Saturday, May 28, 2011

LOA - MAY 4th

Boy am I behind on blogging. I need to step it up because I am missing so many milestones in our adoption of our newest most beautiful miracle. And I really need to change my blog layout. How long ago was Christmas?

Ok...so our LOA (Letter Of Approval) from China was received on May 4th. It only took 34 days to receive it which shocked us to say the least. We waited an excruciating 92 days for Halainah's LOA. We are so excited and was shocked to hear that because of this we should be traveling in August instead of September.

We are currently waiting for our I-800 Approval. Which took a lot of extra work to get to this point. A new Home Study had to be done so that it included the age and specific special need our daughter has. Once we received our new Home Study we had to file a I-797 Supplement 3 to reflect the changes as well. Then we filed our I-800. It was certainly a different process than it was for Halainah and a lot of extra paperwork.

On March 28th, 2 1/2 years after Halainah initially saw her Cardiologist, he gave her a clean bill of health. All the tests he performed proved that Halainah's heart was healed and her small hole in her heart (PFO - Patent Foramen Ovale) had closed on it's own. She was released from his care and was now termed "100% healthy" instead of "special needs."

2 hours after we returned from her appointment we received the phone call that we had been praying for. We were matched with a beautiful little girl whose special need happened to be PFO, the same heart condition as Halainah. It was a sign straight from our Lord above. He found our daughter and brought her to us. He healed Halainah and certainly chose our daughter knowing that we could fully handle her special need. It truly is amazing and no words can truly describe it.

Halainah is very excited to be a big sister. She asks about her sister often and carries a picture of her in her little purse. She tells us that she will share her Mommy and her Daddy and her Grandma and Opa with her sister. Sometimes she says she will share her toys but she makes it clear that she will not share her Tinkerbelle bed with her sister..."my sister can have my crib."

We cannot wait to make the trip to the other side of the world once again to witness our next miracle. The one thing that I am not looking forward to is the heat. We hear it is going to be very hot in China in August.

Here are some updated pictures of our daughter. She is getting so big without us and I just want to hold her and love her forever.