Our Adoption Story Part 4c--While We Waited Year 3

You can find links to the other parts of Our Adoption Story here.

So the second anniversary of our Login Date came on August 15, 2008, and I can assure you 100% I was not thinking about the adoption. at. all.  I was thinking about feeding a newborn, sleep deprivation, and Oak going back to work.  So you can pretty much guess what we did for year 3 of our wait.  However, I have it on good authority that blogs need pictures, so I thought I would tell it to you in pictures.  They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so this might be my longest post yet!

Sunflower Day 1

Sunflower Day 6

One Month-ish

Two Months

Sunflower 2 Months

Sunflower 2 1/2 Months

Lest you think I only took pictures of Sunflower (and I did take over 2000):

Steam Train with Grandpa and Cousin

Finding a Christmas Tree

Sunflower 4 1/2 Months

Christmas 2008

SnapDragon turning 5

5 years and 5 months

Sunflower's Baby Dedication Feb. 2009

Huckleberry Turning 9

2nd Place Regional Science Fair--Huckleberry

Easter 2009

May 2009

June 2009

Trip to Minnesota July 2009

One Year's Old, Not quite walking

So year 3 of our wait was a pretty good year spent taking pictures, going to the YMCA, Awanas, and Bible Studies, Coordinating Mops, taking more pictures, spending time together as a family and with friends, and taking a trip across the country to see family.  We didn't look at the numbers from China, we just enjoyed life, always while praying for our future child.

Thank goodness we didn't look at the numbers.  The wait time continued to grow from almost 3 years to almost 4.  We had waited 3, so that meant we were one year away from referral, right?  Unfortunately not.  We only had 5 months of LIDs in front of us, but at about 6 months to process one month, we were now 5x6=30 more months away from referall.

Here is the chart to prove that I'm not making these numbers up (possibly someone else is, but not me--no, they are accurate.)  

Referral Date               LID               Length of Wait

2009-08-22	2006-03-24		1247 days
2009-07-24	2006-03-22		1220 days
2009-06-25	2006-03-20		1193 days
2009-05-20	2006-03-14		1163 days
2009-04-07	2006-03-08		1126 days
2009-03-04	2006-03-06		1094 days
2009-01-27	2006-03-02		1062 days
2008-12-29	2006-02-28		1035 days
2008-12-10	2006-02-23		1021 days
2008-11-10	2006-02-17		997 days
2008-10-08	2006-02-15		966 days
2008-09-02	2006-02-09		936 days
2008-08-08	2006-01-31		920 days

Thus ends year 3 of our wait.  Continue on to year 4.