Our bags are packed . . .

Our bags are packed and we are ready to go. Our nearly two and a half year wait will come to an end in four days when we will finally get to meet Madison Elisabeth! We can't wait!

Our long journey to this joyous occasion begins bright and early tomorrow morning as we begin a full day of travel long before the sun wakes up. Before our long anticipated meeting on Monday, we will have a chance to see some of the sights of Beijing (The Great Wall, TianAnMen Square and the Forbidden City), soak up some of the Chinese culture and see the busy preparations taking place for the 2008 Olympics.

Check back often. We plan on keeping the blog updated as often as possible why we are in China.

God Bless,
Angie and Mike

Madison will be home by the end of September!

Our travel dates have been confirmed! Madison will be home by the end of September!!!


CONFIRMED TRAVEL DATES (ANHUI)

Thurs, Sept 13: Leave the United States

Fri, Sept 14: Arrive in Beijing

Sat, Sept 15: Sightseeing in Beijing (TianAnMen Square, Forbidden City, & the Great Wall (Juyongguan); Lunch is included.; & Children's Hope International Orientation

Sun, Sept 16: Fly to Hefei

Mon, Sept 17: Receive your child, sign initial adoption paperwork

Tues,Sept 18: to Friday Sept 21 - adoption process, sightseeing and free days

Sat, Sept 22: Fly to Guangzhou

Sun,Sept 23: Free day

Mon, Sept 24: medical exam for children

Tues, Sept 25: ACS appts

Wed, Sept 26: get visa back late

Thurs, Sept 27: Departure from Guangzhou back to the United States


Angie and Mike

We have our papers

We received our Chinese visas today, after sending our original passports off to a Chinese Consulate officially certified courier service in Houston and after sweating each day that we really had know idea where our passports were located. We are now official. We have our papers.

Our tentative travel dates have been set. We are still waiting to receive our travel approval which we hopefully be received today and then our agency needs to confirm our appointment time at the American Consulate in China. Once that is done, we will know our travel dates for certain. The tentative itinerary is as follows:

TENTATIVE TRAVEL DATES FOR HUNAN AND ANHUI GROUPS

Thurs, Sept 13: Leave the US
Fri, Sept 14: Arrive in Beijing
Sat, Sept 15: Sightseeing in BJ (TianAnMen Square, Forbidden City, & the Great Wall (Juyongguan); Lunch is included.; & CHI Orientation
Sun, Sept 16: Fly to Changsha for Hunan families; fly to Hefei for

Anhui families. If you want to skip BJ, please arrive in your provincial capital city this AFTERNOON.
Mon, Sept 17: Receive your child, sign initial adoption paperwork
Tues,Sept 18: to Friday Sept 21 - adoption process, sightseeing and free days
Sat, Sept 22: Fly to GZ
Sun,Sept 23: Free day
Mon, Sept 24: medical exam for children
Tues, Sept 25: ACS appts (first choice) (other choices will be on Wed or Thursday)
Wed, Sept 26: get visa back late (do not make travel plans to return on this date)
Thurs, Sept 27: Departure from Guangzhou back to the US (depending on ACS appt date)

Angie and Mike

Introducing . . . Madison Elisabeth

After waiting and waiting and waiting . . . we are happy to announce the referral of our beautiful daughter, Madison Elisabeth. Madison was born July 1, 2006 and is currently waiting for us at the Lujiang Social Welfare Institute located in the Anhui province of China.

As of her last medical exam in May, Madison weighed 22 pounds, was 29½ inches tall and had six teeth. Her Chinese name, given to her by the orphanage, is Lu Xia Ye and is a reference to the season of summer. We are told she is healthy, active and quick. She loves playing games, has a ready smile and laughs out loud quite often.

We expect to make our long journey to her in about two month’s time. We cannot wait to get her home and introduce her to everyone.

Thank you to all of you who have lent your support, kind words and prayers over the past two years. The waiting is almost over!

Angie and Mike

We are next in line!

