January 20, 2006..We received TA today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our agency said that we will be traveling sometime at the end of February to the beginning of March!!!!!!!! It has been a long time coming! We are so excited to say that our little gorgeous Sierra will be home soon!!!

January 17, 2006 Well we are on day 76 and tomorrow we will be at the 11th week from LID. Oh we are praying heavily that TAs come pouring in at CHI. We know that God knows the day, time and moment but we are trying to increase our peace knowing that he is with us through the waiting pains and agony!!!

January 9, 2006..........Happy New Year everyone!! CHI received the 6 TAs today but sadly we were not one of them!! We are now at the top of the list with CHI. Only one family ahead of us! We are hoping to receive TA in the next couple of weeks or at least before the Chinese New Year.

December 29, 2005.........Oh our little gorgeous is soooooooo gorgeous!!! It makes us want to reach through the picture and bring her home. She is holding the bear that we sent over with Lynn back in September! And to all you Cub fans out there.......yes she is wearing red because that means good luck in China not because she is a Cardinal fan!!!!

December 28, 2005........This is a bittersweet day in adopting Sierra. CHI only received one TA. A disappointment to CHI and to many of the families waiting for TA which includes us. We were very sadden by this. We did hear some good news though. CHI received a camera that we had sent over in a care package that was sent back full of pictures!! We are so excited to receive that tomorrow!!!!! We cannot wait to see our little girl!!(even if it is only in pictures!)

November 2, 2005...This is our LID........we were so happy to receive the news!!!!!!!!!! Sierra honey we are getting closer!! Now we just wait until CCAA approves us for travel which we call TA. We are hoping to be going in January!!! What a great way to celebrate the New Year!!!!!!!

October 7, 2005.......We are DTC (dossier to China) today!!!!!!!!!!!!! CHI called and confirmed it for us!! Now we just wait until we get our LID (log in date) which is when the CCAA gets all our paper worked logged into their system. This step could take up to 4-6 weeks. We are just happy to let go of all that paper work and to know that we are taking one more step closer to bringing our little angel home!!

September 23, 2005....Well we got some bad news. During the week of October 3-7 CCAA is closed down because of the Fall Holiday. The holiday is not the bad news but our dossier will not be sent out until October 7. So we are going to have to wait 2 more weeks!!

September 22, 2005....We received our dossier back from the Chinese Consulate in Chicago..wow that didn't taken very long at all!! Well, because I was in Chicago for a conference for work we were not able to get the papers out to be there by tomorrow which is a Friday and on Fridays CHI sends all the dossiers out. That means we have to wait another week for it to be sent to China. That is ok, it will CHI the time to review our dossier to make sure we are not missing anything.

September 18, 2005 Hui Yan...Sierra is 29 months old today!! And it is the Chinese Moon Festival today! AND we got the newest pictures of our precious little girl....
Isn't she the most beautiful shining star you have ever seen!!! We are so proud!!

September 13, 2005....Well, I got everything state certified, copied, and sent to the Chinese Consulate today but I ended up taking a full day off. Let's put it this way I was in Springfield twice by noon today!! One of our papers from our local police department could not be certified because of notary. It had an expired date and they would not take it. I was determine to get this papers sent out today so I traveled back to Creve Coeur had the police station fix it while I was on the phone with Springfield to make sure the notary was current and had the correct information before I travel back down there. They were so helpful...Creve Coeur Police and the office in Springfield! As you can guess I was in tears!! Nothing was going to slow this process down if I can help it!! Well, it is done and sent. We should get these back within the next week or so.

September 12, 2005..........We got it!!!!!!!!!! Our I171 H came today!!!! Tomorrow I will take a 1/2 day off to get all the papers state certified in Springfield and then come back to Peoria to have the papers copied and sent one day up to the Chicago Consulate!! Ok, it might not be until the first of October when our dossier gets sent to China but we are getting closer to bringing Sierra home!!!!!!!!!!

August 28, 2005.... We have met a generous person through the Huiyang yahoo group who will be going to China in a couple weeks and is willing to take Sierra's care package over to her and to ask the orphanage about how Sierra is doing and if any surgeries have been done on her cleft lip/palate. It is great news!! It helps with this long wait for our I 171 H. It has been almost 8 weeks!! I guess at this point we can look at the middle or end of September to be sending our dossier!! Not so good news!! We are trying to remain hopeful!

July 12, 2005 ...Well, our trip went well and safe. The finger prints are done and we just wait until we receive our I 171 H. We were told it could take between 3-4 weeks. So that should make it around the second week in August. It might not be until the first of September before we can send our dossier to China. Well, we will remain hopeful.

