Missing Cora. How is she celebrating Christmas?

Missing Cora and thinking about how she is celebrating Christmas and the New Year with her friends and Nannies.

The small number of Christians in China call Christmas Sheng Dan Jieh, which means Holy Birth Festival. They decorate their homes with evergreens, posters, and bright paper chains. The family puts up a Christmas tree, called "tree of light," and decorates it with beautiful lanterns, flowers, and red paper chains that symbolize happiness. They cut out red pagodas to paste on the windows, and they light their houses with paper lanterns, too.

Many Chinese enjoy the fun and color that Christmas brings to the drab winter season. Big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are gaily decorated at Christmas. Many people give parties on Christmas Eve, and some people enjoy a big Christmas dinner at a restaurant. Shops sell plastic trees and Christmas decorations for everyone to enjoy, and Santa Claus is a popular good-luck figure.

The Christmas  season is ushered in with fireworks. Jugglers and acrobats entertain, and people enjoy the merriment and feasting. In Hong Kong, which recently was restored to Chinese rule, Christmas Day is just one of seventeen public holidays.

At this time of year, people in Hong Kong also celebrate Ta Chiu, a festival of peace and renewal, by making offerings to saints and reading the names of everyone who lives in the area. On Christmas Eve, Christian children in China hang up their muslin stockings that are specially made so Dun Che Lao Ren, or "Christmas Old Man," can fill them with wonderful gifts. Santa Claus may also be called Lan Khoong-Khoong, "Nice Old Father."

The Chinese lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, begins in late January or early February. The celebration lasts for three days. While not part of Christmas, the New Year is the most important celebration of the year for the Chinese people. People travel long distances to be with their families. They decorate their homes with brightly colored banners. These banners carry messages of good wishes for the coming year. Many people exchange gifts at the New Year. Following tradition, very expensive, special presents are given only to close family members. Token gifts are given to friends and distant relations. Children especially enjoy their gifts of new shoes and hats. People put on new clothes for the New Year celebration. They prepare many special holiday dishes, and families come together at one house to enjoy them. The younger sons of the household serve dinner to the head of the household. For the first celebration, on New Year's Day, people offer rice, vegetables, tea, and wine to heaven and earth. They burn incense and candles to pay tribute to their ancestors and to all living members of the family. Chinese families turn out to watch the spectacular New Year's fireworks displays and the exciting lion dance. Several performers dance inside an enormous costume. They make the "lion" walk, slither, glide, leap, and crouch along the street as it leads a colorful procession. The greatest spectacle takes place at the Feast of the least one lantern for the occasion. Lanterns, when everyone lights at Other special events of the New Year include the Festival of the Dragons and the Fisherman's Festival. Throughout the three days of New Year's celebrations, everyone speaks only cheerful words to each other so they will have good luck in the coming year.

We are hoping that this will be the last New Year Cora will spend without her family.

We have our log-in date

We have our log-in date, November 21, 2012. We also received our packet from Lauren (WACAP), filled out all of the forms, had them notarized, and returned them to WACAP. They are not needed until we have our Letter Seeking Conformation. Now we are in for a long wait again. We are told the average wait time the past few months has been 2 to 3 months. We are hoping for much sooner!

CCCWA website status has changed

Our CCCWA website status has changed from “to be processed” to “in process”. Although the CCCWA has not yet posted our log-in date, this means that our dossier has been logged-in and has already been translated. We are usually notified of the log-in date first, then this status usually changes a few weeks later, but we are told this isn't the first time a family’s status has changed before the log-in date has been posted.

We will continue to follow up to find out our log-in date but this is good news! For now, we will start our 1-4 month wait for the Letter of Seeking Confirmation from this time but keep in mind that our log-in date may have actually been a few weeks ago. Since our status is “in process,” it means our dossier will now go to the review department and then it will be matched with Cora’s (Yan’s) file at which time they can issue the Letter of Seeking Confirmation. The Letter of Seeking Confirmation is the official approval from the CCCWA for us to adopt Shu, Yan.

We are now waiting for the packet that we talked to Lauren about previously. It will include forms and instructions for the next round of immigration paperwork (I-800,
I-864W, DS-230).

Once we have the Letter of Seeking Confirmation we are able to send Cora a care package that is from her Mama, Baba (Dad), and all of her brothers and sisters not from some “mysterious donation family”.

