paperwork has to go to IAD - International Adoption Department, then to PDOJ - Provincial Department of Justice; then to
PPC-People’s Provincial Committee then we get travel dates. This is unlikely to happen in less than 2 months.

There is no new time frame on travel, we will go when it's all approved. The police must sign off on our dossier along with many other families. They have tried to put more pressure on him through the Vietnamese agencies. They say he will answer on all the cases, they just didn't say when. The IAD, PDOJ and the police intend to meet to discuss why these cases have not been approved. Also we don't know when this will happen.

For now all I know is we are sad, upset and disappointed that Nie will not be with us this holiday season.

Adoption is a difficult process with roller coasters of emotions. I appreciate all the thoughts you have given us. We still hope to maybe know when we will travel before the end of the year (however that is not even a guarantee).