May Referrals bring us into November-- Finally!!

Hi Folks,

The referrals that arrived in April were too dismal to really report-- they only covered 2-days, October 25th and 26th. Referrals arrived this past week and finally made it to November 1, 2005.

For those not familiar with how China issues referrals or what, even, a referral is. . .

A referral is when adoptive parents are actually matched with a baby and it contains a picture of the baby and scant information about the baby (birth date, weight, basic medical information etc. from last exam). The agency in China that is responsible for adoptions is the CCAA-- I can't remember what the acronym stands for.

When the CCAA issues referrals, they issue them through a date-- so the next batch of referrals will be for November 2, 2005 through ???

With this last batch of referrals October 27-Nov. 1, all waiting families whose paperwork was registered with China during that time frame in 2005 received a referral-- regardless of the agency they are using or the country they live in-- all waiting families received a referral.

The date that an adoptive family's paperwork (also called a dossier) is registered in China is called a Log-in-Date and is often abbreviated LID. Our LID is December 20, 2005. So we only have 48 more LID ahead of us.

Sound good right? Who the heck knows. Some folks think it might take 4 months for the CCAA to issue referrals for all the November families. At this point we are thinking/hoping that we will get our referral between August and October of this year. But, as we keep learning in this process, that date is always subject to change. It sure would be nice if it changed in a good way and became shorter!

At least the weatherer is getting nicer-- Spring has sprung in Little Rhody. Here are some pictures from a trip to the beach to see some seals. It was a nice walk through the woods down to the water.