Our time has nearly come. The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with their offices before November 14, 2005.

Our log-in date is November 16, 2005 so we should be receiving information on our daughter with the next batch of referrals the CCAA sends out - about one month from now. Travel to China is usually about two months after a referral is received. This would put us in China around the beginning of October.

We are very excited!

Love,

Angie and Mike

Happy (Lunar) New Year!

Xin Nain Kuai Le!
(Happy New Year!)

Sunday, February 18th marks the beginning of the lunar (Chinese) New Year. It will be the year 4705 on the Chinese calendar and the beginning of the Year of the Pig (Boar). It will also be the year we bring our baby girl home!

So, as they say in Mandarin:

Gong Xi Fa Cai
(May prosperity be with you!)

P.S. - It is a Chinese belief that the later children stay up on New Year’s Eve, the longer their parents will live.




P.P.S - Wait time has exceeded fifteen months now!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2007 to everyone! 2006 was a long year waiting on our little girl. While we thought 2006 would bring her home, God had other plans in mind. We pray each day that our precious daughter is safe and we can not wait to make the long trip to China to bring her home.

Farewell 2006 - we will remember you well for the all moments of joyfull anticipation and the many lessons in patience.

Hello 2007 - Let's get your feet to the floor and one foot in front of the other! You have some high expectations to deliver on this year.

God Bless,
Angie and Mike

One year ago today . . .

One year ago today, our dossier was being loged in by the CCAA. We have now officially waited one full year for our baby girl. Unofficially, we have waited more like 15 - 16 months from the time we started chasing paperwork all over the place. It seems like longer. Currently the referral wait time is about 14 or 15 months from the log-in date, so we are hoping for a February referral with travel in April (after tax day of course). Until then we continue to pass the time by staying busy, meeting with other families adopting from China once a month, and continuing to know that our baby girl will be here before we know it.

Our fingerprints expire in December so we are going back to the United States Citizenship and Immigration office this Saturday to be re-fingerprinted for our FBI background checks. Just immagine the DMV times a thousand. Needless to say, we haven't planned anything else for that day.

Along with having to be re-fingerprinted, our form allowing us to adopt a foreign child expires in the spring and will have to be re-done as well. This means we will have another round of paperchasing to do and our homestudy will have to be updated by our social worker. Thankfully, we will not need to have everything certified by the state and authenticated by the Chinese Embassy, like we did the first time.

This Thanksgiving, we will be extra thankful for all of our family and friend's love and support they have provided over the past year (and more). Have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving and try not to eat too much!

Love,
Angie and Mike

We're "Pregnant"!

Good news from China!

After over two months of waiting, the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has officially moved our dossier from review to matching. Our adoption agency's office in Beijing, has also been able to confirm this with the CCAA office. So we are now officially "pregnant" with a Chinese baby!

The CCAA has finished matching children with families whose dossiers were logged-in before July 22, 2005. With our November 16, 2005 log-in date, there are still several families ahead of us in this process and it is looking more and more like we will not receive our referral until after the first of the year. Still, our daughter has taken one more step closer to home, and we are very grateful.

Because this process has taken longer than anticipated, we will soon begin another round of paper chasing. Our fingerprints with the FBI will expire before the end of this year and will need to be redone. Our "approval" with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will also expire soon after. This will require us to re-submit an application to them, along with an updated home study and all of the required paperwork that goes along with that. It will not be as tedious or time consuming as our original paper chase, since the documents are only for the USCIS and will not have to be notarized, certified, and authenticated as were the documents that went to China with our dossier. Whatever lies ahead, we are very excited and grateful to have made it over this hurdle.

Please have a wonderful, safe and blessed Labor Day Weekend!
Angie and Mike

We're Under Review!

Hello Everyone!

