We caught our first glimpse of his beautiful but timid black-brown eyes on January 18.
We submitted our Letter of Intent to be his parents on January 25.
We received our Letter Seeking Confirmation/Letter of Approval officially approving us to be his parents on June 2.
And on Monday, we received the official Travel Approval from China to go pick up our SON!
We’ll be flying to China on August 10, meeting our boy for Adoption Day/Family Day on August 14, and then spending two weeks together as a family touring his country and becoming students of this superhero we have been dying to meet for seven entire months! We’ll return on August 25.
Yes, ALL FIVE OF US!
We adopt as a team, we love as a team, we travel as a team. <3
We bought our tickets yesterday (and scored one for Superhero 4 from Adoption Air for $659!). In the meantime, we have exactly two weeks to obtain our visas (learn why you should save yourself five hours of driving and $30 in computer pay-by-the-hour fees by always downloading the most recent version of computer software HERE), prepare for maternity leave (thank you, most amazing bosses in the world, for giving me six weeks of leave from the work-from-home job I love), clean our house (dear Superhero 4, I promise that this packing tornado mess will not be your daily future life!), prepare for the first day of school (which will fall three days after we return) and cram everything six people and one brand new child need for two weeks, plus gifts for nannies, officials and an entire foster family (plus the entire box of gifts that Superhero 2 used his birthday money to buy for children at Superhero 4's orphanage) into five 44-pound checked bags and one small carry-on each.
Equals I may be a little MIA from the blog and Facebook until I’m on that plane to China.
This time around, I know better what to expect. And this time, I know what I want to do differently.
Although I process life through writing and want to document every detail of our first weeks together for our son to have later on in life, my PRESENCE, not my POSTING, needs to be my first priority. I’ll post to the blog as I can, but this time, I’m not wasting precious naptimes and early waking hours writing when I could be snuggling or sleeping with this boy who has occupied my dreams for the last seven months of my life. I’ll likely post daily pictures to Facebook (“like” or “follow” the page now to follow our journey – www.facebook.com/ofcapesandcombatboots), because that’s fast and easy and I can do that in seconds from my phone. But this time, I’m giving myself permission to WRITE LESS and ENJOY MORE. And to ultimately allow our newest superhero to dictate how our time is spent together in China. <3
In the meantime, we would LOVE your prayers — for our family, for our travels, for our new son and for the foster family who is right now preparing to tell him goodbye.
Thank you SO MUCH, blog community. All of you have loved on us and supported us and encouraged us and journeyed with us as we have raced to this boy we can’t wait to meet in just two and a half short weeks.
We can’t even tell you how much it means to be a part of your little village.
We love you, we thank you and we can’t wait to introduce you to our new superhero in T minus 18 days!
Until China …