Here is Sophie!

We have someone brand new to love at our house!!  Sophie is currently living in the city of Dianjiang in China.  She is 10 months old and (we think) absolutely beautiful.  Carson is very excited that he is now a big brother and has made a list of all the things he is going to teach her.  We hope you enjoy following our exciting journey to bring Sophie home!

Introducing Jada!

Here are her proposal pictures...and a little story about when we received them!!

Well....it was early in July and Brent had taken a week of holidays.  We went down to Seattle for a couple of days to do a little sightseeing, relaxing, and of course shopping!!  We came back to Vancouver for a day (July 9, 2007) to do laundry and get ready to go up to Kelowna to visit Brent's sister and family.  Wouldn't you know it....we received a call from the adoption agency that very day. There were sooo many tears of happiness!! (I think Brent thought I was nuts!!!)  Apparently our proposals were in Victoria and we would soon have information and pictures of our baby in the next day or so!!!!  We headed up to Kelowna anyways (we left Tanya's number with the adoption agency), and even before we got there they had called (July 10, 2007).  Well, I called them immediately and she said to check my email as our proposal had been sent.  What a special moment, Brent's sister Tanya was with us when we opened up her picture on her computer!!!  What a darling little girl, with such huge brown eyes!!!  I got busy on the computer and forwarded these pics to many of our friends and family.....of course Tanya started printing off photos of her as well -  I needed on to sleep with that night!!!  Brent and I were both sooo happy and soo excited!!!

Her name is Jiang Xue Yuan.  In these photos she is about 5 months old and her birthday is November 19th, 2007 (a day after the twins'!!)

Stay tuned for more on "The White's Adventure to China"

Introducing Xue Fei

On July 10th, we were both at Koolhaus when the email came. We closed ourselves in Wolfgang’s office and opened the mail - a girl! Then Wolfgang insisted on reading the entire contents of the email, and scrolling to the bottom of the screen, carefully checking every piece of information contained therein.

Dear Leslie and Wolfgang:
CONGRATULATIONS! We received your proposal today!
Her name is JIANG Xue Fei and she was born on Nov [X], 2007. She is from SWI of Dianjiang County. Attach please find her photos. I have sent your proposal to Lu for her translation and I should have it in 10 days. I will send a proposal package to you after I receive Lu’s translation. If you have any questions, please let us know.
Thank you and CONGRATULATIONS again!!!

Meanwhile, the attachment with her photos was RIGHT THERE and he wouldn’t click on it! This was the longest moment of my life. Finally….
She is about 5 months old in these photos. Her referral consisted of all her medical information and some description of her daily schedule and personality: she has an alert pair of eyes, is a sound sleeper and smiles easily!

Shortly after we received Xue Fei’s referral, I found a Yahoo discussion group for parents who have adopted from the Dianjiang Social Welfare Institute. I introduced myself and asked anyone who would be traveling to the orphanage before we did to scout for Xue Fei and take pictures. The next day, I received an email from someone who was in China and would be visiting the orphanage the very next day! In the middle of her own adoption, this woman had the presence of mind to ask about our daughter. She reported back that Xue Fei was not presently at the orphanage; she had been in foster care since the end of April. In fact, there were no babies older than 3 months in the orphanage. The Dianjiang Kids organization had been that successful at fund raising for foster care!

This explained why the foster care info was not in her referral. They must have placed her with a foster family right after sending her file off to Beijing. So, I packed up a blanket, pyjamas, a toy and a disposable camera and sent it to the orphanage. We amended a standard letter in English and Mandarin with an extra line of text:

Please send the package to JIANG Xue Fei’s foster family so they can take pictures that will let her remember them. Please extend our deepest gratitude to the foster family for their loving care.

I also pinned one of Xue Fei’s referral pictures as well as her name printed in Mandarin to each item in the box! I even unwrapped the camera and taped her picture to it! I wanted to be sure there was no question as to who these items were meant for.

In mid-August we received an update. Now she has two teeth and weighs 22 pounds!

About Us

We are five couples adopting children from China through Sunrise Adoptions. With the exception of Amelia and Mitch, whose application was accelerated due to Amelia’s Chinese heritage, we all began the process in the spring or early summer of 2005. By the time we completed our homestudies and dossiers, it was November, and our documents went to China in mid-December. The China Center of Adoption Affairs processed our documents on January 24th, 2006, and this became our “login date.” Amelia and Mitch logged in on November 20th, 2006.

When we initiated the adoption process and made our decision to adopt from China, Sunrise advised us that the entire process would take one year. Well, this is not exactly how things went. It seems like a combination of factors slowed things down greatly: restructuring at CCAA, a huge influx of applications, changes in legistation, etc. As communication from the CCAA to the adoption agencies is minimal, we could only guess as to why and…when.

All we could do during our long wait was try to estimate when our turn would come. We could watch discussion groups and various websites devoted, specifically, to rumors and estimations of which login date batch was at the head of the queue.

Note this: when we started, Sunrise’s Group 8 had just received their referrals. It took three years to get to us, Group 15. Currently, Sunrise has 39 groups in the queue! Group 36 was the last to receive their login date: January 11, 2008.

June, 2008 was a tense month! There was a sudden surge in referrals, and finally the big day arrived on July 10th! A week later, our referrals were translated and we received a packet of information about our babies.

Friday, July 11, 2008
Sunrise China Bulletin

PROPOSALS HAVE ARRIVED!!!

We are thrilled to announce that we have received proposals for Group 15 as well as one expedited family from Group 25! Congratulations to Leslie and Wolfgang, Alison and Bradly, Tannis and Lawrence, Amelia and Mitchell, Charlene and Brent! The families were informed about the proposals and provided with photos yesterday while we have sent the proposals off to be translated.

The proposals we received were from Chongqing and Guangxi provinces. The children range in age between 8 and 20 months, with the biggest surprise being the proposal of 4 girls and 1 boy!