Matching Room

These are pictures from a website that showed what the "Matching Room" in China looks like. This is a caption of one of the pictures:

Many parents also envision a small room with limited staff in the "Matching Room". Actually, the room is quite vast with a staff of almost twenty workers. It is a very warm and inviting room and all the staff were quite gracious and extremely proud of their work. The task is, however, quite daunting when you see the volume of dossiers that they work with. Interestingly, they take their time being quite meticulous with every single file of the parents and the children to ensure a perfect match. And as is easily attested by virtually every parent who has adopted from China: they have done just that.

Latest Referral News

Our timeline has started to slow down a bit. However our adoption agency just received a new batch of referrals last Friday. This is what their updated web site said, remembering that we have a 6/15/2005 LID (log in date).

Congratulations to the families who received their child match on Friday, December 9th! We received matches for families with 4/1/2005-4/14/2005 LIDs. There were 48 families matched with 49 children as we had one set of twins! We received 2 boys for families who requested boys.
The April families who received their matches on Friday were on an 8 month timeline. The remaining April families who will be matched in January will be 9 months from LID.
For the foreseeable future, it appears that the referral timeline might be in the range of 9 – 10 months from LID (log in date) to child match. We will keep our CCAI families posted as soon as we are able to confirm any timelines changes or receive official notice from the CCAA (www.china-ccaa.org).

According to CCAA's website (China Center of Adoption Affairs), The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with their office in May 2005. That means our June documents are now in the review room. Once finished in the review room our documents (dossier) are moved to the match room where they decide on which child will become part of each family.

That is the exciting room.

Finished!

Happy Festivus!

Mother in the Making?

Nice loaf!

I never thought I would see the day, but wonders never cease...Janet baked! As you can see it looks good. It's not burnt, it's not raw, and most impressively no fire alarms were sounded during the cooking of this loaf (which is a very rare feat for Janet when using the stove/oven).

This wasn't even on a whim or at my request. Yesterday she went to the store bought all of the ingredients, including the pan and went to work this morning. I'm so impressed!

The bread is still cooling so I haven't tasted it yet. I thought that I should post while I had only positive things to write. In a few minutes I will try the first slice. If this is the last you hear from me you'll l know what to tell the authorities. Wish me luck!

Christmas Tree

For those of you who have not put up your Christmas tree yet, to you I say... Slackers! We have our tree up and if it was up to Dan it would have been up since August. He is the tallest damn Christmas elf I have ever seen!
Stay tuned for future pictures of our Christmas in Vermont.

Family

A week from yesterday we spent the afternoon at Edna and Vic's catching up with family. Instead of frenzied shopping nightmares on Black Friday, we spent a sunny afternoon with some family we don't get to see very often.

Jodi and Don were back from their intense insurance work in Florida and they look great. Working hard in a warm climate seems to agree with them.

Andy and Kristin were home from Washington with their "bun in the oven." Kristin makes pregnancy look easy and it is clear that Andy will be a great dad.

The Welchs were also there, Jim and Diane with their adorable Victoria. Diane has lots of advice for us and Victoria is obviously thriving. We missed Kaela, but Jim was home for a break from his worldly travels.

Joan, Brenda, Zach and Alex arrived and Brenda is letting me borrow a crib. Thanks, Brenda! I can't believe how grown-up Zach and Alex are. Pretty soon Bob, Zach and Alex will all be the same height and they will look like the Three Muskateers.

We spent time with Anne and Grandma, and Grandma has let us know that she will be with Sue (my mom) for Christmas and she is ready to head out at any time. Look out Vermont!

My parents were there and Jenny, Don and Ruby arrived from Rhode Island. The following day we all played miniature golf and went to a movie for Jenny's birthday. Well, except for Ruby since she is a dog. Lovable, yes... but still a dog.

We were still missing a few key faces, and you know who you are! But hopefully we will catch up with you at Christmas! Kaela... Lori... Roger... Bob.... Rob... Nancy... Taylor... Madison...

I know this time of year can get really crazy, but Friday was really enjoyable to us and after seeing Dan's family for Thanksgiving and all of you the next day, we were feeling very thankful. Thank you for being our family. We are very lucky.
Peace and love to all.