It's Here!!

Our Letter of Approval arrived today!!  It is so exciting to have the official adoption approval in hand.  It is already on it's way back to China... no wasting time on moving forward!

We are anticipating traveling to China in later February or early March.  Now we wait for immigration approvals from US*CIS and the Invitation to Travel from the CC*AA.  I'm glad we have lots of holidays to distract us from more waiting since March seems awfully far away!

Anna Kathryn is ready to go get her sister now.  We went out to dinner to celebrate (Cracker Barrel.  Sure hope Olivia develops a taste for biscuits and chicken and dumplings!)  and we told her at dinner.  She got SO excited- her eyes got real big, and her mouth made an "o" and she just said, "Ohhhhhh, Ting Ting, my sister!"

The best part is... we can finally start communicating with our girl!!!  And we believe the orphanage will tell her and begin to prepare her now, too.  Please be praying for her as she begins to learn about us, and faces so many changes to come.

Off to scope out Care Package options now... woo hoo!

Introducing Olivia Ruth YuTing!

We are THRILLED to announce (officially) that we are adopting again!  We are planning to adopt a nine-year-old girl from Hunan Province, China, to be called Olivia Ruth YuTing.  Yes, she's another Spicy Girl!! 


Olivia is active and restless (exactly what AK's referral said about her-- and boy was that true!), enjoys playing games and singing, and is a good student.  We cannot wait until we have our Referral Approval so we can finally begin communicating with her.  We are so excited to add another daughter to our family, and Anna Kathryn is really looking forward to having another big sister-- and traveling to China to meet her.  

It took about a year of adjustment for all three of us, but Mark and I began to seriously discuss adopting again last fall.  However, we had no idea how we could afford to adopt again, and we originally felt led to request to adopt a child younger than Anna Kathryn.  

Last January, I decided on a whim (so I thought) to look at our agency's waiting child list.  When I saw Olivia's picture I felt my heart just leap; I began to cry and told Mark that I felt very drawn to this photo of a young girl with sparkling eyes and a shy smile.  I wanted to know more about her.  We prayed and agreed to take things a step at a time, as we felt the Lord leading us.  The Lord kept opening the doors to proceed, including providing the first 1/3 of our adoption expenses so we could start gathering our documents and get our home study done.  Gathering our paperwork has taken longer than we anticipated (honestly, doesn't it always??), but even in our impatience we are confident that the Lord's timing is perfect. 

We sent our dossier to China on September 10 and were logged in on September 17, and now are waiting for all the remaining approvals.  We are hoping that we will travel by the end of the year (miracles can happen!).  

We are praying specifically that no matter when we do travel, we will be home before Olivia's 10th birthday in mid-February.  As well as being an older child, Olivia has a manageable but significant medical need, and she has been waiting a very long time for a family.  We feel a sense of urgency as we prepare to adopt her and bring her into the family.

Please join us in praying for Olivia as we prepare to bring her home, as she faces a huge number of changes and adjustments.  We are also praying for a kindred spirit between her and Anna Kathryn; that Mark and I would be wise and compassionate as we deal with the parenting challenges before us and we walk through this new territory together.   

We will keep you posted as we get closer to bringing Olivia home!

Just One Year

...ago today we got The Call.  It was a hot and sticky July Sunday afternoon and Mark and I were napping after church. 

The house phone rang.  We ignored it. 

My cell phone rang.  I pretended I couldn't hear it.  

Mark's cell phone rang.  I began to wonder if there was some kind of emergency.  I dragged myself out of my comfy nest and went to see who wanted to talk to us so much.  

It was a family coordinator with our agency: "Mark and Kimberly, we think we have a baby for you..."  I almost didn't make it through the call I was crying so hard.  It almost didn't seem real, that we were finally getting the Call we had hoped and prayed for for so long.  

Within minutes we opened up an e-mailed file and saw the face of our daughter for the very first time.  We knew immediately. 

She was tiny. 

She was beautiful.  

She would be ours.

On the one year anniversary of the referral of our daughter-- and every day--we are so thankful for the blessing of her.  It's hard to remember the time before we saw her face, knew her Chinese name, held her in our arms.  I remember the pain of the wait, but now it's like this dull ache; I can recall it but the pain is no longer acute.  We have days of great joy and times of challenge, but always, always love life with our Snickerdoodle.  