We have just returned home from a very long weekend in New Orleans. Mike's brother John and John's fiancee Katie tied the knot on Saturday (June 24th) in the historic St. Louis Cathedral located in Jackson Square in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter. The long weekend's celebrations included John's bachelor party on Thursday night, rehearsal dinner aboard the John James Audubon Riverboat on Friday and the wedding day celebration including a traditional New Orleans' second line parade to the reception, held at the Omni Royal Orleans hotel. It was a long weekend full of jazz, food, family and fun. We are so very excited to welcome Aunt Katie to our family. She is the perfect match for Uncle John. We wish then all the best!

But enough about Aunt Katie and Uncle John. After returning home we have found that the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has posted the following message on it's website:

"The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before October 31, 2005."

Yeah! This means the November group of dossiers has moved into the CCAA's review room, which means OUR dossier will undergo it's "official" review very soon (probably within the next month). Our submitted dossier must undergo and "pass" this review process before moving onto the matching room, where we will be "matched" with our baby girl. We are both happy and anxious that all goes well in the review process and that our dossier moves into the matching room without running into any hurdles. Please help us pray that the review process goes smoothly!

In addition to the November group of dossiers moving into the review room, the CCAA has also posted that they have finished the placement of children for families whose dossiers were submitted before June 28, 2005. This puts the referral wait time currently at 12 months. Our dossier was logged-in on November 16, 2005, so we have been waiting for just over 7 months now. A 12 month wait would give us a referral before Thanksgiving, but we are anticipating that the referral wait time is going to continue to lengthen. We are still keeping our fingers crossed and pray that we might receive our referral before the end of the year, with our trip to China sometime soon after the beginning of 2007.

God Bless,
Angie and Mike

Happy Easter!

LID+5

This Easter marks 5 months since our log-in date to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). Hopefully, we are halfway through our wait for our referral. Only time will tell.

At this morning's Easter service, we saw a couple with an adopted daughter from China dressed in her cute little Easter outfit, hat and all. We can not wait until we have the chance to do that with our own daughter next year.

We have started learning some basic Mandarin Chinese with CD's we bought online. Hopefully, it will help to sooth our daughter in her transition from her China caregivers to her forever family. Mike also hopes it will come in handy, while we are visiting sites and shopping for bargains. Although, he still probably won't stop to ask for directions if we get lost.

Have a most joyous Easter Sunday and God Bless!
Angie and Mike

Nursery Pictures

Well, now you know that "soon" means just a tad over three months. Anyway, as promised, here are pictures of the "almost finished" nursery.

LID+3: Today marks the third month since our log-in date!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We are well past one month into our wait. All of the paperwork, pencil pushing, FedExing, fingerprinting, and jumping through whatever hoops we were asked, seems easy compared to the waiting. At least when we were busy doing paperwork, we had no time to contemplate our thoughts, both fearful and joyous.

Unfortunately, what we thought was going to be a 6-8 month wait, looks like it could stretch into an 8-10 month wait, if not longer. There has been a great surge of dossiers submitted to China for adoption in the past months. Our adoption agency alone, submitted 645 dossiers to the CCAA in 2005. We are still confident, however, that 2006 will bring us the newest member of the Winemiller family.

We hope you had a very merry Christmas and we wish you a most blessed 2006.


Click here for an amazing tale of one family's adoption journey (although it documents a Kazakhstan adoption, there are many simularities to our own China adoption).

Log-In Date

We have our log-in date (LID)! We were notified yesterday that our completed and translated dossier was logged into the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) on November 16, 2005. This date marks the "official" beginning of our referral wait period. Referrals are currently taking 6-8 months, so we are hoping to have ours by Angie's birthday on June 17th. That will be 7 months and one day past our LID and would make our travel dates early or mid August. What a wonderful birthday present for mom and a fantastic Father's Day present for dad!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Winemiller Red Thread blog! This journal will have the most current, up-to-the-minute information of where we are in the adoption process.

Our dossier is now in China being translated. We should have a log in date within a couple of weeks. However, we probably won't know what that date is until sometime close to Christmas.

Check back here soon for pictures of the nursery!