Finally on the way!
We travel to China Sat Aug 12th

Updated TimeLine:
June 24th: We were assigned a child and received these beautiful pictures of Alia.
She was born April 22nd 2005 and was found on April 25th.
Quoting from the report we received:
"The security of Tai He Village, Qingxin Town received a phone call that there was an infant girl in front of The First Grammer School on April 25th 2005. They could not find her birth parents and she was sent to Quinxin Social Welfare Institute on the same day.
When she entered, she wore white baby clothing and was wrapped in a red blanket. She was in a paper box. Her face color was red and she cried loudly. She was a new born infant. There was a piece of paper showing her date of birth was April 22nd 2005. We gave her the name Qing Xin, Yang Guan"
The report continued to talk about her excellent progress thru her first year in life.

Our next step was to take the report to a pediatric adoption specialist and then to officially "Accept the baby".
Our acceptance was sent to China on June 29th.

From that point we had to wait for Travel acceptance, which is permission to travel to pick up the baby. We were told that could take anywhere from 3 - 7 weeks.

Now that we had pictures of our child every day we became more anxious. We wanted her as soon as we could get her and did not want that beautiful little girl to grow older without us.

July 31st we received travel permission! Before we could confirm our flights and arrangements we next had to apply for our Exit from China appointment at the US Consulate.
We applied that day and several days later received an 11am appointment for Mon Aug 28th.

We were ecstatic. Our plans were to leave on Aug 17th arrive Aug 18th in Beijing. Spend two nights in Beijing and then fly to Guangzhou where we would receive Alia on the 20th or 21st.
We would return home on Aug 30th.

Aug 7th:
Best laid Plans..................
We find out that a new law was enacted in the Guangdon Province (which is where Alia is from). Any child adopted from that province must now stay in China for 10 business days with her parents to be before being allowed an exit interview. This meant that we would have to stay in China an extra week!
To cut a long story short we have been told that for "Us" they have made an exception and have cut the 10 day rule to 8 days?!#*.
We had to make a very quick decision to stay longer or to leave earlier.
We scrambled and are now at this very moment preparing to leave for China this Saturday Aug 12th. Arrive in Beijing Aug 13th. Fly to
Guangzhou Aug 15th and receive Alia that evening or Aug 16th.
We keep our exit interview for Aug 28th and return home with our daughter on the 30th.

Must get ready to leave!

Watch this blog, from Aug 14th we will be writing daily posts with pictures of this incredible journey!

Love Jill and Robert