Don't know how she keeps getting cuter...

Lookie what we got this week! It's Kaley's "official" picture; the one they took for the court, visa and passport applications. It's extra cool for us because she is wearing the outfit we sent to Taiwan with the paperwork. :-) More pictures of our baby girl. Looks like she's going to be mobile soon.

Still working on the registries but the ladies at work have decided to hold a baby shower for me this month. After so many years, this whole thing is taking some getting used to, but this is going to be one very loved and cared for little girl.

Now THEY have the papers!!!

We woke up this morning to the following e-mail:
_____________________________________________

Your paperwork and Kaley’s new outfit arrived yesterday. Michelle put the outfit on her right away and in fact, when we had her pictures taken yesterday that will be used for her passport, visa physical and U.S. visa interview, she was wearing the new outfit you sent.

As soon as we received the paperwork yesterday, we prepared what was needed and took it to the court to apply for your adoption. Let’s keep praying! God’s timing is always perfect.

In Christ’s Love,
Ted for Bev, Kaley, Michelle, Carolyn, Anna and all in
The Home of God's Love
_____________________________

YIPPEE!!! Please keep praying! It is now all in the hands of God and the Taiwan government. Lord willing, we'll have her home when she's about 9 months old.

And for those who have asked what size she is, Kaley is now 7 months old (on Feb. 14th) and the fleece onesie we sent was a 6-month size. We know she is small so we took a guess and apparently were right. We did not get a picture of her in it; I'm hoping we'll get that soon.

Here are pictures of the bedding (before the room was painted). The room is now a beautiful yellow that goes with all the colors in the bedding.

I was telling Michael I HAD to find the camera dock so I could offload the photos and put them up here. He said, "why don't you just take the disk out of the camera and stick it in your computer?" (at which point I thought...DUH! I knew I could do that!) I hate it when I get so fixated on doing something a certain way that I miss the obvious alternative! By the time I got home yesterday, he had them all saved to the compter for me. (He's so good!)

After several friends and family members asked me last week where we were registered and when the baby showers were, I finally got around to starting the registry last night. (Karen, I am listening to your wisdom; Target and Wal-mart. :-). Not much on there now but I'm planning to work on that tonight and tomorrow night.

Love you all. More soon!

WE HAVE THE PAPERS!!!!!

The authenticated papers arrived from TECO yesterday!!!!! Can you hear my screams of excitement?!?

Today we'll send them to The Home of God's Love in Taiwan and the final leg of this journey can begin...the court date and visa paperwork so we can go get our daughter! It will take several weeks to get through that part but at least it will be out of our hands and we are soooo close! I can't even describe the feeling when I got home last night and saw the authentication stamps on the documents.

And the nursery is now a beautiful yellow (thanks, Roxanne!). I've got pictures of the bedding and nursery-in-progress but since we moved all my office stuff out of there and merged it in with Michael's home office, I'm not sure where the camera dock ran off to! I'll be searching for it this weekend so I can download the photos from the camera to the computer and share them with you all.

Have a great day! I know we are! :-)

So sorry...

Hi everyone. I'm so sorry for not posting in a while. One thing after another but we are getting so close!

After a mix up with Michael's passport delayed everything, we finally received his passport last Wednesday afternoon and were able to overnight everything to the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in Atlanta on Thursday. We have confirmation that it was received Friday morning so now we are just waiting to receive it back so we can overnight everything to Taiwan! Woo hooo!!! (and I have to say that the man who called back from the passport office was extremely helpful. He verified everything and, knowing we were working on an adoption, he processed it immediately. We had Michael's passport two days later. Thanking him and thanking God for that.) I sent an overnight return envelope with our papers to TECO so as soon as they put it back on the way to us, we'll know.

I'm working on a pictorial to send and we will have the nursery painted this week. Pictures of that coming soon! For those who care, we went with the Peek a Boo Friends set by CoCaLo (Google it and you'll see how cute.) Fun colors, lots of texture and adorable animals. I think she'll enjoy it (I know it makes us smile. :-) We've also received this new picture of our adorable little one. We're so pitiful...we actually just stand and look at the collage on our refrigerator each day. Kaley's picture is not only around our house and wallpaper on all our computers, it's on the big screen at church each week because our Crossmark family is almost as excited as we are! Honestly, I think we could go out every night for a month and have a different babysitter each time if we wanted! Promise...I'll post pics of the nursery this week and let you all know as soon as everything's on it's way to Taiwan. Lord willing, this will be a great and productive week!