Baby Shower

On Saturday, June 21, 2008, we had a baby shower at my parents house. This was a couples shower so we could invite all of our friends. Zach received some really wonderful gifts and I'm sure he will make good use out of everything. Thank you again to everyone!!!!

Updated Information!!!

We received updated information on Zach! We are so excited. On October 27, 2005, a resident of Haikou named Yu De Bo, found a baby boy on a parkway 50 meters from traffic lights near the Qiong Zhou bridge in Haikou.

Zach likes to suck his thumb before he goes to sleep at night. He sleeps from 8:00 pm until 6:40 am. He takes his nap from 12:00 pm until 2:20 pm. He likes to sleep alone, and gets upset if any other child comes near him while he is in bed.

His favorite activity is to take a walk in the morning. He gets excited when he sees something neat, and he has to run back and tell the nannies what he saw.

Zach is fairly introverted, but according to the orphanage he has been hanging with the older kids in the kindergarten and becoming more and more extroverted.

In addition, the orphanage has a copy of his finding add. They indicated that they will give this to us when we pick him up.

Zach currently is 3 feet tall and weighs 26 lbs and his nickname in the orphanage is Rui Rui.

Zach's Room

Joe and I have been pretty busy trying to put together Zach's bedroom. We decided to do a Thomas the Train theme. Just this past weekend, I went to Target and bought Thomas bed sheets and a Thomas comforter. There is still a lot of work to be done on his room as we still do not have carpeting and his closet needs doors and a clothes rack or something.

The Next Step

Yesterday we got our first email from our travel advisor. I'm sure this will be the first email in a long line of emails. One of the first things we have to do to get things rolling is to apply for our visa into China. Of course with this application we need to attach a passport photo. I don't know how many times Joe and I have had to run to Walgreens to get our passport photo for this adoption. You think that we would learn and keep both pictures that are given to us when purchased, but of course not. Luckily, this time I found our two photos lying in a pile of papers. No need to run and get new photos this time. My mom, who is going to China with us, was on the ball and already had given me her completed visa application so all I had left to do was complete our two applications and run to the post office to overnight the packages. These applications are a little scary to me because we need to send them our actual passports. I hope they don't get lost.

I'm hoping that we will receive word about our TA next week. We can only hope.

LOA!!!!

We received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) for Zach on May 29, 2008. Our agency, Great Wall, sent the offical paperwork overnight to us so we could sign and offcially accept our referral for Zach. Yesterday I sent all the paperwork back to Great Wall and they received everything today. The next step in the process is to wait for our travel approval. We should hopefully receive travel approval in 2-4 weeks. According to Stephanie, our Great Wall contact, we very likely will be travelling mid to late July.