Getting ready to travel to China for Ella

I know I haven't posted since on this blog since 9/09 (not sure where 2010 went), but I am going to try to get in the habit again to be able to document the arrival of our beautiful daughter who we are adopting from China!

For those that don't know, her name will be Ella Wei Ham. She was born on 4/6/09 and abandoned at birth. She has been living in an orphanage in Nantong in the province of Jiangsu in China. She was born with a cleft lip and palate. the lip was repaired surgically when she was 8 months old and we will have the palate surgery once she is home.

We began the adoption process by submitting our application on 5/15/10, received our referral on 9/27/10 and will be leaving for China next week on 3/17/11 and will receive our little one on Mon, 3/21!!!!!! All in all a 10 month process (much shorter than the 12-18 months the agency quoted us at time of application).

Lucas and Noah are very excited to meet their little sister. They will be staying with my parents and not traveling with us. It will be hard to be away from them for 2 1/2 weeks (the longest we have ever been away from them is 2 nights!) But I know they will be in good hands with Grandma & Grandpa :)

I will do my best to keep posting, I am not sure if I will be able to post from China (not sure what you can access on the Internet there). If I can't, I'll send my sister posts & pics so hopefully she can post (thanks Lynn, I haven't asked yet if she will do it)

Here are some pics of Ella taken on 12/31/10.