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Welcome

Hi everyone! Welcome to our blog. Until yesterday our blog had an audience of one, me. We received our LOA for Fu Hao Ling(Alyssa) on Thursday so we told the family(we had only told a few people about Alyssa)and made our blog public.

Alyssa is 2 years old and currently resides in foster care in Fuzhou City, Jiangxi. We hope to travel to bring her home in about 3 months. Her 3 brothers and 2 sisters are excited about their new little sister. Grace, our youngest,is the most excited because she does not want to be last.

Paperwork

Since receiving the news of our LOA late yesterday afternoon we have spent 6 hours completing paperwork. We are either extremely slow or very meticulous. Thank goodness it is now headed in the directions it needs to go(a set of papers went to Texas and the other to California). One more thing to check off our list. Still can't believe we are so close to bringing Alyssa home.

LOA!!!!!!

We just got the email that our LOA(Letter of Acceptance)has arrived. We are so excited! We have officially been matched with our little girl. We have some US paperwork to do and then we wait. I think from this point it typically takes about 3 months to travel. We can handle that. We now have a more accurate due date. Alyssa Faith it won't be long now!

We lovingly call this her Urkel photo.

Day 46

We are now 46 days from LID(log in date). I am so tired of waiting. I know it will happen in God's time but I am just not very patient. It's hard knowing it could come tomorrow or it could be another 80 days. God's timing is perfect, I just need to wait for it.

Yesterday while we waiting for the bell to ring so the girls could go into school, Grace asked if we were going to drive to China. Julia and I told her that the only way to get there was by plane. She then said, oh you have to go across the ocean. Pretty smart for a 6 year old. Grace prays for Alyssa every night. She asks God to keep her safe and warm until we get her. So sweet!

Care Package

We decided to send Alyssa a care package before Christmas. We wrote a letter to the orphanage introducing ourselves to them and asked them to take pictures of Alyssa for us. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It is definitely worth a shot.

LID

We recieved our LID date-December 16, 2011. LID-Log in Date. This means our dossier has been logged in China's system. I think we are on Day 26. Our next step is LOA(Letter of Acceptance). This can take anywhere from 37 to 120 days. Of course we are hoping to be on the low end. Everything will close down soon for Chinese New Year. It is doubtful we will hear anything by then but one can always hope.