Well I just heard the news today 

It seems my life is going to change 

I closed my eyes, begin to pray 

Then tears of joy stream down my face 

With arms wide open 

Under the sunlight 

Welcome to this place 

I'll show you everything 

With arms wide open 

With arms wide open 

- With Arms Wide Open by Creed

  Anna Kathryn BoDi 

July 11, 2009

If you want to read the whole story, click here!

We're going to China!!

We leave September 11 and return home on September 27 with Anna Kathryn!  Gotcha Day will probably be on September 15 or 16.  

After the frustration of this week Mark and I are so excited... and relieved... and excited!  Yesterday we heard that more consulate appointments had opened up and that AWAA was trying hard to get their families into those slots.  I tried not to get my hopes up too much, but of course I did anyway.  We didn't hear anything further the rest of the day, and we went to bed wondering (hoping) we'd hear something today, before the long Labor Day weekend.  

I even checked my e-mail at 10:15 last night, hoping to hear something... if only I'd been a few minutes later!

This morning when I got to work and opened up my e-mail it was waiting in my inbox:  an e-mail titled "Concrete Travel Dates."  I gasped so loudly my media assistant came running in to see what was the matter.  

So the day has been a blur of grade level meetings (I scheduled myself to do a media center orientation for the faculty in all three grade levels), e-mails and frantic phone calls about flights, and confirmation of plane tickets.  

We have one minor issue to deal with, still.  I also got an e-mail stating that the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou does not have any record that we were re-fingerprinted last December (which we had to do to renew our paperwork for USCIS, which allows us to bring AK into the country as a US citizen.)  We got our updated form in late April, after we finally made it through the homestudy update.  I panicked for a minute, then settled to down to figure out what to do.  I tried calling 4 times, but never did manage to talk to a human.  I ended up leaving work early, going home, scanning our official document, and emailing it along with a rather pleading message to the Charlotte USCIS office.  Hope they get it and send along the information ASAP.  Please pray that we get this particular bump smoothed out quickly.

So, this weekend, we are cleaning closets (and my grungy house), making lists of stuff to pack, and gathering what we need.  I can hardly believe we have plane tickets to China!  In 2 weeks, we'll be there, and a few days later, our daughter will be in our arms.  As Allison would say-- wowzers.  

Moving at the Speed of Life

Why haven't I been blogging much, despite all of the major happenings in the Kovach household over the past few weeks?  Well, we've been really busy!  Here is a small sampling of what Mark and I have done and have been up to:

• Celebrated Mark's son Abe's wedding at the SC beach (this was our vacation, too) and welcomed new daughter-in-law, Karen, into the family
• Celebrated Mark's son Caleb's wedding in the NC mountains (yesterday, in fact!) and welcomed new daughter-in-law, Leslie, into the family
• Traveled to Florida to visit my parents and grandparents
• Traveled to Ohio to visit Mark's parents and brother's family (and bring home a crib for Anna Kathryn)
• Many phone calls with Hillary about Alie's impending arrival
• Registered for baby stuff
• Shopped for and selected a day care
• Gathered our visa paperwork, and mailed numerous documents to our agency!
• Painted the nursery, ordered and set up crib bedding, clean out closets (sadly-- not done with that part yet!). Mark put the crib together early one morning while I slept in a little-- I'd better enjoy that while it lasts!  We are recycling some of my childhood furniture and a few "pre-owned" and loved items into nursery furniture.
• Packed up Mark's classroom at his former school and moved him into his new room at another middle school
• Spent an afternoon at my school-- I needed Mark's help with assembling media carts and hanging new signage in the media center
• Spent a LOT of time on the phone and on e-mail discussing the good news!!  Also much time has been spent online gathering travel and packing information, and reading more about attachment and bonding.  A little too much time, as always, has been spent on Rumor Queen's site.  
• Survived a week of teacher workdays (meeting after meeting, mixed with some visiting, and not enough shelving) and prepped for the first day of school-- August 25!

I bet I've forgotten something... but you get the idea!  The time moves so fast, and yet so slowly as we wait.

