Questions about our adoption

So I've had a few people recently ask me lots of questions about our adoption so I decided I would try to give a quick overview of how,why,when.
As most of you know, Cole was born in 2003 and being his parents has been the greatest joy for Brent and I. We always said we wanted another child and made the decision in 2005 to adopt. We choose adoption because we have been so blessed in having our own biological child and realized that there are so many other children out there that need a home and an opportunity to be part of a great family(not to toot our own horn,but we are pretty great!!). We contacted Children and Family Services and had our name put on the list for a domestic adoption but was soon told that the wait time for adoption was approx 10 years. Yes I said 10 years,if you want to adopt a child under the age of 2, in good health with little to no issues.
So needless to say that is when we started looking into International adoption. At this point we went and talked to friends of ours that have already adopted and were in the process of adopting again from China and got lots of information,advise and support. Thanks Jeff and Leslie,we couldn't have done this without you guys!!!! We decided to us Children's Bridge as our agency,they are located in Ottawa and have been great to deal with.
It is now January of 2006 and we start filling out paperwork,getting physicals,bloodwork,police checks,fingerprints,financial records together,references,pictures and so much more. Getting all of this done and together took us till April.
In April 2003 we started our homestudy. The homestudy consisted of meeting with a social worker, Judy in Saint John(it was quicker for us to go to Saint John as the social workers in Moncton were too busy and we would have had to wait longer). We meet with her once a week for 6 weeks and talked about everything and anything in our lives. Family, marriage, money, kids, home, work, you name it we talked about it. Then she came to our house and checked it out to make sure we lived where we said and that we had room for another child.
We are now the end of June and we got the full written report from Judy. This is put together with all the other paper work from the province and the adoption agency and off the lawyer it goes. Once it has all be signed and sealed by the lawyer it was sent to the adoption agency for translation. All of the papers that we have done had to be translated to Chinese. Once this was done it was then forwarded to China.
Our file was logged in with the CCAA(China Center for Adoption Affairs) on September 13,2006. In the adoption world this date is referred to as LID and is the date everyone refers to. When we first started the process the wait time between LID and referral(which is when you get the picture and info about your child)was 6-8 months. Right now it is about 18-24 months. Lets hope it speeds up soon. At this rate Cole will be grown and gone before she ever gets here.LOL
To help people understand,the CCAA just finished matching people with a LID of November 1, 2005. So they need to match lots more families before they get to us. The normal average is 15-20 days per month that they match. So as you can see we still have a long road ahead of us.
So far though,we have meet some great people and made some amazing friends.(My JJ girls,you have no idea how wonderful you all are and how much I enjoy getting together with you!!!!) They have helped to make the wait easier.
As you can see it has been quite a journey so far and we still have much more to go. I hope this has helped answer some questions for people.

Nothing much going on these days. Thank goodness for the nice weekend.We have the cottage open and just waiting for the boat to be ready. Can't wait to get out there. Cole is great and is getting very excited about our vacation coming up. He can't wait to go and see Marcus.

Oh, I had my first taste of 'Stamping' the other night. Thanks girls,I could see this becoming an addiction.

Getting started

Ok here it goes, I'm totally new to this whole blogging thing but I'm going to give it a try.
I really don't have that much to say right now anyway. But I'm hoping to keep this updated on what is happening in our world when it comes to Cole and our journey to his baby sister,Ella.
We aren't expecting anything to happen till late next year so in the meantime I can tell you what's going on with him.

He is very patiently waiting to go to China to get his baby sister. He really doen't get why it is taking so long, he's 4 and thinks that things should happen when he says so.
We are going on vacation in a few weeks to California so this will be a good test for us to see how well he is going to travel when the time comes.

I'm going to try and figure out how to put pictures on here too at some point.