Letter Seeking Confirmation....Meili Kang McKenna

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 Meili for quite some time, the middle name has not been so easy. We considered just "K" even though we weren't sure if this was her middle name (Kang) or part of her last name. So as Reed is checking everything out, he tells us that the character for her first name, Kang, means peaceful. Bingo! How perfect. Meili Kang. Russel has always wanted to use Kang but I was worried that it was like half a syllable or something. Thank you Reed!! He has proved very useful.....and i'm sure will prove to be invaluable over the next several months.

We also were able to find a parents yahoo group that we joined. We learned a lot about where Meili is and the orphanage, etc. There are only about 50 children in the orphanage. Most of the children are in foster care as there are about 400 kids associated with this particular orphanage. We also found out that we will most likely not be traveling to the orphanage. We were looking forward to seeing exactly where she has been living....but we will have to save that for a future trip. We will most likely pick her up in Taiyuan which is a six hour train ride from Yuncheng City. Some of the parents we talked to have tried to go but they simply won't let them. It would also be very hard for little Meili to turn right around after a 6 hour train ride and go back. So that's a little disappointing but the city of Tiayuan looks great. There are some really neat parks there. It will be perfect as we try to help Meili adjust to us.

Everyday, our prayers are being answered. We truly have seen the hand of the Lord and know this little girl is meant to be with us. We have an amazing family that has already encompassed her with so much love. What we would do without them, I am not sure. They have been our support every step of the way. And they are absolutely crazy about her.....what more could we ask for.