Holidays are over - back to the grind stone

Chloe received the above as a Birthday card this year from her Great Aunt Mickey - I love it so am posting it here and calling it Asian Flair

It is time to finally shake off the holidays, sadly enough. All the tree trimmings are down and packed away, the house seems to be back to normal, at least temporarily. I have been checking out the CCAA's website occasionally. Things sure are different now vs. the first time around, the CCAA actually posts the dates of referrals as well as posts the dates of dossiers that are currently in the "review" room. Not sure what "review" means but I hope I can assume that the babies are being chosen for these people. Check it out at: http://www.china-ccaa.org/ The updates should appear at the bottom right of the webpage (don't forget to choose English at the top unless of course you can read Chinese!). For future reference my LID (which is the date the CCAA posts for updates) was November 30, 2005. If you notice that date being included on the bottom right and haven't seen that discovery in this blog, shoot me an email.....fast!!! :-)

The wait seems to have gone down to a crawl now, I suspect that I will not receive my referral until the end of 2006 if we are lucky, which would mean that most likely I will be traveling in dead winter again (January for Chloe) so Northern China will be BURR cold and southern China will be absolutely perfect; I suppose I should search my closet for those covertible pants that zip off to shorts as they certainly came in handy during the last trip.

It seems that there are 3-4 single moms in the November group with my agency, we won't know until much later if all of the November LID's (log ins at the CCAA) will be traveling together or if the month will be split - hopefully the former rather than the latter, the more the merrier.

Chloe has been talking about her "baby sister" a lot lately ("baby sister" is said like it is the actual "name" of such as in, "Baby sister will like these shoes when they don't fit me anymore". "Can I teach babysister how to cut snowflakes?" "When baby sister is 3 and I am 7, I can show her how to do stuff". The "Chloe, I really don't know how old your sister is going to be but she will probably be younger than you" falls on deaf ears. In hindsight, I should have never told Chloe about this so soon as it is such a looooooong wait for an adult, I can't imagine how difficult it must be for her.

Still not sure who in my family will be accompanying Chloe and I to China this time around. All of the sisters "wish" to go and I am praying that they all can but I do realize it is quite an expense. I just hope at least one goes as I will need the help and will need someone to occupy Chloe while the bonding takes place with the "baby sister". I am also really, really hoping to go a few days earlier than the rest of my group so that we can do some sight seeing. This agency doesn't seem to be as good about sight seeing as my first agency - the way I understand it, if you want to sight see, you arrange it yourself on the front end of your trip and then meet up with the rest of your gourp at the pre-determined location. This will be tough, especially if all the sisters want to go as they "must" (in my opinoin) see the Great Wall in Beijing (Seriously, why go to China at all if you aren't going to catch 'The Wall"?) yet I "must" see Hong Kong this time around (opposite ends of the country, practically but I am determined). Not sure how I will work out the logistics but I will try my darn-dest!!!