Quick Update

First off, Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you are all having a great long weekend.



I wanted to share with you our last update of Kate, we received confirmation a couple of days ago and we are so happy with the updated information.



"... your daughter is doing well. She can sit independently and pull herself up but she cannot walk on her own yet. I asked if she is crawling, and was told no because the caregiver doesn't want to put her on the floor to crawl because of her heart condition (according to her). She said that when the baby cries her lip will turn blue and she doesn't want to upset her by putting her on the floor to crawl. Other than her heart condition, she is doing well and she is a bright child."



Kate is 15 months old in December. Of course Danielle and I are so thankful for the great news. The picture above is from when Danielle was on the phone with our adoption agency when we got the call about being accepted to adopt Kate.

Here We Go!

Welcome to the new blog. I have to say that I got tired of myspace and decided to move over here. So far so good, I am going to continue to explore all the different options with blogger and edit as needed. Bare with me as I go through the changes. Hopefully this will be a fresh look at Hough Stuff as we move towards our second adoption, hence the name Hough Stuff con Katie. Kate Ann Cheng Xin Hough is the name of our new daughter. Kate turned one year old on September 11th and it looks like we are still about 5 months out from being able to go get Kate and bring her home.

The latest update is that Danielle and I pushed at getting our paperwork through USCIS (government immigration), it was the last bit of paperwork that we needed before we submitted all documents to the State Department and Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. All said, it took us a total of 57 days to complete the USCIS part (this is fast given the majority of wait time is now 120+ days for approval).

Danielle sent the dossier to Washington D.C. on Friday November 21st. The courier that we hired delivered the papers to the State Department today, tomorrow the papers will go the Chinese embassy then they should be completed and shipped back to us December 1st. We will be cutting it close, our adoption agency gave us until December 5th to get our Dossier to China. I must note that we did file an extension to give us extra time to get the dossier completed, but it has always been our goal to get the dossier completed more sooner than later.

We will be submitting our documents to our adoption agency the first week of December with hopes of the agency sending it to CCAA (China) that same week. The we are only about 3-5 months before we can go get Kate.

In other news, Danielle switched hours at work so she now goes to work from 6 pm to midnight 3-4 nights a week. So I am able to get home, sit down to diner with Jessica and Danielle for about half an hour before Danielle has to leave. It is working out good for us, we took Jessica out of day care so either Danielle and I are with her all the time.





Since we are not putting money into day care any more, we decided to get Jessica into gymnastics and dance. She loves them both!


Jessica's first dance recital is December 12th, I am excited about seeing her in the show. For the gymnastics, I guess there is no recital to speak of, so I took an afternoon off from work to go watch. I have to say that I was almost moved to tears, it was awesome to watch Jessica be so comfortable with herself to be so sure of what she was doing. She was focused on her gymnastics and payed attention. It made me realize that she is growing up quickly and to realize that she has already been with Danielle and I two years, she is well adjusted and a happy girl. I could not be more blessed!