WE HAVE LOA!!!

So I spoke to soon with my last post. We are happy to annouce that we received our letter of approval for our beautiful June Skye on January 25th, 2010. It looks like China signed it on the 21st of Jan and we got the call on Monday @ about 2pm. We are so ridiculously excited!!! That means in about 3 months we will have our second daughter! Next steps are filling out the I-800 paperwork for immigration (which I already did and overnighted to Texas on 1/26) then we wait for our approval, then it's cabled to Guangzhou National Visa Center, then we get a letter from NVC, Next we wait for out article 5 to be picked up and then we wait for our travel approval and consulate appointments and FINALLY it's off to China. This usually takes an average of 60-70 days but can vary widely (just like LOA wait).
The reality hit Shane and I Monday night that we are actually going to have 2 daughters. EEEKKK!! It's all REAL now and although very exciting I have to admit a bit scary also. There are just the unknowns that I sit and dwell on while we wait...like attachment, lack of sleep for us for awhile, will she like us, will she allow us to comfort her during her grieving process, how will Jaili react, will Jaili feel left out, how do we fit 2 kids in our queen size bed : )  , how's June's eyesight and her strabismus (lazy eye), when do we schedule her eye doctor appointment (which reminds me I need to call our insurance about referral to Casey Eye Institute in Portland), how are we going to get together $3000 more for travel in 3 months, anywho the list goes on and on.I was awake several times last night thinking about it all. I know it's all going to work out great but like I said I have 3 months to obsess about it right now. I just need to remember that this is God's plan and through him all things are possible.
 On a side note we are so grateful to Jaili and June's Auntie Shannon. She will be traveling to Oregon from Texas and then off to China with us to help with everything. That is a big relief and will help us out so much. Huge blessing for us and she is REALLY excited to go also.
We are also trying to decide if we should go to Beijing again or just to Nanchang and then Guangzhou. It is going to be less expensive to go to just Nanchang and Guangzhou but on the other hand Jaili and Shannon (ok and Shane and I) are excited to see the great wall and all the sites of Beijing. Jaili girl talks about it alot and it would be nice to have a few days to relax and cruise around before we got Miss June. Anywho, we cannot wait to meet our newest addition.
We also received 6 new pictures of June on the 25th. I will try and post all of them, I keep having issues getting the pictures on blogger right now. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. They keep wanting to end up all over the page or not post at all. So in the pictures she is wearing about 7 layers of clothes and has some sweet boogers in her nose (I did try to retouch them out). Our Holt director Beth (who is absolutely awesome BTW) said it was very cold where June is (Jiangxi) right now and the houses are concrete with no heat, so hence the 5 bazillion layer, the red cheeks and green boogers.

Hope you enjoy the new photos of June. I think they are all on there, even though it's not set up very well

Updates of June

 So here we are at 125 days waiting for our LOA (letter of approval) and still nothing yet. We hope to get in any day now. Holt let us know that we have been in the review department since Dec 24th and it usually takes anywhere from 1-2 months from then for LOA. We are praying we will get it soon to bring our little one home. Holt has been fantastic with everything and were able to get updates for us. We got one new picture of June and a little more information on her. It looks like she has strabismus (lazy eye) with one of her eyes so we will see what we need to do to help her with it when she comes home. Besides that it looks like she is doing well. She is currently 18.3 lbs and 28 inches tall. Similar in size to Jaili girl at the same age. It also says that she is able to walk while holding on to furniture now and can say ma ma and baba. I'm so happy to know that she is doing well but it also breaks my heart to know that she is having all these firsts and we are not there to share it with her. With the current time frame it looks like we will not be getting her until June or July. It makes me very sad that the whole thing is taking so much longer than we were wanting/thinking.
Jaili is so precious, she really can't wait until we bring home baby sister. She has her picture under her pillow and gives it a kiss at bedtime and tells it "I already love you so much baby sister".
 The holidays were wonderful this year, although it felt like we had a hole in our family because we were missing June. Jaili was so much fun. She was so excited for everything that it brought a whole new sense of awe to the holidays that I haven't had in many years. I can't wait to see both of the girls this next year.

Well, I'm hoping the next update will be one that I'm announcing that we've received our LOA!