INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MONTH'S REFERRAL BATCH

We received an email from our agency this morning stating the CCAA updated "the box" to show the offical cutoff of this month's referral batch as January 31, 2006. A dismal two-day batch considering the 2006 Chinese New Year began on January 28th - so the 26th and 27th were the only LIDs included in this batch.

There has been some talk on the Rumor Queen site that apparently some European countries had a lot of families logged in during those two days, so it's possible even though only two days were referred it was a big enough batch as far as number of referrals.

It's a little confusing as to why the CCAA chose the 31st as the offical cutoff since the 2006 CNY was January 28-Febraury 5th. I'm thinking the most likely reason is simply to close out the month of January. However, there are some who think there is a quota system in place at the CCAA (even though the CCAA continually denies this claim). To date the CCAA is averaging five days of LIDs in each batch of referrals. If they stay true to this, that means next months batch would only include through February 5th or 6th (and not really skip over the CNY dates like we were expecting them to). With an LID of February 9th, this would put us with a referral in October. So for now, since I'm rather disappointed and a little sad and out of energy to hope, I'll be expecting our referral to arrive in the October batch rather than next month. It's sad, really, because we are offically only 4 LID days away from our referral, but if feels like it's forever away.

I must say that I'm so thankful for my faith and the trust I have in God's timing. I know that He is ultimately in control, not the CCAA. So with that I take comfort in knowing that Malia just isn't ready to be matched with us yet. In His time...

However, it is very difficult to watch the Olympics, seeing all the Asian children all over the TV, and not miss my daughter.