Moon Festival for Lottie Lee

 

We invite our family and closest friends to virtually celebrate with us this year in anticipation of receiving Charlotte Lee's referral. We found out on September 6, we were officially accepted or "logged in" to China's adoption database on August 27, 2012. Although we could still be waiting for several months we are one step closer to our sweet baby girl and want to celebrate each milestone and receiving our LID we feel we have amazing reason to celebrate! Best part is this all falls during the Moon Festival!

So we ask you to choose a special time in the next two weeks to celebrate life & love, friendship & family.

 

Don't feel obligated to incorporate any fancy Chinese traditions (ie moon cakes, or an elaborate Chinese meal.  Make it simple like sharing some tea or a simple meal of noodles) but PLEASE do share your story and a photo of your special meal to celebrate our Lottie Lee as we want to document this in her baby book and  here on our blog.

The Chinese Moon Festival is a joyous time for family, friends, and couples to reunite under a full moon. All take a little time to appreciate the beautiful full moon on hopefully the clearest night of the year. This year the Moon festival falls on 09.30.12.

 

 

Best wishes to all everyone of you hold a very special place in our heart and have been so thankful for you to be a part of our journey.

China Adoption Terms and Acronyms

Here are some of the terms commonly used in China adoption referring to things involved in the process.  We find the Acronyms to be funny but it is helpful to use them in blogs and during conversations in our yahool gorups discussing adoption topics.

·Paperchase - working hard on all the paperwork
·Dossier - the collection of paperwork that is sent to China
·CCAA - China Center of Adoption Affairs
·DTC - Dossier To China, when the dossier has arrived in China
·LID - Log-in Date for the Dossier into the CCAA system
·Waiting Mom - What I am after LID
·Referral - When the child is matched to the waiting parent(s)
-LOA-Letter of Intent letter written to oficially request your specific child
-PA-Pre Approval China recognizes your LOA and offically pre-approved for adoption
·SWI - Social Welfare Institute, orphanage
·Embassy Appt. - Appt. at U.S. embassy in China to get baby's visa
·CA - Consulate appointment, same as embassy Appt.
·TA - travel approval (to go pick child up)
·Forever Family - Adoptive family
·FCC - Families with Children from China

A common conversation or email might go like this: "I'm about finished with my paperchase. I'm hoping to be DTC in a couple of weeks and think I'll get my LID about two weeks later. I hope the wait for my referral doesn't get any longer."

LID-Log in Date

Oh joyous day how sweet it is....at 8:31am Central time while leaving for work I opened an  e-mail from our Social Worker at CHI  Subject LID: and this is what it said

Castagno family's LID date is 2012-8-27. 

 

Castagno Family made my heart skip a beat, YES we are a family and soon we will be a family of three! Then I saw the date we were logged into the system on August 27th, the day after Scott and I met for the very first time!  We found out on September 6, we were officially accepted or "logged in" to China's adoption database which means we are now considered a waiting family. Although we could still be waiting for several months we are one step closer to our sweet baby girl and want to celebrate each milestone and receiving our LID we feel we have amazing reason to celebrate!

Teravista Garage Sale for Lottie Lee

Adoption Fundraiser

 to help bring Lottie Lee home from China to her forever family here in TX

How can you help? Have items to donate?

Can you help spread to word to local  Austin/Round Rock/Cedar Park family & friends?

Or ready to shop til your drop for a GREAT cause!

Please contact Winn if you can help winncastagno@yahoo.com

DTC-Dossier to China

Getting everything straight in the crazy process of adoption is tough! The adoption process can be broken down into three distinct steps: the home study, dossier, and the post LOA/referral paperwork.  We are officially DTC--Dossier to China!  What does this mean?  Well all of our paperwork, everything we have been working towards since January, is finally sent to China. 

We received our state-certified USCIS I-797/ I800A Approval Notice copy, then we sent it in to the Chinese Consulate in Houston, which was forwarded directly to our agency in STL, which completed our dossier, and then sent on to China. We are now DTC (Dossier to China!)

A few weeks (4-6 weeks) after our dossier arrives in China, it will be logged into the CCAA. The day our paperwork is logged into the system is known as your LID. After our LID, we will wait for a referral, which will include a photo and some medical information about our sweet baby.  The wait depends on so many factors, and there is no definite timeline; but we are closer and closer to Lottie Lee and continue to pray she is happy, healthy and cannot wait to meet our daughter!

We LOVE FedEx

So we decided to send our documents via FedEx, standard overnight, with tracking and email updates to our courier in Houston, and since it made no sense to have the courier send us back the consulate authenticated I-797 Approval Notice, we decided to have it sent directly to our agency in STL from Houston.  

So we mailed out the document on Thursday, August 2nd, and it was received by the courier at 8:30am on Friday August 3rd.  We were not expecting our authenticated document to be sent to STL for at least 2 weeks.  To our SHOCKI we received an e-mail from Fedex at 5:25pm on Thursday, August 9th, that the document was mailed to our agency in STL.  The Chinese authentication process for our final document took less than one week to complete...amazing!  On Friday, our agency confirmed the document was delivered and our Finalized Dossier would be sent to China on Monday August 13th! The email notifications from Fedex are fantastic, and these last few Fedex emails have made my month!

1 week and we are State Certified..off to Houston

Opened the mailbox and sure enough our state certified copy of our USCIS I-797/I1800A Approval Notice document arrived in one week, on August 1st.  This was perfect  timing for us to send it to our courier service (www.mychinadocs.com) before we left town for the weekend.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect..We are all smiles here at our house!