Gotcha Day! - 6 Dec 2009

Hello all!

Today is the day that Nancy and I have been waiting for for the last year! We are meeting our daughter today!

Nancy arrived here on Friday night. I joined her after traveling for four days from Baghdad. My first stop was a hole in the wall camp west of Kuwait City, Camp Ali Al Salem. I flew there from Baghdad and went through all the in-processing for Rest and Recuperation (R&R) Leave. I must say that the Army did a great job at getting me to Beijing at the right time. The big issue was that I only get 15 days off and needed exactly that time for this trip. The great thing is that the 15 days doesn't start until the day after you arrive at your destination and it stops the day before you fly back to where you have to sign back in. In this case, I have to fly back to Dallas to sign in on the 20th of December. This is just enough time to get back to Los Angeles and then fly out the next morning. How grand.

So, I arrived in Beijing an hour late and got my ride to the hotel. Of course Nancy was already comatose from her trip. We talked for an hour or so and then crashed. The next morning, we had an orientation meeting with all the other Holt families here to get their children. At the end of the briefing, we received a packet with new photos of our precious little girl! She and another child are back at the orphanage now and have been for about a week. The caregivers bring the foster care kids back to the orphanage about a week before they meet their new parents. This helps to start the grieving process for the kids.

After the meeting, the other families went on a tour to the Forbidden City. Since Nancy and I were just there (in much warmer weather) a few years ago, we decided to head out on our own. Our Hotel (Novotel Peace Hotel) was only about a mile from Tienanmen Square. We decided to walk to the square and along the way we met two local college girls who spoke with us and took us to their little art gallery near the square. Too bad we were broke because they had some beautiful art!

After walking to the square, we went to a book store and bought a Chinese DVD set for Elyssa. It is a famous kids series that the book store girl recommended. I knew it had to be good because I later showed it to a little boy and his mother and they smiled and from their reaction, I knew it was a favorite in their home.

At the end of the day, Nancy was hungry for some noodles so we found a great mall and, after looking at EVERY menu, we settled on a nice little place that treated us extremely well. I'll tell you, this is our second visit to China and I have never visited a friendlier place. The people here are genuinely happy to meet Americans and the young folk are always approaching you to try out their english skills.

So, we are now in the old terminal at the Beijing airport waiting on our flight. Unfortunately, we can't log onto our blog. The other family traveling with us to Kunming has also had issues with getting onto their blogs. It seems that most social networking sites are all blocked. So, we will probably have to post e-mails when possible.

Our travel partners are a family from Salem, Oregon who are adopting a 15 month old boy. The mom and dad are educators and they brought their young boy and girl with them. This should be a fun trip!

Stay tuned. When we get digital photos later today, we'll do our best to send them out to you all.

Love,

Brian and Nancy

China or Bust!

I know, it's been a while since we've updated this blog. We'll we actually have news to tell. We're on our way to China to pick up Elyssa!

On the 23rd of November, we received word that we had to be in China on the 4th of December! Since Brian is in Baghdad, and in the Army, the first thing we had to find out was if he could take his Rest and Relaxation (R&R) leave to coincide with the adoption trip. After asking his boss after a sleepless night, we were happy to get the green light from the powers that be.

The next few days consisted of Brian getting all the bureaucratic gates needed to get from a war zone to South Central China. In the meantime, Nancy was busy arranging and purchasing the trip to China. She also found time to hit Babies R Us and a few other places in order to get some of the basics we'd need in China. Holt held a phone conference on the 25th where families traveling called in and asked questions. Brian could here Nancy and her pre-school kids playing in the background of the call!

We will post as much as we can while on the trip. Brian will be flying nearly 25,000 miles on this trip as he will go from Baghdad to Kuwait, then to Beijing to meet Nancy. After a few days in Beijing, it'll be off to Kunming in Yunnan Province to meet our daughter! After a few days in Kunming, we;ll fly to Ghuanzhou to get our our immigration paperwork completed at the US Consulate there. Then it's off to LA where Brian will hopefully get to spend a few hours at home before heading back to Iraq for the last nine long months of his tour of duty.

Expect the next post on or about the 4th or 5th of December.

China Says Yes!

We just got word that the Chinese adoption authorities have approved our adoption! Not too bad since they have only had our dossier since late June. The next steps for us will be to file a Form I800 with Homeland Security (immigration). That should take about 2-6 weeks to get the form approved. The next step will be to get a travel date to China. This should be another 2-4 weeks. The only problem now is that Brian is going to Iraq next month for a year! We'll be trying to postpone that or have him take his R&R early so that we can meet in China to bring home our little girl!

New Photos!

These photos just came in from the orphanage. Isn't she cute? We are waiting for permission from the Chinese government to travel to go get Elyssa. We can't wait!

New Update!

Here's the latest...

Our dossier was sent to the Chinese government a few weeks ago. This is a big deal when it comes to international adoption! The dossier is a compilation of all our hard work over the last year. Under the standard adoption program, families wait for about 40 weeks for a match after their dossier Log In Date (LID). We are fortunate as we already have a match with our little Elyssa Li. Now, we have to be patient as the Chinese government needs to review our dossier to ensure that they are ready to allow us to adopt our baby. So, the wait will probably be between 3-6 months until we can travel. This will make the trip quite challenging, from a logistical standpoint. Brian will have to probably fly from Iraq to Kuwait, and then on to Beijing during his R&R from Iraq. We hope he has enough time to fly back to Los Angeles. However, the R&R rules are very clear and he only has 15 days away from the job. As the average time in China for these trips is about 14 days, we are anticipating no time in the USA for Brian.

In other news, we got some additional documents about Elyssa this week. An email arrived that contained a few medical documents that the great staff at Holt translated into English for us. It said that Elyssa had a surgery to close her cleft lip last August. That is good news! What is not clear is whether her pallet was corrected. We do know for sure that her alveolar bone will need corrected as she gets older. Either way, we are ready to give her the best care possible when she comes home to the USA and are grateful for all the love and care she is receiving in China.

Travel Time May be a While Off...

We just got word that our time to travel to China may be a while from now. The big issue is that Brian is leaving for one year starting next fall. We were hoping to get Elyssa before he left. Now, our time to travel may be 4-6 months from when our Dossier gets to China. That wont happen until a few weeks from now. So, it looks like we may have to wait until Brian can come back on his rest and relaxation leave, which can happen in November at the earliest. Just when it looked like things were going to fall into place prior to his deployment...

I797-C is Here!

We finally received our last piece of paperwork for the dossier on Thursday! Brian attempted to get it notarized on Fort Lewis on Friday afternoon. Wouldn't you know it, they were closed! He'll go back to the legal office on Monday morning to get it taken care of. This will complete our dossier and we'll be able to send it off to China! I'm not sure how long it should take to get our travel approval, but we will apply for our visas as soon as possible so that we can take off ASAP!