Friday afternoon at 4:30, as we were driving up for Caleb's wedding rehearsal and dinner, the phone rang just as we got into Boone (and better cell service).  It was the travel coordinator at our agency telling us that we just received our Invitation to Travel from the Chinese government!  Well, we were floored-- I was driving and had to pull over so I could listen and take notes without wrecking the car.   Mark had been snoozing and at first didn't know why I was pulling over.  Much excitement ensued as we headed on to the rehearsal, despite getting totally lost on Beech Mountain.  

We have two possible windows for travel; AWAA is trying to make sure we travel with a group. We could travel September 11-24 (or 25, depending on travel arrangements), provided we can get a consulate appointment (CA) in late September.  The CA is crucial because that gives us Anna Kathryn's travel visa and citizenship papers.  If we can't get a CA in Sept., we will have to wait until mid-October or later to travel.  We are praying hard that we can get a CA for September travel.  (September is very busy, sandwiched between the Olympics this month and the National Holidays and Trade Fair in October.  I've heard that appointments are becoming scarce.)  Obviously, we would rather travel sooner than later!!  Still, we know God has this all planned out-- if it's in his plan for us to be united with AK sooner rather than later, it will happen.  

It's been six weeks exactly since we first saw Anna Kathryn's sweet face.  They have been some of the busiest weeks of my life!  Sometimes I wish things would slow down just a little, so I could catch my breath and really reflect on all the changes in our family right now.  

RA today!!

Mark and I got a call from Anna, our Family Coordinator at AWAA, this afternoon as we rolled down I-95, on our way to Florida for a super-quick trip to see my parents and grandparents.  

We have our referral approval (otherwise known as the Letter of Approval) from the CCAA to adopt Anna Kathryn!!!!

This is the long-awaited, officially official paperwork that says it's all systems go from here on out. The countdown begins for our Travel Approval now.  This could arrive as early as 4 weeks from now, or as long as a couple of months (but I truly do not think it will take that long.  No, it's not just my expectant-mama optimism, but the pattern for some other families who were reviewed when they were matched.)  We have about 147,000 things to do before we leave, but if someone said that we could get on a plane to China tomorrow, you bet I'd be on it.  

So, since we are officially official, it is my absolute joy to share Anna Kathryn's beautiful face with the world:  

Home again, home again, jiggidy jig

We just got home tonight from our trip to the beach and celebrating Abe and Karen's wedding in Murrells Inlet, SC.  Mark and I are worn out, but in a good way.  It was a wonderful week with the kids.  We got to spend several days out at the beach (random burn struck me again), did a little shopping, hung out with all of the kids and their friends/fiancees/boyfriends and did a lot of food prep/errand running to get ready for the wedding.  I'll have to devote a future post to the wedding-- it was beautiful and a lot of fun.  

We got 2 pieces of good news while we were vacationing!  The first was that we got our PA, or pre-approval, from the CCAA on Tuesday.  This is the first of 3 approvals that we must get from China before we can travel to get Anna Kathryn!

The PA basically states that the CCAA has received our letter of intent that we sent electronically the day after we got AK's referral.  After they review our dossier paperwork, they will issue a Referral Approval (RA) -- which is also, confusingly, called a Letter of Approval (LOA in adoption jargon).  It's a good thing that as an educator, I am used to dealing with an alphabet soup of acronyms on a daily basis.  The RA is the final, official approval that states that the CCAA has agreed to let us adopt AK.  Now, there really is no chance that they would say no-- it's just the red tape that is part and parcel of international adoption.  Plus, our dossier has already been through the review process, so we have cleared that hurdle.  We are hopeful that our RA will come quickly because our dossier is out of review already.

Due to the Olympics and the likely shutdown of most government offices during that time, I don't expect to see our TA until well after it's over.  My gut feeling is that we will travel in early October, but that is a total guess at this point.  Once we get TA, we apply for our visas and start making travel arrangements! Woo-hoo!!

