Red Thread Charities

Love Red Thread Charities....they are the charity group that has been in the orphanage that Maddux is at and have been able to send us updates and pictures from October updates below. This weekend we received some new pictures, including ones with his foster mom and one with Maddux actually smiling!!

Their website is: http://redthreadcharities.org/ if anyone is interested in more information.

And now for the new pictures:




























A smile:













This picture is of the bracelet that he wears. This was with him when he was found and was given to him by his birthparents. We are told the bracelet is for good luck. The walnut is a chinese medicine that promotes wellbeing.

Our little boy is waiting for us in the Zhejiang Province, in Hangzhou City.

Blog Settings

We have taken our blog private as we are not able to publicly post pictures yet until we have official approval from China. We received notice yesterday that our Log In Date (LID) was 10/12/2010. This is the date that China has received our dossier and logged it into their system. The next step will be official approval (Letter of Approval - LOA). We are hoping for this by Thanksgiving, but the average wait time is 58 days currently.

The Big Update

So finally the big update that everyone has been waiting for..... we have decided to switch from Bulgaria to China (for a variety of reasons) and have a boy waiting for us. He is from the China Special Needs program - he has already had surgery to correct his special need. We saw him listed on an agency waiting children's list and requested his information and received it on his 3rd birthday!

His name is Sun Zhong Qiu and he was born on 5/25/2007. Sun would be the equivalent of our last names. His first and middle names (Zhong Qiu) were given to him as he was found during the autumn festival. His American name will be Maddux Samuel Bush.

Multiple pictures below for our cutie.

The first picture we ever saw (taken in March 2010)













New Pictures Taken in October 2010:

Where's the News...

So you are asking where the update is. We have been silent for awhile but should have some news by the end of August. It may not be the news you are expecting from Bulgaria....we are researching some other countries and children, will have more definite information coming shortly.

But....we have not been bored. We have had 2 sick cats in the last couple months - Monster with pancreatitis (yes, we managed a feeding tube for a few days) and Mickey had to have 3 inches of his intestines and his entire appendix removed!! Everyone back to healthy for now, hoping it stays that way!

Stay tuned....more to come!

Introducing Mickey....

We brought home our new kitten on Friday night. He is doing really well (except for slight eye problem - going to vet today). He was terrified of the greyhounds the first night, but is doing much better as you can see from the second picture.

He is very very tiny - can fit into the palm of one hand. Even the adult cats that were at the cattery when we picked him up were much smaller than we thought. He'll probably grow to 7-9 pounds and will be very long and very very skinny!

1 Year

It seems hard to believe, but today we have been registered and officially waiting for a referral from Bulgaria for one year!

Good News: We did speak with our adoption agency last week and they are still saying 18 months for a referral. The MOJ has been meeting weekly and referring approximately 10 children per session. The children that were identified in January should be on the international adoption registry shortly - approximately 4500 children.
Bad News: We know of at least one other person who has been registered for 24 months and does not have a referral yet. She also requested a child up to 24 months old at the time of referral.

We continue to wait and still hope that we will have a referral by 18 months. 18 months of waiting (going by week numbers) will be exactly our wedding anniversary date of September 20th, so maybe 18 months is what is meant to be.