Hello from John & Pamela

March 2007 brought a late snowfall to our home in Redmond.

Our daughter awaits us

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break."

Ancient Chinese Belief-- A red thread, although invisible and unfamiliar, is already forming a bond between our baby and us. We don't know when she was was born or what she looks like, but we do know that she is already ours in our hearts and that soon we will be holding her in our arms. For now we will continue to look at the red thread.

The paper chase is finally over

After almost 6 months of compiling official documents our adoption dossier was shipped to our agency on Friday, March 16, 2007. The "paper chasing" phase of our journey is officially over. For those of you that have shared this part of our journey, thank you for all your patience and encouragement!John and I spent Friday evening reminiscing about the mountains of paperwork that we compiled over the past months. Once we learned of our acceptance from our agency we begin the paper chasing process. After interviewing several local social workers, we decided to work with a wonderful woman from Brainbridge Island. She assisted us in analyzing our strengths and weaknesses as future adoptive parents and helped us compile the life story of our family. The home study is an important piece of our dossier as it is necessary to satisfy requirements of both the US Citizen and Immigration Services and well as the Chinese government.During these past months we have had several interviews with our social worker, been cleared of any illegal wrong doing from the county sheriff's office, had our finger prints cleared with the FBI, provided our marriage license and birth certificates, disclosed our finances, completed a medical physical, and reached out to friends to be a reference as to our parenting skills.Once all this paperwork was gathered, it was signed in the presence of a notary, certified with the state of Washington as well as the Secretary of State in Washington D.C. and authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. This paperwork along with our home study and 10 life style pictures are now on their way across to sea to China!