Day 1 - May30/31, 2007

We dropped the kids off at school yesterday, ran home for some last minute packing, and then headed for the airport. We were booked on a 1:15 flight which gave us less than an hour layover in Detroit before our flight to Tokyo. We showed up early hoping to switch to the earlier flight. Unfortunately, the flight was full. We headed to the gate to do a cross word puzzle while we waited. Luckily, a couple people didn't show for the flight, so we got to hop on. Whew! That extra time really helped with my nerves :)

The flights were very uneventful. All connections were great, and food was plentiful. The only hitch is that both pieces of luggage are overweight for China flights. Guess we will just be shelling out some money for oversize baggage.

One eye-opening experience occurred as we were eating dinner at 4:30 Dayton time. I had set my watch ahead to Tokyo time at the beginning of our flight. I was eating, when suddenly my watch alarm started beeping. What's going on? I realized that it was my 6:30 AM wake up alarm . . . going off for Tokyo time. What a funny feeling to realize that it is 4:30 pm body time, but 6:30 the following morning at our destination. We hoping that we can adjust quickly.

Off Like a Herd of Turtles - May 30, 2007

OK, we are leaving in 15 minutes or so. The bags are all packed. Passports are accounted for. The bags are jam-packed. Snacks and books are good to go. The bags are straining at the hinges, but closed. Laptop has been configured so we can call home using it (thanks for the tip Jaspers!). Todd even managed to get the kitchen sink into one of the bags somehow :) Did I mention the bags are PACKED? We are booked onto an afternoon flight into Detroit, but we aren't real happy with the layover time. The airlines couldn't change our flight because we had booked the last 2 tickets on the follow-on flight to Tokyo. The lady was afraid that if she wiped out our reservation and started again that we would lose the seats for the second leg. So, we are heading to the airport early in an effort to change to an earlier flight at the desk. There is an up side and a down side. Up side - if we get changed, I will be much more at ease. Down side - if we DON'T get the tickets changed and we have to sit there for several hours, I will be fretting about all the house cleaning I could have been doing instead of sitting in an airport . . . on second thought, how can NOT cleaning a house be a down side???? :)

Next entry should be from Beijing!

Travel Itinerary, Sunday, May 27

Child care is set up - what a tangled web it is! The deck is painted, the garage neatened, the control journals for the 4 babysitters are nearly done, this crazy website is nearly up and running, and the bags are halfway packed (or maybe they are actually 1 1/2 packed since they are full to overflowing and the lids won't go down). Now, to attack the house :)

No real updates for now, so I will just post our itinerary for anyone interested in following us.

The Travel Agenda for Venema Family

May 30 (Wed):
Depart Dayton

May 31 (Thu):
Arrive Beijing at 21:25pm at BJ airport. Check into Temple of Heaven Beijing (Zhongcheng Holiday Inn),

June 01 (Fri):
9:30am: Go to Temple of Heaven. Then, have a Hutong (traditional local houses existed for 600 years) tour.

June 02 (Sat):
8:00am: Go to a jade place, Great Wall and Summer Palace.
*****You are going to visit Juyongguan Section of the Great Wall where there is no tram.

June 03 (Sun):
8:00am: Go to Tian An Men Square, Forbidden City and an international church.
Fly to Guangzhou by CZ371 (17:15pm-20:05pm).Check into White Swan Hotel. David will be your local guide.

June 04 (Mon):.
Free in the morning.

3:30pm: Bus to Civil Affairs office to meet your baby.

June 05 (Tue):
10:00am: Bus to civil affairs office to do the registration.
Go shopping right after the registration.

June 06 (Wed):
Time unconfirmed: Bus to civil affairs office again to pick up adoption decree and to police station to apply for baby’s passport.

June 07 (Thu):
9:30am: Bus to Family Chen’s Temple and Liurong Temple.

June 08 (Fri):
9:30am: Bus to Museum of King Yue’s Tombs.

June 09 (Sat):
9:30am: Bus to Guangzhou Zoo.

June 10 (Sun):
10:45am: Walk to a nearby church for Sunday sermon.

June 11 (Mon):
9:30am: Bus to Yuntai Botanical Garden.

June 12 (Tue):
8:00am: Take adoptive child’s visa photo and have a medical check-up.
After the exam: Fill the forms for the consulate.

June 13 (Wed):
David will go to send visa documents to consulate in the morning. One parent of each family will have to wait in the room from 11:00am to 12:00pm, in case additional information is needed.
5:30pm: have a river cruise (two hours).

June 14 (Thu):
2:30pm: Bus to US consulate to take the oath. Prepare passport. After the oath, you will get child’s visa. You can bring carrier, one diaper and one bottle of formula with you. The oath will last about 40 minutes.

