Meet my crazy AMAZING friends who will care for the Hunter crew while we are away!

Marc and I are so grateful for our church family at Potomac Hills Presbyterian Church.  We know there will be many people praying for us, Nathan, and our other kids while we are gone. We have received clothes for Nathan, and money towards his adoption from our church family and other friends as well.  Many people have offered to help, and I'm sure will assist in keeping the Hunter kids alive, dressed, washed, and fed.  But here are the team leaders:

Meet Louise.  Lucky Louise gets to come to our house at 6:00am every weekday for the 2 weeks we are away.  Once she arrives, she will get to awaken three exhausted elementary school kids, one cheerful middle schooler, one moody middle schooler, and one high school girl.  I am not allowed to use any adjectives to describe the high school girl.  She will get to blow dry one child's hair (believe me, this is necessary!) and make sure the same child's clothes actually match (also necessary.)  The boys can handle their own hair and clothes. She will then assist in lunch making.  At 7:10am, she will escort the 3 elementary kids to their bus stop and chat with my neighbors.  An hour later, the three older ones will head off, and she gets to clean the kitchen and start Mount Washmore.  Around 9:00am or so, she will finally be able to schlep herself home, only to return at 11:15 to pick up Josiah from the bus stop on those days I can't find an after school playdate for him.  Believe me, I am trying hard to find many after school playdates!  Thankfully, two days a week, my college girls will be able to get Josiah from the bus.  Louise will keep Josiah on the other days until Mary arrives.  Then Louise gets to go home to her empty nest and have a relaxed evening with her husband (something I cannot even imagine at this stage of life....sigh.)

Next is Mary.  Mary will arrive chez Hunter around 2:30 pm to meet the elementary bus.  She will then dole out snacks, supervise homework, and COOK DINNER FOR THE ENTIRE CLAN.  Mary is such a good cook that I suspect the kids will not want me to return.  Tough luck, kids.  Enjoy it while you can!

After dinner, she will supervise chores and kitchen clean-up (we have quite the elaborate chore routine- too bad it doesn't work half as well as we would like!) and make sure the house doesn't look like a bomb blew up.  Then she will get to go home to her peaceful home with only one almost-grown daughter and husband. 

There are many other wonderful people pitching in while we are gone as well.  Five of our kids are involved in sports right now, two of them are on multiple teams, so there is a lot of driving involved.  Many parents of our kids' teammates have offered rides, neighbors have pitched in and offered play dates and sleepovers to give our kids a break from each other, parents of schoolmates have offered to help, people have been so generous.

And I would be remiss to not mention my oldest daughters, Vania and Trisha.  Vania and Trisha will be responsible for the bedtime routine- showers, stories, outfits for the next day, etc.  Vania is basically the second mom in our house.  She knows the routines, is a wonder with the little kids, and is generally my right hand around here.  Trisha drives, and already shuttles her sibs around when we need her to.  She is going to assist Louise and Mary with the laundry and make sure clean clothes actually make it back to people's rooms.  She will also get to practice her chauffering skills and perhaps learn to grocery shop while we are away.

Update on our son!

Last night I was thrilled to receive Nathan's foster report and a new picture of him, taken this week!  Here it is:



From the report:

Guo Xu is very happy to receive the camera from his US mother and father.  We told him he can take whatever pictures he likes so he can send the pictures to his American family.  He took the picture of fosterparents, his family while they were busy doing chores, watching tv, eating.  He even brought the camera to school to take photos with his classmates and teachers.  

When it is harvest time, he is very helpful to doing chores.  He helps to dry and stir the grains.  At school, he is doing much better.  On rainy days, mom will bring his lunch to school and he will share his lunch with his friends.  He is very hard working except his school grades.

Well, son, you won't have time to send us those pics because WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU NEXT WEEK!

This week has been nutso, running around, packing, creating my 'master calendar' for while we are gone, arranging rides to sports practices, playdates so the kids don't kill each other, and meeting with the ELL teacher and coming up with a plan for Nathan's education (as much as you can plan without knowing the child, that is...) 

6 days till we leave!

Got a new (but old!) picture of our boy today!

I received a wonderful little pick-me-up this morning!  I received an email today from someone on Nathan's orphanage yahoo group.  I had posted that we had received TA and would be traveling soon, and included the link to this blog.  When she saw his picture, she recognized him (it was that red shirt photo!). She remembered him from a list 4 years ago, and even knew that at one point, a family was close to moving forward in adopting him, but then couldn't.  She had a photo of him on her computer and sent it to me.  Here it is:



Now, back to packing and making lists and creating the master calendar for while we are gone...

