the hardgrave family

As of this post, we are about 30 days past what is reffered to as our “Login Date” or as is commonly said in adoption lingo, 32 days LID. (I’ve discovered that you have to learn to speak with a whole new vocabulary of acronymns to be able to communicate meaningfully with anyone involved with international adoption. example: “So you are 30 days LID, but you’re 60 days DTC . . .wow, how is your DW holding up while waiting on the TA from CCAA?”) Anyway . . . at the present, we’re still hoping to get our “TA” (travel approval) from the “CCAA” (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) sometime in the next several weeks. The earliest that we would expect to see it would be around the middle of December. If we do get it then, we are hoping that we can get in with one of our agency’s two travel groups leaving around the start of the new year.

For all of you who have so gracioulsy responded to our letter and given your support, prayers and encouragement, we just can’t thank you enough. So far as we can tell at the moment, we are only about $5K short of where we need to be before we travel. While we still have a respectable amount to make up, we just can’t say enough about how overwhelmingly blessed we are to have gotten so close to our goal so quickly. We know that it is only by God’s grace and your kindness. Please continue to keep us in prayers and rejoice with us that God has been so good to us thus far.

In other news, two weekends ago, we finished our last “home improvement” to get ready for Hua Yin/Lily Faith’s arrival. To the great pleasure of Sarah and Kathryn, we’ve finally added their much anticipated bunk beds (big thanks to Michael, Melissa, Jesse and Matthew for the beds!) and repainted the room in “Princess” pink. All we need is princess #3 and the room with be complete!

We’ll be putting our 2nd batch of “support leters” in the mail today. You can read the full text of the letter here. As you can read in the letter, our adoption time-line has really been accelerated since having accepted a “Special Needs” refferal. We are very excited about the possiblity of traveling to China as soon as January,but it does shorten time for raising the funds to do so. By the Lord’s help we are hoping to raise the remaining 14K of the adoption costs by December. We really believe that He has called us to this, so we trust that he’ll provide for our needs. Please keep us in your prayers that we would remain faithful and patient!

If you are checking out our Weblog because you recieved one of our support letters, thanks so much for stopping by. We are so glad you are here!

Please take a second to look around and catch up on the latest news. To find news or pictures about specific family members or “happeningss,” please check the “categories” in the right column. If you have any questions for us about our adoption or the site, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to email us

Life International has graciously given us a Matching Grant of $3000. Life International is a trusted organization administering funds on our behalf, and will pay our adoption expenses out of funds received. If you would like more information about Life International, please visit their website at www.lifeintl.org.