Travel Plans

My travel plans are coming along. Yesterday I officially booked my plane tickets and my hotel. I will be leaving on Wednesday, September 3 (3 weeks from today) and will arrive in Hanoi, Vietnam on Friday morning (Vietnam time). I will be staying in a hotel in the Old Quarter part of Hanoi where many other families from our agency will also be staying. Over the past few weeks, several other families also received travel approval so there will be quite a large group of us over there at once. We are scheduled to go to the orphanage on Monday the 8th, that is when I will get Maddie!!

20 days, and counting!!

I-600 Approval!

We were beginning to think this day would never come, but it has! Late last night we FINALLY got our I-600 approval! This means I can travel to Vietnam to bring Madison home! We are still awaiting a travel date which we should hopefully receive in a few days.

When I blew out the candle on Madison's birthday cake 2 days ago, my wish came true!

Stay tuned for more details.

Happy Birthday Madison!

Today Madison turns 1. It is very sad for me to post this and not have her here with us yet. To think that she has spent the entire first year of her life in an orphanage. We are thinking of her today and praying that they do the investigation on her case very soon so we can travel to bring her home. The boys and I are going to make a cake for her today and sing Happy Birthday to her and we will take a few pictures so someday when she asks about her first birthday we will have some pictures to show her.

New Pictures of Madison

We got some updated pictures of Madison on Tuesday. She looks great and is so pretty! They are definitely feeding her well. We also got some of her recent measurements, she weighs 19.8 lbs and is 27.6 inches long. She has 4 teeth on top, 2 on the bottom and can sit and crawl by herself, and stand and walk with help. It seems she is doing very well. We are still waiting for them to do the investigations and keeping our fingers crossed that it will be SOON!

Maggie Maher

I finally got some recent pictures of Maggie from Kathleen. She is doing very well. She is a tiny little girl, only weighing in at 13 lbs. and will be "1" already this Wednesday, July 16; "Happy Birthday Maggie!".

11 Months Old

Madison turned 11 months old yesterday. Here is her nursery, the finished product!

A Brief Update

Just thought I would post a brief update since we haven't posted in a while. I guess we can safely say (for now) that no news has been good news. The latest news out of Vietnam is, yes the US and Vietnam have agreed to do the investigations on the cases in our province (Phu Tho), but right now it is a matter of “who needs to talk to who” to arrange the time when US can get to the province to complete the investigations. They are telling us to remain positive but it is very difficult to do as time continues to pass by. Madison turned 10 months old on the 29th of May and my (current) wish is to have her home by her first birthday. We do know that things are still very unstable surrounding adoptions between the US and Vietnam and at this point anything can happen. Our agency still tells us that they do have a backup plan for us involving new referrals of new babies if these ones fall through, but as we said in our last post, time is running out and if this backup plan has to happen and we do not have a referral by September 1, we will have to decide on another country.

On a more positive note, Kathleen traveled to Vietnam between May 8-May 24 and she is now home with Maggie. I posted a few pictures below from her trip and I am waiting for her to send me some more so I can post them, but she has been a bit busy lately:) But she says all is well with Maggie. She is very tiny, only 12 lbs for a 10 month old, but she has 9 teeth and eats anything Kathleen feeds her. She is currently working on crawling and is adjusting very well to her new home & her Mommy! I can't wait to see her!