Group #19!

This is a message posted by Stefani Ellison on the CHIWaitingKids site today!

Boy Howdy!! Its time to circle the wagons and get out our fiddles and dancing shoes! Group 19 is HERE and what a posse of perty little partners we have this time too! We had been told the group would be late in arriving due to the 3 week tour of the US by the Waiting Child Supervisor so we got a mighty fine surprise when it arrived. We didn't even get time to have our naming game. So, since the new group of children was compiled on Utah's Pioneer Day, and we had no names,we quickly named them for towns in Utah. Most of you wouldn't have a clue with those anyway.We are in the process of translating the files and that will take us to the end of the week. We have a large group of CHI families (this means that they have officially applied to CHI, not just sent out a pre-app, and submitted a request for a specific age, gender and need for Group 19) who will be assigned their children first. As soon as that is finished the list will be opened to our preview families.These families have sent in a pre-application and we have that on file. We will not be accepting any more pre-application families UNLESS they would like to adopt a boy. We still have room for more families wanting magnificent boys and let me tell you, this group of boys is darned cute! We have 27 new files. 16 girls and 11 boys. Only 1 child is under 12 months old but we have 13 one year olds with the bulk of them having their first birthday in the last month or two. We have 4 two year olds, 1 three year old, 3 four year olds, 1 six year old (boy) and 1 nine year old (girl). The children are from Guangdong, Henan, Shanxiand Zhejiang provinces. Two of our children are in the Shunyi Outreach Program for Hope Foster Home. We know they have been very well cared for and are excited to be part of their journeys home.We have needs that include cleft palate, cleft lip/palate, heart issues, visual impairment, spina meningocele, limb difference, burns, port wine stains, hypospadius, chronic skin rash, strabismus, and unilateral microtia.We will be working furiously to get these files ready and will be contacting first our CHI request families, then our preview families and then opening the children's files to the general public. We CAN'T WAIT for you to all meet them!!!We tremendously appreciate all your help with Group 18. We are getting ready to make our final announcement for the last child inGroup 18 very shortly! I'm having to go find my drum sticks for that one. We'll need a HUGE drum roll to get all your attention.--Stefani EllisonChina Program Coordinator Children's House International