Hi all,
This has been an incredible journey thus far to our two newest children. We are blessed to announce we received PA {Pre-Approval from China} for our son and PA for our daughter. Both are older child adoptions and are from HENAN, China. We want to take a moment and make sure our recognition of this amazing miracle is to CCAI~The HENAN Project, and the "Dedicated Staff" in the Waiting Child Dept.!
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Oh My Gosh, we were blessed to find our son, Guo Yu (referred to us as a healthy 10.5 year old boy, in October 2008, through a camp for older children. (this camp happens at a few different agencies & provinces around China.) The video we received, was icing on the cake for our family...after reviewing a file,... but wait; Guo Yu's file was incomplete for an older child adoption. It was not completely ready for IA (International Adoption), it had not made it fully to Beijing yet... so we waited, as we prepared our Dossier {A large pile of official legal documents about us.} to adopt again from The China Special Needs Program.
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One month, Two month...EIGHT months. Our Dossier finally left for China in June 2009. (the USCIS/United States Customs and Immigration Service, was really lagging {using kind words ;o\} for us; and we are a Hague Family {A Treaty in place to fight child trafficking, FYI: China has been a Hague Country for at least a decade or maybe two, now our US government conformed and sign the Treaty as well, in April 2008.), but we made it. ~ We were LID {LOG IN DATE} 07/08/09 after nearly 9 months. ;o)
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Along this journey, we had been approved by our Social Worker and USCIS to adopt two older children... (first USCIS lost our Original HS {Home Study} and then the second time around they forgot to word our I-797 C {the last document needed for our Dossier} for two older children, so we needed an addendum to our Home Study to fix this (at a fee of course) LOL!! The third time was a charm :o). Then as we are sending our Dossier to China, a wonderful older girl, took our breathe away. She was from the CCAI web-site of waiting children. She was ageing out of the China Adoption Program and her bio listed Post Surgery for major congenital heart disease {TOF/Tetralogy of Fallot}. We so wanted to bring her home as our daughter, But her bio said LID ONLY NEED APPLY... that Monday we were disappointed. We knew though, that we were blessed to be with CCAI~Henan Project to bring us a son. So we sat on the sideline waiting each day for Beijing to receive Guo Yu's file :o), all the while gazing at Liu NiuNiu, a child we would be forever blessed, if we could call her daughter...
Later, that same week, "Pat" posted a message on our yahoo group, it said CCAI WC Dept. wanted her to advocate for this wonderful girl, and stated if you were DTC {Dossier To China} you could apply not just LID only... I would tell you what else the email said... but I did not get that far... I clicked on my email,... and emailed Deniece at her desk, and said this is our daughter!! I told her we were DTC, could it be possible? It took a few days of CCAI internal workings, or so I imagine, but we got a call a week later and said they would do everything that was with in their capabilities & possible. But, this was not concrete, nor was it easy, nor it be even totally possibly. The CCAA is the ultimate authority.
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We still wanted to proceed, no matter the outcome. How could we not try, our diligent best to bring our son and our daughter home.
BUT...... Guo Yu's file still had not come to IA.... it was now 8.5 months since we saw his video. Deniece proceeded to tell us how we should proceed, and it was not going to be easy, nor very possible. Plausible,...well YES; but not very likely, a long shot, it is rare, she "insisted" that we know this. But this was it, we just had to proceed; broken hearted or not, we had to. We just had to ask for NiuNiu too.
Well, it took a few more weeks for the CCAA to release our son's file from Henan to CCAI. That happened this Monday, & well... we already had our LOI prepared & translated for him and our LOI prepared & translated for her (located at CCAI), just waiting for this day, to proceed. We held our breathe, cried, & Prayed and CCAI sent our LOI's on Monday 07/13/09 for both children.
AND...
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Today 07/16/09 we received news from the WC Dept. that China has granted us a PA for a boy and a PA for a girl!
We are Humbled to announce we have a son... and a daughter!
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Please welcome Scott Yu and Athena NiuNiu.
Love, ash and family ;o)
wife to Jim
mom to Jacob 9,
our "Angel" Kira 1,
Hannah (A. 7/1/08 Guangdong)
Scott and Athena... waiting in Henan.
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(please do not cross post our news, I would love to just keep it here: amongst us in the "family".)
Scott Yu
and
Athena NiuNiu
~
LOA is the LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE; This is it! China has officially requested we decide.
The happy family tonight.
Jake and Hannah Banana, awhhh! :o)
Arriving at our hotel for the reunion; R. and her girls.
The 3 Mei's. (Hannah is looking inquistive) :o)
Yum, the pizza.
The three families. (Aren't we cute) ;o)
The 3 "China Sisters".
The siblings.
The fun...
The girls' 1 Year reunion day started off slowly...
We drove around the lake and had lunch at a local inn.
After lunch, ...later on in evening we attended a BBQ!!! at the home of the 
Look ma, no hands! ;o)
Pretty girl!
Scary!
Oh good, cute again!
The drive ~ pig farms, cow farms, chicken farms, corn farms, soybean farms... 
+giggle.jpg)