June 15 (Fri):
5:00am: Wake up call;
5:15am: Check in bags on the left outside your door;
5:45am: Leave for Guangzhou airport and catch flight NW10 at 8:20am to fly back to States.

June 15 (Fri):
6:20: Arrive Dayton!!!
6:21: Hug Sofia, Peter, and Molly . . . and Grampa and Grama, too :)


2 days, 18 hours and counting . . .

Consulate Appointment - CA, May 21, 2007

Another day to make our hearts pound and blood pressure quadruple. I talked with our agency travel guy early Monday morning. He said that they had not heard from the China agency about our Consulate Appointment yet. Since it was 10:00 pm in China, we would need to wait until the next day. Hopefully, we would hear soon, since we were still trying to make the June 13th appoitment. (just a sidenote - the Guangzhou province, where our SWI is located, requires us to be in the province for 7 business days with our child BEFORE the consulate appointment. We were cutting it pretty close at this point.) At 11:55, I was headed out the door for a 2 hour hair appointment when the phone rang. I nearly ignored it, but grabbed it at the last second. It was our travel guy saying that our CA was confirmed, Gotcha Day was set up for Monday, June 4, and we were heading out NEXT WEEK! Oh, and by the way, the US consulate over in China has no records of our FBI immigrations fingerprints being updated. I, of course, went into panic mode - trying to find and fax our fingerprints records, trying to figure out why the fax machine wouldn't work, trying to get ahold of Todd (who has no phone access at work) to tell him to cancel his TDY for the following week and to get home to deal with faxes, fingerprints and airfare, etc. I was 15 minutes late for my hair appointment, but Todd breezed into the house and calm descended. By the time I arrived home nearly 4 hours later, everything was done and Todd was on the phone buying our plane tickets. The countdown has begun - 1 week and 2 days.

Now, about that childcare . . .

One Last New Picture - May 16

Here is our last new picture that will be taken by somebody other that US!! This is also from a family in our Yahoo chat group who was over in China getting their little girl. Even though we have had several pictures come in, each one is just as precious as the ones before. We just want to be able to have as many pictures of him as possible from his first home.

Mommy and Daddy are coming, little guy!

What a DAY! May 14, 2007

This was another day where I was expecting to get a new picture of Hai ZiWu. This time from a family down in KY who were in China getting their little girl. I did indeed find some really cute pictures of him. Just like last time, he had been asleep prior to picture time. One thing I noticed right off the bat was how much his hair had grown. It's very obvious. As a matter of fact, Molly walked around for 2 days showing EVERYBODY the new pictures of her new little brother, saying, "This is my new little brother. He has bedhead! AAAAND 5 teeth."

Just after receiving Hai ZiWu's new pictures, we received updated measurements on him. He is still a tiny, little thing. Nearly 14 months old, and in 6-9 month old clothes!

height - 65cm - 25 1/2 inches
weigh - 8.5 kg - 18.7 lbs.
head - 46 cm - 18 inches
chest - 46 cm - 18 inches
feet - 10 cm - 4 inches
teeth - 5

Immediately after receiving measurements, we got an e-mail with updated photos from our agency.

Immediately after receiving photos, we got a call from AHH letting us know that our Travel Approval (TA) had arrived, that our agency was putting in for a June 13th consulate date, and we might leave as early as May 31st! The kicker was that we needed to hear back from China by Friday in order to get the 14 day advance purchase airfare prices. By this time, I was feeling like I had been hit by about 5 different trucks coming from 5 different directions - but in a good way. I thought that maybe I could deal with leaving in only 2 weeks and 4 days. Maybe.

Now, about childcare for our other 3 kiddos . . .

LOA - Letter of Acceptance, April 20, 2007

The long awaited day has arrived! We received our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) today. We were told that the average wait for LOAs was 120 days, and that the range was anywhere from 70 days to 220! We were only on day 84 - nice surprise :)

Now, for the story behind the LOA. Our agency had told us that in an effort to streamline paperwork, the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) would only be sending out LOAs with referrals at the beginning of the month. Since we hadn't received ours at the beginning of April, we had pushed everything back a month in our heads. On April 19, I talked to my mom about schedules (she and dad are on the books to be babysitters for our 3 staying behind). She said that their schedule for early to mid June was getting pretty hairy. Was I SURE that we wouldn't be travelling then? She wanted to be sure before commiting to too much. Yup, Mom, you are cleared out for early to mid June. Also on April 19, I went ahead and signed Peter up for gymnastics camp at Ohio State University for the week of June 11-14. Oh boy. The very next morning I got a surprise call from Grace at A Helping Hand - our LOA was in, and they were predicting an early to mid June travel date! Hmmmmm . . .

