Friday, February 8, 2008

The Boyle's are going to China again!

Early last year I did what I was not supposed to do...I began looking at lists of Waiting Children at various agencies. In the mean time, I read a message about a little boy whose papers were about to be returned to China. He had been promised to a family but something happened and the family had to withdraw from the adoption. He was with Harrah's AIM in Texas. I saw Xin Xiou Liang's photo and it was like being struck by lightening. He was so cute (as you can see by his photos) and had such sad eyes. I was lucky enough to get photos and video from a family that had traveled recently. Bill & I discussed Liang (well OK I twisted his arm again) and he agreed that we should pursue him. With all the changes going on with China and their adoption program last year, Harrah's warned us that we may not be approved because of Bill's previous cancer history. It did not matter that we had completed 2 adoptions without any difficulty since his cancer and that he has been cancer free for over 7 years. Harrah's said that they would strongly advocate for us so we sent off our LOI around last year this time and began the wait. Happilly we were given pre-approval last March and began our paperwork. It was a long and bumpy road to complete our dossier. Finally on January 16th, 2008 our dossier was sent to China and logged in on January 25th. Katie, Josh & Hailey are very excited about having Patrick as their brother. Josh is especially excited as he thinks there are too many girls in our house. He is anxious to have Patrick and not sure about sharing his room & things with him. So we are in the waiting phase at this time. Letters of Acceptance are taking anywhere from 60-180 days. We are thinking positive and hoping we are on the 60 day track but who knows.