Travel Approval is Here!!!!

Our agency emailed today to tell us that our travel approval has arrived and they have requested our consulate appointment at the embassy in Guangzhou.  Our travel itinerary will be built with this appointment at the end.  We will visit Beijing, then travel to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province where Ty lives, then to Guangzhou to the embassy to finish Ty's immigration paperwork.  Our agency says we will travel on July 7th or 14th, depending on the appointment date.  We will know for sure by next Wednesday!!  In the meantime, Andrew and I have completed the baby's room and started buying travel supplies.  Quinn and I have been staying busy swimming, playing, and organizing the house to get ready for our new addition.

The one to two year wait for number two turned into three and we have finally been matched with our precious son. We had a paperwork update in March and included a paragraph about being open to certain special needs. We intended to wait until summer to search the waiting child lists for our next baby and our agency called a week later offering to let us review a file on an 11 month old boy with a cleft lip and palate from their agency only list. We reviewed his file and fell in love. We will be able to travel near the end of this summer!

Currently, Tian Yi is being taken care of in Maria's Big House of Hope in Henan Province. This is a foster facility for medical needs children funded by Stephen Curtis Chapman's charity called Show Hope and another amazing organaziation called the New Hope Foundation. He is experiencing a spa resort of care compared to government run orphanages. We have found his picture on two websites. The foster home has many English speaking volunteers and they call him David. We haven't completely decided on his full name yet, but Quinn decided that we will name him Ty. So....Tyler David? David TianYi? Ty David? You can see his pictures here http://www.hopefosterhome.com/babies/david.htm and see more pictures and read a profile about him here http://blog.showhope.org/2010/04/07/david/  .

We are thrilled that we have been chosen to parent this beautiful little person and cannot wait to finally hold him in our arms. We are waiting for Travel Approval(TA) from China, which is our OK to get our tickets and go. We will keep everyone updated with our travel plans.