I 800 Approval and...

I hear my mommy and daddy received their I 800 approval today and this is a good thing! I've also learned that I don't have just one, or two, but THREE big brothers and they have said that I can't go out on a date until I'm 30!!! Oh my ~ I'm glad they are going to be protective and all but we are really going to have to negotiate the age of my first date!

Merry Christmas!

Gabriella's Room...almost ready

After years of dalmatians, basketballs, sports themes and nascar we have PINK in our home!!

The dolls are ready to be loved on and are warm and cozy under a very special blanket made by Aunt Jennifer:)

The makeup table is ready for Gabriella to accentuate her princess status.

On a perfectly sunny day this picture came out a little dark ~ I do love her lamp:)

This is my favorite part of her entire room. It is a picture of Emily and Gabriella in their foster home together in China. While the other frame has a picture of Gabriella, it is waiting to be filled with a picture of the girls the first time they are reunited here in the USA:)

The most beautiful little girl in the world!!

As you can tell we are beyond excited as we just received updated pictures of the most beautiful little girl in the world!! Did you notice she is even holding a picture of herself ~ my little girl who loves to play with balls looks like she may even like to wear dresses ~ something is telling me I may just have a little shopping buddy:) Our agency commented that Gabriella now even has hair ~ here comes the ribbon and bows!! I already have a box, similar to one people use for dividing beads and all of her hair bows are divided by colors and are just waiting to be matched with the outfits hanging in her closet. Papa saw her closest last week and mentioned that she already has a good start on her wardrobe ...I believe there is a song that says "we've only just begun" and that's how I feel about her wardrobe:) Gabriella has gained 6 pounds since her last update ~ she is now at 28 pounds and is 34 inches tall ~ she hasn't gained much in the way of height but she has in weight and we are very thankful for that:)

All of our paper work is now completed and we are hoping to have travel approval very soon so we can bring Gabriella HOME to her forever family:)

Signing our LOA & Update

Courtney this update is for you and anyone else who is wondering how our paper work is going:) We signed our LOA accepting Sun Wen Hao as our daughter on November 18, 2009 and sent it back to our agency:) Today we received a certificate of educational requirement completion from our agency which allows us to mail in our I 800 tomorrow; we will also be mailing our DS230 back to our agency tomorrow as well:)

One of my sweet sisters, Kris, lives in Chicago and hand delivered our Visa information to the China consulate on Monday; well, they have very limited hours only being open from 9:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 2:45 and they were closed when she arrived. Kris returned the next day and gave them our information. Well....we have two issues we need to correct. First, our Visa photo can't be a copy of our passport photo and they need a new, 2x2 original photo for our Visas. Secondly Curtis sent a priority pre-paid return mail envelope and it needs to be an express pre-paid envelope for the China consulate to return it in. Tomorrow we will be mailing Kris two new photos as well as a new pre-paid envelope and a gift card for all her time she is spending helping us to bring Gabriella home:) We are hoping and praying that we receive travel approval for the end of Jan or the first week of February, before China's holiday the week of February 14: our agency feels that this may very well be our time line and we are hoping so as well:)

To summarize how Courtney described receiving travel approval on her blog the last forms that we are mailing in will unite in China; once these forms unite and become "married" they then form a new form which is our travel approval. The travel approval is the LAST form we are now waiting on and once we have this China will invite us to travel to their country to bring Gabriella home to her forever family:)