Dossier sent to WACAP

Our dossier was put in the mail on November 06, 2012 from WACAP to China. It should arrive at the CCCWA in the next 2-4 days. It typically takes the CCCWA anywhere from 2-4 weeks to notify us of our log-in date, but the actual log-in date is usually an earlier date than when we are notified. I’ll post once we have been notified of our log-in date.

After our dossier is logged-in, we can expect to receive our Letter of Seeking Confirmation from the CCCWA anywhere from 1-4 months later. While we wait for that we have a packet of WACAP referral acceptance paperwork  along with the forms and instructions for the next round of immigration paperwork (I-800, I-864W, DS-230) to work on filling out.

 

The Letter of Seeking Confirmation is the official approval from the CCCWA for us to adopt Cora (Shu, Yan). Once we have that we will be able to send Cora a care package.

Documents from the Chinese Consulate

We got our documents from the Chinese Consulate today. We are so excited! I will be mailing the Dossier Package out to Lauren at WACAP tonight.

I have so much left to do before Cora comes home!

Dossier Checklist

Dossier Checklist

1.      Birth Certificate for Shawn Verified and Authenticated

2.      Birth Certificate for Sharon Verified and Authenticated

3.      Marriage Certificate Verified and Authenticated

4.      Financial Statement Verified and Authenticated

5.      Physical Exam for Shawn Verified and Authenticated

6.      Physical Exam for Sharon Verified and Authenticated

7.      Police Clearance for Shawn Verified and Authenticated

8.      Police Clearance for Sharon Verified and Authenticated

9.      Letter of Employment for Shawn Verified and Authenticated

10.  Letter of Unemployment for Sharon Verified and Authenticated

11.  I-797C Notice of Action Approval Notice Verified and Authenticated

12.  Adoption Application Letter Verified and Authenticated

13.  Homestudy Verified and Authenticated

14.  Copy of Passport for Shawn

15.  Copy of Passport for Sharon

16.  Passport Photo for Shawn

17.  Passport Photo for Sharon

18.   Family Photos that Reflect Our family Life

 

We started our adoption of Cora with an application to WACAP on 04/20/2012. We are sending our dossier out to China (by way of WACAP) almost one month before our deadline of 12/09/2012.

The original estimated time of travel to China is 04/2013.

Good news! ...Bad news.

Good news! Our documents are here from the Chinese Consulate!

Bad news, we still have to wait for the two we did not do properly to come in. They signed for the documents on October 11, 2012 so we are hoping they will be back to us by October 21, 2012.

The Chinese Consulate puts a stamp and sticker on the backside of the Authenticated page from our Secretary of State Great Seal. It is very cool, the kids loved it. There was a little delay because the Consulate was closed for the Moon Festival and then again for Columbus Day.

We still need to have our passport pictures redone for our dossier but other than that we are ready for our dossier to be sent in. We are starting to think about what needs to be done to get ready to travel.

Dossier documents are at the Chinese Consulate

Our dossier documents are at the Chinese Consulate. I got a call (the good part because now I know they arrived) that one of our documents were not apostled and needed to be redone (the bad part). They will send all the documents back when they are verified and we will have to resend the ones that were not done properly. We were ahead of schedule but this will put us back another 10 days or so. Not too bad but we are so excited about bringing Cora home that these small setbacks that I should have noticed drive me crazy! We are still one step closer and getting very excited.

We are trying to figure out how to decorate Sasha and Cora’s room, get it organized and built in a way that it will be easily accessible for Cora to reach all she will want to play with and a bed built to suit her needs. I feel like the nesting stage is kicking in and we are still a long way from bringing Cora home.

Received our approval for our I 800

We received our approval for our I 800 on Thursday. I finally feel like we are really going to get this adoption done and Cora will be home with soon. It is such a game of hurry up and wait, the waiting is the worst part for me. Friday I went to have the last few documents notarized and drove to Lansing and had them apostled/ authenticated. IT seems that I need to check our notary more close because when I got to the Secretary of State Department of the Great Seal it seems that my notary did not date a document so they refused to authenticate it. I had to find Auntie Cheryl, who happens to work in Lansing, and have her find me a notary. She walked me personally to one. We only had about 20 minutes before they closed for lunch and I do not like the “crunch time” feeling. Everything worked out so I can send the documents for my dossier off to the Chinese Consulate. They need to have all of our original documents plus copies of each. I am so scared that something is going to happen during delivery (like they get lost) and I will have to start collecting documents again. We only have until December 9, 2012 to get all documents to China and I do not think there is any way to get that done. Everything has gone smooth so far so I know that my worry is not doing me any good, things always work out.

