DTC - Take Three!

I've got a circle of friends... all China adoption moms... and we can pretty much have an entire conversation that includes nothing but acronyms, numbers, and Chinese geographical names, and it makes perfect sense... to us. I do, however, realize that to the other 99% of the population on the planet, we barely sound coherent! So, I'll give you a little refresher here! 

Today we are DTC!!! 

(Dossier To China)

That means that our Dossier - that big, huge packet of information about us that we've been working on for several months now - is on its way to China! That means the Paperchase is officially over! Woohoo! In retrospect, it really flew by! 

So now what? 

Well, sometime in the next few days our Dossier will be logged-in to China's system. This will be our Log-in Date (LID). As soon as we have LID, the Dossier will be sent for complete translation, and then will be processed to officially match us with Meimei. 

"But wait... Aren't you already matched with her?"

Well, yes, in the sense that her file is earmarked and saved for us. No one else will be matched with her. However, China's official recognition of our official match with her... officially... is known as the LOA (Letter of Acceptance). This can come anywhere between 30 - 90 days from LID. Typically it seems to come a little more quickly if you are Pre-Approved before LID. (Are you cross-eyed from acronyms yet?). I'm holding out hope that we receive our LOA in under 60 days... Closer to 30 would be ideal! So, for now we wait. We officially have nothing to do right now but twiddle our thumbs... and continue life around here with 5 other kids... and catch up on all the schoolwork we've gotten behind on during the paperchase... but other than that... just thumb twiddling. 

When will we travel? Still too soon to know for sure, but we still feel confident that late summer is a pretty safe bet. 

That's pretty much all for now! We're excited to have reached this milestone. I'm glad to have the paperchase over with, and we are so thankful that God has once again walked us through this process in such a gracious way and poured out blessings on us the whole time. He has surrounded us with support from friends and family, brought us new friends along the way who have become so precious to me, and once again allowed us to work with not only a great agency, but the best social worker on the planet! I'm going to bed one smiley girl tonight.

And Meimei? We don't really get much new info until we get to her, but she seems to be doing well, she is in good care, and we are all super excited to bring her home!