RFE- addendum complete

Because we are working with such amazing people for our home study our addendum has been completed and on its way today back to USCIS today. Praising God for that! So who knows how long it will take for our officer to approve us once they get it. But at least its on its way!!

RFE

Well a dreaded "Request for evidence" arrived at our house today. And I was not pleased! But after contacting our awesome social worker and her boss plus our family coordinator at AWAA we are now in the process of gathering the evidence they need. Which in our case is to fix some wording about our 18 year old in our home study via an addendum by our social worker. That will be mailed out tomorrow to USCIS and hopefully they'll receive it this week. In the midst of all the craziness we realized that at least we've been assigned an officer to our case. There have been some major delays in receiving approvals lately so I'm just thankful for anything I can be thankful for right now! Pray our approval comes sooooooon!

Fingerprints done!

Praise God! This morning Brian, Emily and I were able to walk in and get our fingerprints done a week early! They didn't really want to let us but finally they did and we were out of there in less than 30 minutes. So now what? We wait for the last piece of paper we need to finish our dossier. The approval letter! Unless they have questions and need more information it shouldn't be too long. Pray they don't have questions.....

Finally...fingerprint appointment letter!

Ok, ya'll I have been so patiently (er....maybe not) waiting for our fingerprint appointments to arrive in the mail and they finally came today! Because Emily is 18 she also has to have hers done with us. She arrives home tonight for spring break but our appointment time isn't until after she returns to Nashville. And the appointment is here in Dallas. So we are going to trrrryyyyyyy to walk in to get our fingerprints done early while she's here next week. Please pray that they allow this to happen! God is good...!!

Thank you!

Well, I couldn't be more humbled and thankful for the response that we received from everyone after publicly announcing our adoption plans! We are hastily working on getting everything finished up with our dossier so we can be DTC as soon as possible! Our agency is expecting many files in the coming months and we hope to be at a place where we could be considered for one of those precious children. As of today our I800A application along with our home study is at the govt office its supposed to be at so now we wait for our fingerprint appointment to be assigned. Its a whole lot of "hurry up and wait" but at least we're now at this point.

Until then....

Homestudy

Well finally there's something to write. Today we received our finalized home study in the mail which was exciting! I already had everything ready to go for our I800A application so when we received our home study I could mail it off. And that's just what I did. I hopped in the car and went straight to FedEx and mailed that puppy off. Since Monday is President's day and today is Friday I scheduled it to be delivered on Tuesday. