OUT OF REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank the Lord!

That is the best I can say! Now I'll say everything else...

In these last 10 months of waiting, it has been a one step forward and two steps back.

Finally getting out of the Review Room and into the Matching Room is actually our first milestone to celebrate since our LID!

I was a little nervous about getting through the Review Room, with all the changes going on in China. However, in December my agency assured me that all of our paperwork was documented well and that they did not expect any problems. Then I just became anxious for it to happen so I would know for sure!

Now, not only did they move us to the Matching Room, our LID was the cut off date!! You can't imagine how it felt to see our LID staring at me! I was yelling for Chris to come look, grabbing the phone to call my Mom and putting on my coat to take Chris to school all at once!

Very Exciting Friday!

Now what does all this mean? Well our dossier will sit in the Matching room for many months now. Since they just referred families with LID's through 10/13/05, there are exactly 160 days until 3/22/06. (I learned how to do date calculations in Excel this week!)

I took the stats from the last year and did some calculations and found that in the last year, the CCAA has processed an average of 13 referrals in an average of every 30 days. So I took (160/13)*30 and got 369 or Feb 5th. I really wasn't thrilled with this so I calculated using the last six months averages and got December 16th!

So I tried my nifty little calculation and using the last three months averages and came up with November 20th! Okay now that's more like it!

Well since I have a cold and it's freezing and icy out and I couldn't muster any ambition to do what I should have been doing... (Winter Blues)

I did a few more calculations!! Using individual month's stats on their own.

September - September 19, 2007
Early November - March 6, 2008
Late November - December 5, 2007
January - November 13, 2007
February - November 17, 2007

That was fun, and lifted my spirits! It's still a toss up at this point because we just don't know what the CCAA will do and we have such a long way to go! But I have decided to be SEWHOPEFUL again, for a while there I was SEWHOPELESS. I am going to allow myself to hope for a December referral and have Hope's picture on the fireplace mantle above her stocking on Christmas Eve.

I can dream of Christmas in China but I won't hope yet...

Happy Groundhogs Day

Note: I noticed I had miscalculated a few numbers and found them to be even more promising so this post has been edited to reflect the more hopeful dates!