All I want for Christmas...

Well, Christmas has come and gone in a blur of shopping, cooking, eating and opening presents.  My older boys are home for the holiday and I have to say that it has been wonderful.  I am very thankful for my beautiful family and thankful that we were able to share a great Christmas.  I have very few pictures of all of us together so I had my niece take a couple of us tonight.  So, here is my family...Christmas 2011.

We were missing one very special little girl this year.  I have been a little down in the dumps that Elise was not here with her new family for Christmas.   But things are progressing and we will be getting all of our dossier off to our agency on Wednesday if everything goes as planned.  It is a great feeling though to know that this is the last Christmas we will spend without Elise.

This morning I woke up to an email from Bethel, the school where Elise is living.  We had sent her a present and they sent us five very precious, very beautiful pictures of an incredible and beautiful Elise.  I am so in love with this little girl...it really does amaze me how I can be so attached to her and I haven't even met her.

Devin loves the jacket she is wearing.  I will be on a mission to find this jacket!!

She really knows how to tear into presents!  She is going to have so much fun here next Christmas.

I was told by one of her teachers that she loves to look pretty and loves her hair in pretty bows.  She looks like she is telling the office manager at the school "hurry up and do my hair, I need to look pretty"!!

Here Elise is with the new hair bows in her hair....well, not really bows, but rather these beads that hang...they look real cute on her though.  You can see the pajamas we sent to her on the right and the backpack on the left.  I don't see the toy we sent.  But I notice that she has discarded everything for the hair bows.

It looks like she is not all that happy that she had to put the backpack on.  And look at the grip she has on her new hairbows!!  She is not going to let those go for anything.

I am so thankful for the wonderful school that is taking care of Elise.  They have made it much easier for us to get through this long wait.  And I know that next year when she is with us our Christmas will be even more special....

Tears of Joy

I am crying tears of joy.  And shaking like a leaf.  I just found out that we received our immigration approval yesterday on day 67.  The very nice lady on the phone said that a favorable determination was placed in the mail yesterday so I hope, hope, hope to have it in my hands tomorrow.  If I get it in my hands tomorrow, I will be driving to Tallahassee first thing Friday morning so that I am there when they open the Secretary of State doors at 9:00.  It then goes to a courier in Washington DC who will walk it to the Department of State and the Chinese Embassy.  With rush service and overnight mailing we might actually have our dossier ready to go to our agency before Christmas.  What a gift that will be.

Still....waiting....

The baby blues are setting in.  Our application has been sitting at the USCIS for 66 days today.  I decided to take a chance and gave them a call.  Nothing yet.  She did tell me that they were doing a big push on I800A applications for the next two weeks trying to get things moving and they are starting October applications today.  Well, our receipt date is October 7^th  so we ARE getting closer .  She did say to call back on Friday….we will be at 70 days.  I know it will all happen eventually….I was just hoping….that we would have our dossier to China by the end of this year….

 

I guess I need to get used to waiting.  There will be a lot of it over the next several months.

She is worth the wait

I received an email from Bethel this morning with four new pictures of Elise. She is just so beautiful. It was such a great way to start the day. It is that face that makes this wait bearable because no matter how long it takes in the end she will be our daughter...forever. I love that they sent us pictures of her doing her normal tasks as we get to really see into her personality. My mom noticed that she might be a lefty, the same as her daddy. It is a little odd though because her dominant eye is her right eye and it usually follows hand dominance, though I guess not always. Funny we didn't notice that...but I did notice her dimples. I am so in love with this little angel.