It is Thanksgiving evening 2008. We have spent the day with Loree's family at "The Cabin." Robbie is teaching us how these blogs work so that we can have a place to record and share details and progress of ChaoChao's adoption.

We tracked ChaoChao's Letter of Acceptance and see that it was received in Beijing today. We expect to receive our authorization to travel within the next three weeks. Once that is received our agency (Small World) will schedule appointments for us in the required places. We will first spend about a week in Zhengzhou (capital of Henan Province) to complete the adoption with the Chinese. When that is complete, we will go to the US consulate in Guangzhou to apply for a US visa for ChaoChao so that he can travel home with us. This will take another few days. If all goes well, we will have to be gone a total of 12-14 days.

We are hopeful that some of this travel will take place over Christmas break and that we will return home the first week of January. It could all have to wait until sometime in January, depending on how quickly the Chinese government responds to our LOA.