Referral Time

It is China referral time. That means there are many new families out there. I am so happy for them and I love seeing pictures of the new faces. 4 more days were referred this month so I feed the pig again as you can see. I know that there are at least a couple of my readers that missed the date by one day :0( Hang in there you are so close and definitely next!!! Seeing people continue to get referrals is what keeps hope alive that we will someday see our daughter from China.


That was the up side not for the not so up side, as much as I love seeing the babies and knowing that the line is moving, the reality of how slow it is moving is daunting. We are still 393 LID days from referral and at the rate they are moving I predict another couple years. I know that there are rumors of speed ups but until I see something to indicate a speed up I can't go there. If I am eating my words in a few months that is perfectly fine but I have worked the numbers a couple different ways and soonest I could see it happening is the mid to late 2011. I won't mention the latest date I came up with because it is just ridiculous. I am also not happy with the fact that so far we have only seen 8 referral batches this year. We did have one at the very end of 2008 so I guess you could say 9 but it seems like the time between referral batches is lengthening. The real frustrating part is not know what is going to happen in the future, slow downs, speed ups, who knows I don't even think China knows.

No updates on the Burundi adoption yet. The Bishop (the person coordinating everything in Burundi) is in the US still. We are hoping that once he returns and checks on the progress he will find that things have progressed and they are ready for us to come and finish the process. But I know better to get too hopeful, I am just hoping for travel before the end of the year. We are now at day 199 of the wait since we have seen his face and the wait is getting old. We are ready, so ready to be parents we have worked so hard and yet it seems like we are trying to walk through waste deep mud and getting no where. There are many days where I have serious doubts of it happening at all and I wonder if it is worth all the pain.

But I am not giving up yet so we continue to wait and hope that the outlook changes soon.