I spoke with Laura Tuesday and she was able to confirm that our contracts had been sent to Taiwan and already received by Chung Yi. She said they may or may not be in court yet but that we should receive an update on that at the end of the month. We are so excited! One more step down, the countdown really has begun!!!

So many things going on with Adoption #2! We are happy to report that we received our documents for TECO, headed to Coral Gables, dropped them off for authentication and picked them up the next late after noon. We then sent them Fedex along with our family photo albums back to FFC where they received them on Thursday. Saturday we sent out our FFC contracts and formal referral acceptance and today everything was sent to Taiwan to be reveiwed and enter the courts! We have no reason to see any delays in our court process but you just never know what the judge may ask or do. We may get a hearing fast then ruling slow. Or we may get a hearing late but a ruling on our hearing date. The world of adoption is full of unknowns. We can safely say that we should have her home well before Christmas which is very very exciting and if we follow another families time line (wink wink) the way we have been, we may actually travel in September. We have also learned a few things. We will not be meeting Ti's foster family as we thought we would. Seems this is not something Chung Yi encourages. We are also aloud to write letters along with our care packages too! We are very excited about that. So there you have it. Lots going on and lots to think about. As others travel and bring home their older children we are faced with lots of questions and mroe research. We know this will be difficult for our daughter and us. We are learning through all of you.

The girl that stole our hearts! We have to laugh at the temper on our little girl. Many think that it ends at about age 4 or 5 and we can attest that it does not. We are in for a ride! We love her compasion and how happy she is in one video and a spitfire in the other. She will fit in our family. Enjoy.

It's here! The package filled with those "oh so important" contracts and power of attorney forms! ALong with that was just as Laura said, a nice little photo album of Ti and 3 discs full of photos. Over 1500 photos actually! Can you imagine? I am stunned. We are so excited. We feel taht we have learned alot by so many photos. A glimpse of our daughter to be. There were also several video clips that showed how happy, fun, and talented. We also learned that she has quite the temper (as if we didn't expect that!) It was amazing and we are still in aw about the whole thing. Getting all the information a few days ago and then getting more photos than we may have been able to take in her lifetime is a blessing that we could have never imagined. In the world of adoption you learnt ath you sort of take what you can get as far as pictures and info on the life of your child before you. My heart aches for her and her foster family even more so now then ever. We can see with our eyes already the love and compasion they have for Ti. In all of their hearts she is their daughter, they are her parents. We will not be able to deny that pain when they are seperated. We will be forever thankful of the life they ahve given her since she was 2 years old. They helped her over come many obsticals and helped her thrive. They have nurtured her and loved her as their child. Foster takes a unique set of people, very special people. I know we all live for the picstures so enjoy. I havent even been able to get through all of them, I mean when you stare at each and every picture and there are 1500 of them plus video...I think it will take a couple days :)

Amazing news the last few days. We received a detailed report on the meeting between our in country coordinator, Ti and her foster mom. Many questions were answered about her, her personality, and her life. She drew us a picture of herself. It was sooooo cute. She looked through our family album over and over. We received 4 pictures. Unfortunetly they are pretty blury and inbedded in the report but we hope to get them seperatly soon so we can add them to the blog as they are the most recent. Her hair is beautiful and down to her lower back! She is about 45lbs they report which is age appropriate for US standards for 5-6 years old. We learned so many new things about her and her life now and before. Many things are personal so I won't share them publicly at this time. We received more WONDERFUL NEWS today!!! The contracts arrived at FFC. Along with them was a small photo album with captions! How amazing is that. And as if that wasn't enough...also 2 or 3 discs will be included as well with pictures from her life from 2 years old until now. Can you read our excitement? They should be here tomorrow or Monday. We will then head to TECO Miami for and overnight trip and pick them up Wed and fedex them from around the corner back to FFC. FFC will send those contracts and power of attorneys along with our translated dossier to Chung Yi. Chung Yi attest they will get reveiw and then get our documents into the Taipei courts. Who knows how long of time span for Chung Yi to ge thtem into court exactly or for the courts to take. Some families have been blessed with a judge that is skipping hearings or skipping fist rullings and giving a finale pretty quickly. We can expect about 3 months on average but it can be anywhere from 1-6 months in the actual courts. Witht he blessing of all involved and the circumstnaces of her birthfamily we dotn expect to have delays in court but you never know and we are prepared for jsut about anything. We can pretty much expect to have her home by Christmas no doubt and tha tis a good feeling. I will post pics as soon as we can.