We have Pre-Approval!!!

We have just received our pre-approval letter from China!  This means they've agreed to review our dossier for the adoption of the specific child we've been matched with!  This also means I'm now at liberty to share our little Rayanna's picture:

Isn't she adorable?!!!

She lives in Jiangxi Province, which is in southern China.  (That's right next to Fujian, which is where I went to teach English.  Should be lots of fun if we're there in the sweltering month of August!)

She will turn one year old this month!  That means she'll be less than a year and a half when we get her!   I'm very excited that we'll be part of her life while she's still a baby in many ways.

The kids all say they're excited to have another little sister.  But Tabitha's feelings seem to fluctuate.  She's already informed us that she's not going to share her toys, and she's going to tell Baby Sister, "No, no no!"  Heath and I are fully expecting some all-out girl fights, but hopefully it'll only be a temporary problem.  =)

We still need to come up with several thousand dollars before travel time.  God has graciously been providing already, and we're sure He'll provide the rest of it.  Thank you so much to all of you who have been praying, donating, or otherwise helping us out!  We appreciate everyone's help and support so much!

Our next step is waiting for China to review everything and give us official permission to adopt her.  (This is called LOA--Letter of Acceptance.)  That can take anywhere from 1-3 months.  Once we get that we need to get USCIS to approve our approval, and then we send that approval back to China.  Then we wait for the US Consulate's approval of the approval of the approval.  Once everybody has approved the approvals of the approvals (it's a bit like a tennis game), then China sends us permission to travel, about 3 weeks before we actually go!  So we're figuring August or September will most likely be our travel time.

Hard to believe it's really happening!