Memorial Weekend 2011

This weekend we went to Washington DC to see our nation's capitol. While we were there, we were lucky enough to be able to coordinate a visit with a family who adopted a boy that is one of John's friends!! They haven't seen each other in 18 months, and it was a nice reunion for everyone. This family adopted four children from China over the years, and they brought five (of their 9) children to see us in Washington. Collectively, our two families had 9 children, six of whom were adopted from China, and we managed to feed them all dinner and watch them swim without any trouble at all. We told the family about our upcoming adoption of KangChao (Logan) and we think he lives in the same orphanage that their daughter Emma lived before her adoption. What a small world! We also went to the National Zoo to see the two panda bears that are on loan from China. Ben was so excited! We tried to see pandas in the Guangzhou Zoo, but for some reason they weren't in their cage that day. Overall, it was a fabulous weekend.

Biometrics appointment

We finally received the Appointment Notice from the Department of Homeland Securty U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. Our "biometrics" (a fancy way of saying fingerprints) appointment is June 6th at 9am. Darn. I was supposed to go on a field trip with Ben's school to the zoo that day. Obviously, I'll have to let the teacher know that I can't go anymore. We can't reschedule the appointment again. We lost almost two months by rescheduling the first appointment. Luckily, we have done this once before, and we know that no matter what we do or how much we hurry, the adoption will take over a year to finalize. That's just how long it takes, period.

No progress

It's been over a month since I sent the notice to the Dept. of Homeland Security asking them to reschedule our finger-print appointment, and we still haven't heard anything back. I've called them twice and left two messages, with no response. In the meantime, I booked our next cruise vacation for Feb. 2012, and we reserved a room large enough to include Logan too, just in case we have him home by then. I've been reading a blog lately, entitled two tots and a teen, and the family just adopted two more adorable little boys from China, ages 3.5 and 18 months. Yes, it made me wonder if we should adopt two more boys again. We have the room, and six is a nice even number. Three teens and three little ones...hmmm. I mentioned the idea to David, and he is thinking about it now too. Elizabeth Rose is in China right now, visiting two orphanages in the Shandong province, where Logan is currently residing. When Elizabeth Rose gets back, maybe she'll have new information about Logan, and maybe she will send us more videos of little boys!