This is Katie!  I'll add more pictures later.  We received our pre-approval tonight, so I felt like we could finally introduce her to everyone.  We're in love!

Breakdown

Today has not been a good day.  I had my first post-referral breakdown.  Now that we "know" our little girl, it seems very hard to wait until July/August to bring her home.  I was looking at her pictures and crying.  People had told me this would happen, but the feeling of helplessness that I have right now is oppressive.  I cannot do anything to speed our paperwork through the process and that is very frustrating.  I'm trying to remember that God's timing is perfect, and that He has planned this adoption for us since the beginning of time.

Acceptance Paperwork On It's Way

Our letter of acceptance and all of our other acceptance paperwork left for China today.  I'm so excited about this little girl.  She is already such a blessing to us.

Referral Accepted

We received a referral late Monday night and had until Wednesday morning to decide if this was our little girl.  We accepted the referral for An A'li who is in Xi'an, ShaanXi, China.  Her birthday is August 21, 2008, so hopefully we will have her home before her third birthday.  We are very excited, overwhelmed, happy and scared.  We asked God to send us the perfect little girl and know that she is the one meant for us.  We will post pictures soon once our acceptance paperwork reaches China.

Wait, Wait, Wait

We are still waiting on our paperwork to make it to China.  After that, it should only be a week until we get our referral.  Hopefully, we will know who are little girl is in the next two weeks.  We'll keep you posted and put pictures up as soon as we have them.