BIG NEWS

 On April 9th (Olivia’s birthday), Brian and I sent in our LOI (letter of intent) to China requesting to become the parents of a little girl we had recently seen on our agency’s page.  We had already reviewed her file and also had a doctor at our local International Adoption Clinic review her medical file, photos and videos as well.   After submitting our LOI we were told that it normally takes 1-2 weeks to receive pre-approval back from China allowing us to continue moving forward in the process.  At this point we were cautiously excited, but decided not to share this information with Olivia until we got our pre-approval.  Then yesterday late afternoon, Brian received a phone call at work from our social worker letting him know that we already had pre-approval and giving him a quick rundown of the next few steps in our process.

We took Olivia out to dinner last night and showed her a picture of her new little sister.  She is SOOOOO excited!  In fact, she was actually speechless for a couple minutes and if you know Olivia that is really something! :)  This morning she went to school with the picture of her new little sister in hand and went straight to the front office to show everyone there.

 We have decided to name the newest member of the Harmon family, Heidi Grace.  She just turned 2 years old in January.  Olivia’s birthday is exactly 4 days before mine and it turns out that Heidi’s birthday is exactly 4 days before Brian’s.  I told him he will never get a birthday cake ever again. :)  Heidi is from just one province over from where Olivia came from in southern China.

If all goes smoothly we hope to travel to China to bring Heidi Grace home late this fall (we were told to count on it being approximately 6 months).