Another New Picture - April 14, 2007

Another wonderful way to start the day. I dragged myself down to the computer this morning (ok, I lied, I was expecting a surprise today so I practically ran down), hooked up to the Yahoo chat group, and found a new picture of our little guy. This time taken by a wonderful couple who live only 40 minutes from us here in Ohio. They received their little girl last week, and they were able to visit the SWI to take more pictures of the waiting babies.

On April 12, she wrote:

Hi Becky-
I saw your little boy today. He looked fine and healthy. I double-checked his ear and it seemed okay. I think they woke him up for me to look at. I told him his mommy was coming soon. I will try to download the pictures later and send to you.

She added another note when she sent the pictures:

Becky -
I know I told you they had to go wake him up for his picture. He was drowsy. I'm not sure if you can see him in any of the pictures in the crib room. He may have laid back down after they got him up. He may be one of the only boys. Very sweet, he seemed a little shy. His ear looked great and he looked longer than other pictures I've seen of him.

It really seems like we will never get over there!

Happy Birthday to Us - March 9, 2007

Well, today was the big 4-0 for me. I don't feel 40. Wonder how that happened? I had a great day today, and Todd took me out to the see Oklahoma at the local dinner theater. We went with another couple from church, their son and son's friend. I had so much fun, and ate way too much!

While we were having fun, I did keep thinking about our little guy. It was his first birthday, and he was spending it over in an orphanage with no mommy, daddy, or siblings. I wonder if he got a present or something special to eat? Don't worry, little guy. We'll get you a cake as soon as we can - and your big brother can even teach you how to blow out the candles with your nose :)

New Picture - February 12, 2007

I mentioned in an earlier post that I joined a bunch of Yahoo chat groups after getting Hai ZiWu's referral. One of the groups was one made up of families who had already adopted or were in the process of adopting from Hai ZiWu's orphanage (also known as an SWI - social welfare institute). As fate would have it, there was a group of families from Canada who were getting ready to head over to China to adopt their babies. Two of the families were going to be able to visit our SWI and offered to take pictures of waiting babies. Since our only pictures were from the previous August (6 months ago), I jumped on offer.



Imaging how awesome it was to get up one morning and find this adorable face looking out at me from our computer screen. I just want to reach out and hug him!

LOI - Letter of Intent to Adopt - January 26, 2007

After we got our referral for Hai ZiWu, we had a frantic weekend of joining Yahoo chatgroups, researching doctors, researching microtia/aural atresia, e-mailing everybody in our address book, etc. I think I dropped just about everything and focused on this cute little guy. I even pulled up weather.com to see what the weather was like over in his neck of the woods.

Part of the paperwork for this step was to do a Letter of Intent, or LOI. We had to write out that we had been in touch with our doctor (in our case the base doctor and the doctor in Cincinnati at the International Adoption Center, the IAC doctor had also consulted with a pediatric craniofacial specialist), had drawn up a rough plan of action, had contacted our insurance company to ensure that we had adequate coverage, and then state in no uncertain terms that we were going to bring him into our family, love him equally, provide for him, and "promise that we would never abuse or abandon him." Our LOI was officially logged in on January 26, 2007.

Our agency predicted that we would travel in the latter part of June or early July. That still seemed like ages - but we had lots to do to fill the time.

Agency Referred!! January 12, 2007

January 12 was just about the longest day I have ever experienced. I knew the review board had been meeting all week to match families and children, and that they would be calling the families sometime on Friday. I tried to keep busy. I alternated between believing that we would be matched with our little guy, and trying to convince myself that when we weren't matched I would be ok.

Around 1:00 I was sitting in Judy's office (our minister's wife) talking about the Children's Moments that I was going to be doing in church on Sunday when my cell phone rang. It was Grace from AHH. I am not ashamed to say that I totally lost it! Poor Judy. I'm sure she thought something terrible had happened because I was just sitting there bawling and trying to talk and not making any sense at all.

Without further ado, I am proud to introduce Hai Zi Wu. Born March 9, 2006. Currently living in the Foshan Nanhai Social Welfare Institute (SWI). The name "Hai" is his surname. All kids in his SWI are Hai. All boys who entered his SWI in a certain time frame have the second name "Zi". All girls from the same time period have the name "Zhi". The last syllable (the second of his "given name") is Wu. That is all his - not shared with anyone :) I have heard that the nannies will typically take the last syllable and double it - so he is called WuWu by his caretakers. Cute!

