How it Started
Our little adventure begins August 2005 when I “strongly encouraged” Trey to attend an informational meeting with me in Knoxville regarding international adoption. A young woman from Children’s Hope was leading the meeting and several families who had recently adopted shared their stories. So, after years of investigating alternatives, dealing with DCS and foster care, etc, we decided adopting internationally was right for our family. And thus we started our journey to Li Anna.
I spoke to a friend whose daughter was born in Northern China about the process. She steered us in the right direction, introduced us to an adoption agency and provided us with guidance and support throughout.
The paperwork is maddening! There is no way to describe the endless hoops of certification, authentication, verification, and the re-certification, re-verification, re-everything, countless times, etc., to any one who has not gone through the process. If you know someone adopting internationally, please give him or her a hug of support they truly need it. And if they break down in tears for no apparent reason, they are probably having to re-new their home study or re-do their fingerprints for the third or fourth time. None of this is easy; all paperwork has to go through the Federal Government for approval and processing. Those of us who started this journey in 2005 were told it would only be 6 to 9 months before we traveled to our daughters so we can be a little touchy about the subject of waiting.
After a little over 7 months of paperwork, with a couple of lost months for delays that were out of our control, our paperwork arrived in China in late March 2006. We were officially logged in April 3, 2006. This becomes known as your Log in Date (LID) and it’s the most important date in your world.
Forty-five months after our LID we see the first picture of Li Anna. She’s the most beautiful little girl we have ever seen! Approximately fifty five months since we started, forty-seven months after our log in date or approximately 1,435 days, we will travel to China to bring Li Anna home.
Angie