5 Years..and a day!

This last weekend was fabulous~busy, but great!  We spent Saturday driving around Mt. Rainier, Sunday at church, together at home, making family plans and rearranging furniture, ending with me at a potluck as part of our church's upcoming marriage conference planning committee (and I only went home with one to do item.)  All that to say, I'm spending a lot of time on my other blog posting pictures and more pictures, and neglecting my home here.  Which is fine since most of my 4 readers read both places, but it means I missed our LID-versary!  

Can you believe it?  Ummm, I guess I should tell you what a LID-versary is.  5 years ago-yesterday-China received our dossier and stamped it with a date 8/15/2006~our LID (log-in date).  Astounding I know.  5 years.  I've been saying we have been waiting 5 years for a while actually since we started the process 9 months before our LID, but those 9 months were spent paperchasing.  Then we just started waiting and waiting and waiting...

Now we are paperchasing again so we are busy again, but the waiting doesn't really change on China's side.  They have our dossier and when they start making matches for families with our LID, they will send us a referral.  Then we send a "referral acceptance."  Then we wait some more.  Then finally, if all our ducks are in a row (ie our homestudy and i-800 approval) we will travel to pick up our future child.

No one told us this process might be 6-7 years all told; even the most pessimistic weren't predicting that long (no matter what they say about it now).  Yet, the only time it really bothers me is when I think it might never happen or is not supposed to happen~then I freak out.  Those times have helped me to cling to God and I expect in the next year I will have more of those times, but today (well, yesterday) is my LIDVERSARY!  Yeah Us!  It is the first one I've celebrated because I didn't know it was something people celebrated until I started reading blogs.  You really can learn so much on-line.

At this point there are only 34 other LID's that can say they celebrated their 5th Lidversary with China.  That makes us the elite of the elite; certainly something to be proud of...maybe not.   Well, anyhooo, Happy LID-versary to our family!  May it be the last one!