Totally Awesome, Truly Amazing...Travel Approval!

We are going to China!  I got home from picking Josiah up after speech to an email that told me to "START PACKING."  Ha!  Like I haven't already done most of that! 

Not only did we already have our TA, our wonderful agency had already gotten us our Consulate Appointment, so I could start booking our travel. We need to be in Changsha by November 6. So, I spent the rest of the day trying to wrangle a good airfare deal.  Not terribly encouraging...the three travel agents I spoke with all found airfare to be around $1400-$1600 per ticket, for the privilege of changing planes twice and taking more than 24 hours to get where we needed to be. I think we paid about $900 last time, flew direct from Dulles to Beijing, and got moved to business class for free since our seats were needed by the flight crew.  I am thinking that was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.  Darn.

Fortunately, Janell at Lifeline did some sleuthing around for me as well and found some good deals out of JFK, but we couldn't seem to get a flight from DC going that way.  So, I called one of the agents with this idea and he found me tickets for $1089 round trip, DC to JFK to Shanghai to Changsha!  We do have to fly on an awful airline if the online reviews are to be believed, but that's OK.  The return trip is more direct and that is more important since we will have Nathan with us. 

I can't believe we are leaving in 2 weeks and 2 days.  Wow.  I wonder what Nathan will think when he finds out we are finally coming for him?  He looked rather somber in the most recent photo we got of him and his foster family.  He had just received the first package we had sent him.  I pray that God is preparing him for us, and us for him.

Another week...TA?

DISCLAIMER:  Ignore this post if you are not interested in the fascinating world of Chinese adoption bureaucratic procedures. 

Well, it's Monday morning in China.  Hopefully, all the CC*A folks are cranking out some Travel Approvals as I type.  Or at least getting ready to crank out some TA's once they receive our #$% signed Letter of Intent, a document that we submitted to them back in, oh, say, April?  The document requesting that we be approved to adopt our little guy?  On Friday the Rumor Queen board began buzzing with news of a new requirement before TA's would be issued.  The CC*A wanted Letters of Intent with original signatures before they would issue TA.  The electronically submitted ones were not good enough.  This would not normally be a big deal if our paperwork were somewhere earlier in the process, but for those of us with files sitting on someone's desk, waiting for THE VERY LAST APPROVAL WE NEED BEFORE WE COME TO CHINA,  it was devastating to hear. 

Shocked and horrified, I quickly called my agency contact who was amazed at how fast good news spreads among adoptive mothers on the internet.  Desperate adoptive mothers who have been anxiously counting down the days till they get TA.  (It's like a club.)  Instead of the good news we had all hoped for on Friday, we got news that meant MORE WAITING.  As soon as Marc hit the door Friday, I handed him the letter to sign and off to the post office I trotted.

Now, my agency says this will not really delay our TA too much and that we should get it soon, hopefully this week.  I sure hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.  I think I will be doing a lot of running this week for stress relief.

Or I could just eat chocolate instead...hmmm...

Still No Travel News...

It's not looking good for late October travel, that much is certain.  To the best of my knowledge, not a single TA has been issued this week.  Well, I guess if we don't get to leave till later in November, it will be easier in some ways (TRYING to look on the bright side here).  Fall sports will be over (but I think basketball will have started- better check that!)  The kids have a whole week off school at Thanksgiving, which could be good or bad (Will they bicker with each other?  Or will it be a bonus that they won't have to get off to school each day?  Hmmm...guess we will find out.)  The later travel date also gives us more time to put together the remaining funds.  For those of you not familiar with international adoption, at least from China, about half of the fees necessary are related to travel, if you include the required orphanage donation.

TOTALLY ANXIOUS as we wait for TA!!!

I am just DONE with the wait.  No matter how many times you adopt, the wait simply  doesn't get any easier.  I have no idea how people in the regular China program wait for 5 years to bring home their child. I guess if you don't know  who your child is for the first 4 years and 9 months or so of your wait it's easier??  But knowing who is waiting on the other side of the world for months and months is just so HARD. 

We are hoping against logic to receive our TA (Travel Approval) this week.  All of my online mommy friends who are also waiting for TA seem to be as loony as I am now- incapable of doing much except checking their email and logging onto Rumor Queen http://chinaadopttalk.com/forum/index.php for any news.  And there is just NO NEWS!

