Happy Birthday, YouXin Fu!

It is difficult to wrap my head around having a child in country thousands of miles away who we haven't met, who doesn't know about us,  and who is celebrating her first birthday without us. I hope her caregivers give her lots of love today and make her day as special as she is.  We will have many more birthdays together, but it's sad to miss the first. 

We will have our own little celebration for her today, complete with birthday cake and candles. Connor and Kenna are making birthday cards for their baby sister, and we'll just have to have the most amazing belated birthday party when she finally comes home!

Speaking of that....we received approval of our I-800a on November 12 (coincidentally, that's National Adoption Day).  That's the approval to adopt a child.  Our next approval is still pending, and that's the approval to specifically adopt YouXin Fu.  It's mostly a formality of paperwork and rubber stamp signatures that somehow takes weeks. We should have that any day and then we can apply for our Visas!

In the middle of all this, I took another look at our official referral paperwork from China.  Part of the process is checking to make sure that all the names on all of the documents match your U.S. Passports.  Of course, Brian's name is spelled "BRAIN" on Keira's referral!  We had to request a new certificate correcting the spelling so that everything matches.  Luckily, this won't further delay anything, but it's just good that it's fixed before we go to meet our daughter.  Who knows what kind of confusion that would have caused!

I'm still estimating that we will travel sometime in January or February.  I'm sure Chinese New Year will interfere with those  plans somehow, but we'll just have to take it in stride.

Happy Birthday, Keira Jane YouXin - we love you!!