July 11, 2005 It has been a long weekend. First we found out that Fed EX sent our homestudy to the wrong address! On our address label was written as 291 for our house number and not 297. I guess it is their policy if they cannot find the address on the evenlope is to look into the phone book to find another person with the same name to mail the package to. Fed Ex sent it to a Mike Wanless in Bloomington, IL. No we had not met him before. He was a true angel because he decided on his on accord to call our home phone number and to ask us what we wanted him to do with the paper work. As you can guess it, Mike went over to this Mike Wanless home to pick it up in person. We could not thank him enough. We finally had our homestudy in our hands!! This has been a long time coming. Well, for the second great news we got notification from CIS of where and when to get our finger prints done. We are leaving here tomorrow at 5:30 am to head for Chicago to get the prints taken. It will be another step that we have accomplished in getting closer to sending our dossier to China by middle of August.

June 29.....Our Homestudy is finally done. Yes, it took more than the week we were originally told but it is done!! CHI has sent it off the immigration and now all we have to do is wait to get notification to get our finger prints done for CIS. We are so determain to get this done so our dossier will make it to China by the middle of August.

June 13, 2005....We received it in the mail!!!! Our PA (pre-approval) CCAA has given us approval to adopted Hui Yan as our daughter as long as our dossier is within their requirements. Now we are even more determain to get our homestudy done!! Megan said it should be done within the next week.

April 12, 2005 We got the call from Mary. Our daughter's name is Hui Yan. Yan means swallow. She lives at Huiyang SWI in the Guangdong province of China. She is healthy and is developing on target. Her favorite toy is a red ball and she loves to listen to music! We had already talked to Shriner's to the possibility of them performing her surgery. We are still in the state of shock about being paper pregnant! She is so beautiful! When we thought we were down and out God showed us his awesomeness through the face of this little girl our daughter.

April 9, 2005 We got up early. Both of us very nervous of what to expect and knowing that the possibility of another dead end. That day Children's Hope had a Life Book party prior to their informational meeting. Even though we had not signed up with them yet, Children's Hope told us that we were welcome to attend. It was so much fun to talk to parents that were further along in their pregnancy. Some already had their dossier to China (something we did not know what it was at the time). Some had log in dates in China (another term that was new to us) and some parents to be were just getting their papers together. After the Life Book party was finished we were both feeling so comfortable and excited for the informational meeting to begin. They began with explaining a little about adoption from China. Mike (the quiet one in the marriage) asked a question about children with cleft lip/palate. We had decided prior that we wanted to adopt a little girl with a special need of a cleft lip/palate. It was one of our questions but Mike usually lets Lisa to do all the asking. When Mary House, the manager of that CHI office asked if that was what we were interested in doing that (adopting a child with a special needs). We both shook our head with excitement. She directed us down to her office to look at the new waiting children pictures that had came in the day prior. While walking down the hallway, Lisa felt as if she was at the OB office to find out if she was pregnant. We had choosen three precious little ones to go home and to talk about. Mary came down and asked us to choose one. She told us that she did not want us to loose our daughter to another family. We already knew which precious face drew our heart. The office staff printed off her picture and Mary emailed and called Tina to let her know that she had a family interested in #827...soon to be know as Hui Yan and later be named Sierra Ann Kuan Yin. Mary said as soon as they have her on hold for us that they will not share the information with any other family. We were so excited! We had our little wonderful daughter's picture in our hands. We kept looking at her and grinning! WE WERE PAPER PREGNANT!

April 8, 2005 We were on our way up to Chicago to look into an adoption agency. It was an agency that we kept being drawn to. We had a list of questions in our packet that we kept adding to while we were traveling the 3 hours to get there. After getting checked into a hotel, we decided to go get something to eat and to discuss some of our concerns, hopes, and dreams. We both wanted to be paper pregnant but it kept being a dead end. Before being drawn to Children's Hope International, we had search out the foster care system to find our daughter. When we first began our journey, Lisa had heard that one of her students was going to be up for adoption. That day Lisa had ran home and told Mike. We talked about it and we both agreed that we would love to be her parents. Well, about two weeks before we finished our Foster Care and Pride classes the little girl we thought would be our daughter was moved from the home she was in and placed with a family further away from her biological family. DCFS felt this would be to her safety. We found out that family wanted to adopt her. We were so sadden. Over two months after getting our foster care license we had not heard from our agency about any type of perment placement. We decided to check other states. We had our homestudy through out the United States and we were up for several children but each time it was a dead end. We kept getting denied. There we were in Chicago begining another journey to find our daughter. This night we were scared that once again thinking that this would be a dead end. Maybe God did not want us to be parents to a little girl.