I did manage to cook a few meals for my freezer so the kids can eat while we are away...I guess it's something.  Guess I could clean the house tomorrow...sigh...

OK, let's change the subject.  Here is a picture of my daughter, Annie, going to her Homecoming dance this past weekend.  Isn't she lovely?

More about Nathan

Nathan has lived with the same foster family since he was 3 years old.  In China, foster care is closely supervised by the local orphanage.  From reading his foster care reports, he has clearly been well cared for.  His foster family includes three other children- a pretty large number of kids under one roof, especially in China (but just wait till he gets here!)  Two of his foster sibs have fairly significant medical issues and their foster parents have worked very hard to help those two boys develop life skills.  All of this to say, we think it's going to be really HARD for him to leave.  Some of you are likely wondering, "Why not leave this boy where he is?  Why uproot him from the only family he has even known?"

We asked these questions too.  And what we found was that, unfortunately, orphans in China have a really rough road ahead of them.  In China, your family line and name is very important.  An orphan has no family line or name.  Domestic adoption in China, while growing, tends to be for very young babies only.  No one is lined up waiting for older kids (kinda like in the US, hmmm....)  Once they turn 14, children are no longer eligible for adoption.  At 16, they are on their own.  Most receive substandard education.  In Nathan's case, he did not start school at the normal age, but instead, 2 years late.  When we questioned the reasons for this, we were told that it was "normal" for SWI (Social Welfare Institute) kids to start school late.  So from the get-go, they are at a disadvantage.  Also, they are usually sent to poor schools, because in many places, parents don't want their children going to school with 'unlucky' orphans.  After digging around a bit, we found that even the VERY FEW orphans that receive a college education have trouble getting hired (has to do with that 'unlucky' orphan thing.) 

I think I have fairly accurately described the situation in China.  Feel free to comment or correct me if I have misstated the facts!

Here are some more pics of our boy over the years:

Love this one!

With his foster sister

I bet they made him hold those flowers!

With his foster sister again...she sounds like a clone of our Grace!

With his foster mama and two foster sibs

Meet our new guy!

Meet Nathan, age 9, currently residing in Hunan Province, China.  I know some of you are wondering, hmmm, I thought those nutty Hunters were DONE growing their family.  Well, the nutty Hunters thought they were DONE too, but sometimes things happen that change your mind.  I'm sure everyone has BTDT.  Long story short, shortly after arriving home with Josiah in 2007, a darling little face popped up on my screen, courtesy of the adoption agency we had used for Josiah's adoption.  Here's the pic:

Is that not the sweetest little face?  Obviously, he is younger than 9 in this picture- we think he was about 4 or 5 here. I don't know what exactly it was about this picture, but I called Marc and kids into the room and showed them.  And didn't think anything more about it at that point.  Because we already had 8 kids and in fact had just gotten back from China a couple of months earlier with Josiah.  Because we thought we were DONE.

For my fellow adoptive parents from China (the rest of you will find this meaningless, so ignore...), Nathan was on the very first shared list.  Our agency had picked a few kids to advocate for and he was one of them.  He spent some time on the shared list, then went to an agency designated list, then finally onto Lifeline's designated list.

Over the next two years, Nathan kept popping into my presence.  I tried advocating for him, mostly through contacting people I thought might be  interested, and posting about him on some online adoption groups.  I finally brought up the idea to Marc that maybe, just maybe, we were supposed to be his parents.  Thankfully, he did not run screaming from the room, but listened to me.  We prayed about it.  We discussed it.  I gathered as much info on him as I could.  And finally we decided to go ahead! 

(Skip this next part if you aren't familiar with how China's adoption programs work.) The day after we made the decision, his file got snatched away from Lifeline since the CC*A had decided to do away with agency designated lists and put all waiting children on the shared list.  NO time to submit our LOI.  I was absolutely panicked.  What if he didn't get put on the shared list?  What if he did and some other family decided to adopt him?  I felt like he was ours already.  We were assured that he would be on the shared list.  We were assured that it was a very long shot that another family would come forward for him. After all, he had been waiting over 4 years for a family. 

About a month later, Nathan did indeed show up on the shared list.  We had to wait an additional 30 days to file our Letter of Intent to Adopt him.  That wasn't fun.  But in the end, it all worked out as it was meant to!

Here is a more current photo of our boy.  I'll post more stuff about him later!