McKenna Family

We learned that on May 21, sweet little Meili fell and cut her head open. She was playing and fell on some door tracks. They had to take her to the doctor and get stitches. They also had to shave a small patch of her hair. She is doing well now but she was very sad and cried hard. Here are the pictures taken after she had been to the doctor. We received our I-800 approval on the 20th and the NVC letter came on the 27th. We were very excited as this starts the Article 5 process which is the last step before the travel approval. The article 5 will be complete on June 15. The only problem is that we have learned that travel approvals have been extremely slow in coming over the last couple of months. We talked to our agency and she said hopefully things will pick up a bit before it's time for us to go. It was a pretty frustrating day to know how close we are yet really still have no idea when we might travel. We are still praying and hoping things will continue to move quic...

This last week has been a whirlwind to say the least which is why I haven't posted all the amazing incredible things that have happened to us this week. It's been a little crazy around here. After we made the connection with Lisa from Beijing, she showered us with pictures. Beautiful, sweet, adorable pictures. We have enough to make Meili a baby book, we have pictures from when she was just a baby! She looks so happy and healthy. She is in such good hands. They love her and take care of her. She just glows. We will forever be grateful to these wonderful amazing ladies who are taking care of her. It is an amazing blessing she is where she is. We thought she was in Yuncheng City which is a desperately poor and deprived area. The pictures we have seen of the kids in foster homes/orphanage there are very depressing...dirt floors, rooms without walls, etc. They truly do suffer in that area of China. We feel so blessed and thank our Heavenly Father everyday that she w...

As mentioned earlier, we have recently joined an email group for parents adopting in the Shanxi area. We have been able to connect with many parents and have learned a lot about the area. Of course we were always hoping we would connect with another family traveling that might be able to go to the orphanage and get pics of Meili. But then we learned that would not be a possibility. So you can imagine how incredible it was when we received an email from a lady in Bejing that actually volunteers at a foster care group home and knows Meili. She sent some pics and told us she really thought this was our daughter and that if it is, she has many more to send. Wow!! We were a little in shock as the tears started coming. We could not ask for more. She said they call her Yuan Yuan and that she is a little doll. I asked many questions and can't wait to hear back from her and get more pics of our sweet girl. She is darling and looks so healthy and happy. We know the Lord is watchi...

You can guess we were ecstatically jumping up and down yesterday when Heidi called to let us know that our Letter Seeking Confirmation had arrived! We were really hoping for the middle of May so we were more than thrilled when it came two weeks early. It has been a whirlwind 24 hours trying to get paperwork filled out and sent off but we got everything sent today and hopefully the I-800 petition will be filled in the next few days. So according to timeline estimates we are 12-16 weeks away from finally having our baby girl in our arms. Last night as we were filling out the paperwork, our case manager cleared up some confusion. Meili's first name is Kang Yuan and last name is Dang. You'd think after all these months, we would've figured that out or someone would've told us :) So Russel rushed down to Uncle Reed's to show him the Chinese characters of her name. We had to decide yesterday exactly what we were going to name her and while we have been set on Meil...