We received our travel approval today!  We are likely leaving somewhere between July 4th and July 6th.  Ready or not, we are going to go soon!  It is overwhelming how much needs to be done between now and then. 

Yesterday we were asked if we can be ready to travel June 29th or July 6th.  If we agree that both travel dates are acceptable, the actual dates will be finalized in a week or so in conjunction with the date the Chinese consulate appoints us.  If we can't accept this time frame, we will most likely travel to John's province alone.  We hope to be able to scramble and make arrangements so that we can stand ready to travel in June.  Thanks everyone for your great support!

Well, we got our Visas yesterday, so we are ready for travel!  Actually, not quite, we do need to do some packing, purchase gifts to bring, and a few other things.  We are getting so close to travel, though, and we need to assume that we could be traveling the first week of July!

We were notified today that our Article 5 was issued.  Now our estimated travel dates have us leaving between the first week and last week of July.  The uncertainty about the dates makes it harder to plan for things like having the pets taken care of.  For anyone interested in the process, first we received our letter of acceptance from the Chinese government.  That was in April.  Then we had to sign and return it.  That is our final agreement with the government that we are adopting John for sure.  Then we had to submit immigration paperwork on John's behalf.    In mid May we received the  approval of the immigration application.  Then we received approval from the NVC.  We are now at the step after that and waiting for Article 5 to reach the Chinese government office where they will issue travel approval.

Good news!  We are getting very close to travel approval.  The process from finalizing our agreement to adopt John with the Chinese government until now has taken just over five weeks.  We expect Article 5 around June 11th, then it will be approximately 2-4 weeks until we receive our travel approval.  This means that we are likely to travel in late July or early August.

An organization called International Care has agreed that if anyone is moved to make a tax-deductible donation to John's cause, they may send a check made out to I CARE and mail it to:  International CARE, Inc. P.O. Box 1603 Bel Air, Maryland  21014 together with a note saying you wish to benefit the Ziemann family adoption, rather than putting our name on the memo line.  Anyone who wishes to donate by credit card may do so on their website at http://intlcare.org/helpingus2.html by using the donate button and specifying the Ziemann adoption as the recipient in the note section.  An extra 3% fee will be charged by PayPal.  Many thanks to all who have helped or wish to help us.

We have initiated a new fundraiser which offers $50 restaurant gift cards to donors for a $20 donation, and our adoption fund will receive $10 for each such purchase.  For those of you who love to go out to eat, check it out at

 http://coupaide.com/ziemann-adoption-fundraiser