 

I hope to have the documents in the mail and on their way to the Chinese Consulate on Monday, three days to get there and checked in, ten days for them to return to us, and then we will be sending our Dossier to China! Everything is moving along at a good pace so I recalculated our “hope to travel date” to being the end of February instead of April (of cource I can always be wrong).  I will try to keep up with adjusting the date as we complete a new step towards bringing Cora home.

 

USCIS biometrics appointment

Drove to Detroit today for our USCIS biometrics appointment, this is just getting fingerprinted. We got up at 5:30 to get ready and woke up Rey and Max to get them ready for school. They both rode the bus and this is new for them in the morning. After they were up and moving we got Sasha up. She did really well for getting up almost 2 hours early. Everyone was ready for the bus and we only left about 10 minutes late. Sasha rode with us because the bus would not be by to get her for another hour and we would never make our appointment. Two hours later we arrived, walked in to an almost empty building, filled out a short form, were first in line, got fingerprinted and were out the door. The whole process took maybe 10 minutes.

We were very close to Comerica Park (Tigers Baseball Team) so we decided to stop by and take some pictures. It is very cool!

After we dropped Sasha off at school we decided to go and see a movie. Shawn picked one that he took the children to. It was The Odd Life of Timothy Green. It was very good but hard to watch. It is a movie about a couple who wants to have children and cannot. They went through the process to have a miracle happen, literally. I do not want to ruin the ending so all I can say is that it touched our hearts and lives in many ways. The ending really opened our eyes. It seemed like this movie was talking to us and letting us know we are doing the right thing. We were talking about the movie and our adoption and Shawn looked down to find a leaf very similar to the one in the movie. It spoke volumes to us. We saved it and it will go in Cora’s book with a copy of the story as to why it is so special. You need to see the movie to understand.

Next step will be sending our documents for authentication of our documents from the Chinese Consulate.  It will be so hard to put our only original documents in the mail and hope they make it there and back to us safely.

Received our biometrics appointment at USCIS

We received our biometrics appointment at USCIS today. Our appointment is for September 13, 2012 at 8:00 am. Our other children need to be at school at this time but I am sure we will find a way to work this out. This will give us the approval for Cora’s visa and give us the last piece of paperwork needed for our dossier!

We sent in our Application (I-800A) to WACAP

We are one step closer to Cora! We sent in our Application (I-800A) to WACAP so they can add a few supporting documents and they will then send it to USCIS. This will approve us to bring an adopted child with us back into the United States. Once we get our approval we will be able to send all of our documents to the Chinese Consulate for Authentication. We only have a few steps left!

Our homestudy was approved!

Our homestudy was approved through Family Adoption Consultants on Friday July 27, 2012. Louise has been great to work with; very understanding to our timeline, supportive when we worried, and always available to answer our questions when we needed her. Thank you Louise!

Now we send in our I-800A for immigration giving us permission from the American government to bring Cora home. We are hearing that it can take up to 16 weeks for their approval and to get the document we need from them to move to the next step of Cora’s adoption.

All of our dossier documents are completed and waiting so the day we get the I-800A returned we can send (or drive 31/2 hours if we are running out of time) our dossier to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for Authentication. 10 days to have our dossier processed and returned by mail, same day if we drive. This is all that is left to complete before we can send our dossier to China to finish the process and get a travel date. We have until December 9, 2012 to have all documents to China.

Tick, tick, tick…..

We are very happy to announce the new addition to our family…

We are very happy to announce the new addition to our family…

Cora ShuYan McClurg!

 I am sorry to say we cannot post pictures of her at this time but we will as soon as we can.

Cora was born June 20, 2008 in Ningbo China. She is almost exactly half the world away from us! Her favorite color is red and we are told her favorite thing to do is play with blocks and watch TV. We were able to “send” her a birthday party with a cake and presents for her as well as all of the children in her group (17!) Stuffed toys, books, candy and fresh fruit for everyone.  It was sent as a donation so at this time she still has not seen pictures of her new family. When the homestudy is complete and officially approved we will send her a photo album full of pictures of the family, house, pets and her room. Max, Sasha and Rey said they liked that we did this for them and that it was a very helpful.

We will continue to post as we learn more.