Earthquakes in China

For those of you who wondered Ren was not affected by the earthquake, although they would have felt the rumblings in his Province. This earthquake has had devastating consequences across China. My heart breaks every time I see it on the news. 5 million homeless, its hard to wrap my mind around those numbers. Parents have lost children and children have lost parents. Over 55,000 people lost and still counting. It makes my problems and annoyances seem very petty. Please pray that the diseases do not outbreak and spread now, this will be a big challenge. China needs 3 million tents just to house the homeless. For those of you that would like to help I have taken this from my agency's (Homeland) website and posted it below.

Please join us in supporting the American Red Cross efforts in
providing emergency services to the victims of the recent earthquake in
Sichuan Province. The Red Cross has a 4 star rating for effectiveness from
Guidestar, the independent charity evaluation organization. Please visit: http://www.redcross.org/ and
give what you can!

What's the Hold Up?

Well we are still doing paperwork. The Hague Adoption Convention recently went into effect. The requirements are new to everyone including the adoption agencies and homestudy providers. I have been told that as we are all wading through this new treaty, we are the first group of guinea pigs to be fulfilling the new requirements. What is the Hague Adoption Convention? In a nutshell (I have taken this form the Hague website):

"On October 6, 2000 President Clinton signed into law the Intercountry
Adoption Act of 2000, the US implementation of the Hague Convention on
International Adoption.


The Hague Convention is multilateral treaty that includes 66 prospective
member countries. The Convention serves to set internationally agreed upon norms
and procedures for countries who participate in intercountry adoption. The goal
of the Convention is to protect the children, birth parents and adoptive parents
involved in intercountry adoptions and to prevent child-trafficking and other
abuses. "

This in of itself is a good thing for all involved, it is just adding to my frustration as it causes us to have to wait longer to travel to get Ren. On top of this we have to consider the Beijing Olympics. The Olympics are August 8th through the 24th. It is rumoured that China will not allow "adoption travel" during this time. They are going to have so many foreigners in their country during this period that it will be logistically difficult to deal with the extra adoptive parents during this time. The big question is how long will they black out adoption travel? It is rumored that it could be anywhere from the 2 weeks of the Olympics to 3 months! I am guessing and hoping we will travel to get Ren in September.

We are ready to go over there now and get him. Our excitement at meeting our new son is tangible and it is hard to be patient. I have to keep reminding myself that everything happens in God's timing and there is a reason for everything. In the meantime we have put together a picture book of our family, house, his bed, etc. and had it sent to Ren. I wish I could be a fly on the wall to watch as Ren first sees us and to see the look on his little face. Will he think we are funny looking foreign parents? Probably, but I hope he will look at us enough to get use to us before we get there. We sent pictures of our 2 dogs and I hope they don't scare him either! Poor Bob, our pug, is so ugly he's cute. I'm hoping it was a good idea to have sent his picture ha ha ha!

Here is a picture of Bob, I wonder if Bob knows what he's in for ?! And a picture of Ren's new bed and comforter set (please ignore the pink carpet LOL)!