The 2nd piece of good news is that Mark has a new teaching position.  He will be teaching 8th grade math at one of the top middle schools in the county.  He is excited and thrilled, and I am totally jealous that he could potentially carpool with Allison, since they will be at the same school.  God is good!  He worked this situation out for Mark's good, and we are so relieved that he is not only out of job-related limbo, but has landed at a great school not too far from home and the day care where we hope AK will be able to go.  

So, the summer continues to blaze past at the speed of light.  I may be a little scarce again this next week.  I need to finish the last of my work for my summer grad school classes (thank goodness all of my profs gave extentions on the final projects) and we leave later in the week to visit my family in Florida.  I hope to post about the wedding soon!

Also-- you've probably noticed my new look!  It was time for a makeover.  I found an awesome website with the cutest FREE blog designs that are super-easy to use.  Thanks, Leelou!!  Go here if you want to know more or spruce up your blog.  Tell me what you think about the new look!

The Best Phone Call EVER

I've started this post three times, and it all sounded lame, so I'm just going to announce it:  

WE GOT THE CALL!!!!

As in, the call that we have been dreaming of for over two years.  The moment I've been longing for for even longer.  

The call from our agency, in which one of the family coordinators said the magic words:  "We have a baby for you." 

 (Actually, I have no idea what she actually said.  We were both in shock.  Shaking, trying not to cry, frantically searching for a piece of paper on which to take notes.  If she had asked me for my name at that moment, I do not think I could have recalled it.)  

So:  

We are the soon-to-be parents of a beautiful, 8-month old baby girl.  Her Chinese name is Bo Di.  She is currently living at the Social Welfare Institute of Poyang County, in Jiangxi Province, located in the southeastern part of China.  According to her medical report, she is a happy baby with a sweet smile, a deep sleeper (I pray it is still true, since the paperwork is 4 months old), is active and restless (like Mark) and likes to play.  She apparently gets really excited and smiles and waves her hands happily when she sees food at mealtime (a girl after my own heart.)

Mark and I stared at each other, stunned, when we hung up with the agency.  (I didn't know that they even worked on Sundays!)  Then we opened up the e-mail with information and pictures, but we already knew.  Mark said, "That's our Anna Kathryn."  We devoured every scrap of information, and called AWAA back to say, yes, of course, we want to accept her referral.  

Then we got to make the other best phone calls ever-- telling our families.  And sending joyous e-mails to more family and friends.  In between calls, we kept saying things to each other like, "Is this real?" "Isn't she beautiful?"  "Did this really happen?"  

We just spent a frantic 24 hours gathering paperwork and writing a "Letter of Intent" (LOI) to the CCAA stating that yes, we really, really, really truly want to adopt her-- and some other stuff.  We have a 48 hour window in which to do this, or we could have lost AK's referral. Needless to say, neither one of us slept a whole lot last night.  But today we visited a pediatrician to have her medical report reviewed, and he said the info indicates that she is quite healthy and developmentally on target. We e-mailed our LOI, some other papers, and more photos to AWAA.  Around 5:00 p.m. today, we got the e-mail saying that our Electronic Acceptance was sent to China and she will be ours!

I know y'all want to see pictures, but we have to wait a few weeks before we post them.  I promise they will go up as soon as we get the OK from AWAA.  

We don't know exactly when we will travel, other than it will be sometime in the next 2-5 months.  We feel pretty safe in thinking we will be home with AK before Christmas.  I'm personally hoping we will be with her before her first birthday-- November 3!

In an amazing "God-thing,"  Anna Kathryn was born on a significant date in our family's lives. November 3, 2007 was also the day we held my niece Natalie's funeral.  It was by far the most horrible day of our lives.  I always wondered if I would know what I was doing on the day of my daughter's birth.  I never would have dreamed that a day of such tremendous sorrow would also be the day of a new beginning in the life of my family.  This is not a coincidence.  I believe with my whole heart that the Lord and Nat-Nat were watching over Anna Kathryn on that day.  

Mark and I are SO EXCITED.  We are totally in love with Anna Kathryn.  Last night, we were looking back through a little book about adoption that Mark got for me around the time we sent in our dossier.  We saw this quote, and know that this is what we will tell Anna Kathryn one day soon, when we first hold her in our arms.  

You are now a part of this family, my darling, wonderful child.  You are and always will be the choice of my heart.  Welcome home.