I just wanted to send an update. We are anxiously awaiting news from our adoption agency. Next week, China should be sending out referrals. They typically send referrals once a month. A referral is the picture, medical report and history of your child. This is the news we have been waiting so long for.

I would love to think we are in this next group that gets referrals, but it is anyone's guess right now. The CCAA (Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs) does not give out any information until after the referrals are mailed. Families don't know when their referral is coming until their agency has it in hand.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard, "When's the baby coming?" I wish I knew. I really wish I had the answer. It is often difficult to explain to family and friends, but even more so to our children.

What I do know is that our Log in Date (LID) was June 20th (of 2005). They just gave referrals to families through June 6th. That means there are about 14 days' worth of families ahead of us. We could get our referral the first of June, but most likely will get it the first of July. Of course, these are just educated guesses. We really won't know for sure until the CCAA mails our referral. When we submitted our paperwork to China, the wait time to be matched with your baby was 6 months. It has grown to 11 months plus. I have had people ask if we are still going to adopt....of course we are! If it were up to us we would have been to China and back by now. But....it is not up to us. God's timing is perfect so, we patiently wait (and I mean PATIENTLY wait).

We know that one day not too long from now, we will meet Olivia and bring her home to be part of our family forever.

Since the waiting time of this process has been long and difficult, we decided to spice things up a bit. We got a new puppy. Her name is Sophie and she is 6-months-old. She is a lot of fun to have around (minus the housebreaking part). We have had her 12 days and she hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet. She has been a great diversion to all of this waiting.

I have to let you all know that Jarrett actually said more than just the one line in the first entry of "Our Story". We wrote the long paragraph together. I just typed it in. I wasn't sure how to write it, so I just wrote from first person. Obviously I am not the best writer, but I hope you enjoy it and will continue to follow us along on this amazing journey.

Check back soon!