Awesome Surprise - December 22, 2006

The Christmas season was upon us, and we headed off to Chicago to visit Todd's mom. One evening (the Friday before Christmas, to be exact) Todd, his mom, and I were sitting around the table talking about names. I mentioned that when we lived in England, NOBODY ever spelled Todd's name correctly. Over in the UK, it is spelled Tod. Soon after, I went in to the computer to check the AHH Waiting Children list again. I don't know why. Maybe I was hoping that a supplemental list would be added to the small list they had received earlier. While I was playing on their website, I read a testimony about a family who had adopted a little boy with microtia/aural atresia (underdeveloped ear and no ear canal). I thought, "Wow, that would be a perfect fit for our family." Then I switched over to the list. Hmmmm, more children had been added! I scanned down the list and found a listing for a little boy named Tod. I smiled because we had just been discussing Tod/Todd. I looked at his age - 10 months - perfect. I opened his file - what a cutie. I checked out his exact age - born on my birthday! I looked at his special need - microtia/aural atresia. I tell you, at this point I was trying really hard to be calm but not succeding very well. I called Todd over to show him the file. He said, "I think this just might be our little boy!" Needless to say, I sent in our application the next day.

Fall and Winter 2006

Our agency - A Helping Hand - typically gets a new list of special needs kids to post on their Waiting Children list every 3-4 months. As the time for the new list draws closer, I tended to check their website more and more often in hopes that a child would catch my eye. I'm not sure when the next list was posted - late October or early November. Unfortunately, none of the kids on the new, very small list felt right. We were open to a whole variety of special needs (SN), and boy, do you see a variety! A SN can be a little birthmark, cleft palates, deafness, heart defects, missing limbs, Hepatits B, or just being over age 3. Todd and I had talked about what kinds of things we were comfortable in dealing with, what age range we were interested in, how things might affect our family, etc. Like I said, nothing felt right. Again, we were disappointed, but we knew when the time was right, God would let us know.

In the meantime, we were carrying on with our everyday life. Sofia had taken up horse riding lessons, Peter was having a ball in his first season as a competitive gymnast, and Molly was beginning to strut her stuff in gymnastics as well. If I can ever figure out how to link a video onto this website, I have a great clip of Peter doing his rings routine to show you. On a very sad note, Todd's father lost his battle with cancer during this time.

Our First Referral - June 2006

When we originally had our home study done, we had it written so that we would be approved for either a non-special needs adoption or a special needs adoption. Last June (2006), we were matched with a little boy from our agency's Waiting Children list. Boy, were we excited. Unfortunately, the referral team thought that there might be more wrong with the little guy than was listed on his information. After talking with a specialist about best and worst case scenarios, we felt we had to turn down the referral. With Todd being in the military, and us moving every 3 years, we didn't think we would be able to meet his medical needs if the worst case scenario proved to be true. Talk about heart-breaking! That was one of the worst phone calls I have ever made. I did keep my eye on him on the Waiting Children list. The good news is that he was eventually matched with a family! What a lucky little boy he is.

The Paperchase and L I D

After 4 months of "paperchasing", our dossier was finally sent over to China. "Paperchase" is the term used to refer to the mountains of paper/documentation that you have to collect in order to do an international adoption. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, police and FBI fingerprint checks, child abuse checks . . . the list goes on and on. Each piece of paper needs to be notarized, county notarized, state authenticated, and then sent off to the Embassy to be stamped. Since we have lived in so many states over the past few years, we had a very difficult "chase"! We also had to have a social worker do a Home Study on our family. The social worker met with us several times, checked our house, talked with us about international adoption, etc. and finally wrote up a big report - the Home Study. Once everything was done, all of the papers were bound up together, sent to China, translated, and logged in with the CCAA - the China Center of Adoption Affairs. This was the big day - our LID - or Log In Date was April 28, 2006.

Meet the Family, and How We Decided To Adopt

Welcome to our website. We are the Venema family. Currently, our family consists of Becky (mom), Todd (dad), daughters Sofia and Molly, and son Peter. We also have a dog, cat, hamster and an African albino frog. However, we are in the process of adding to our family by adopting a little boy from China.

The decision to do this was a long, drawn out affair - about 11 years long! Todd started mentioning adoption before we were even engaged. I, however, wanted to start out the traditional way and have "my own" kids. After our youngest was born, I still had the baby-bug. I really did want to have another child, but I really did NOT want to be pregnant again. Right about this time, we had several friends adopt children - both domestically and internationally. Suddenly, the idea of adopting started to creep into MY mind.

During the summer of 2005, we packed up our house and made a cross-country move. The first Sunday in our new town found us visiting a local church. The sermon for the day was actually a presentation by a group of folks from the church who had just returned from a mission trip to the western regions of China. They had visited several orphanages, and they had many awesome stories to tell. It was during our minister's wife's presentation that I had one of those light bulb moments. I really felt like adoption was something I was meant to do. I had several more of those light bulb moments over the next few months. Luckily, Todd was having them, too! It all finally culminated in us applying to A Helping Hand Adoption Agency in Lexington, KY. Todd and I both kind of wanted to adopt a little boy, and we realized that odds were huge that we would get a little girl from China. However, we went ahead and applied to the China program knowing that God was leading us in our decision.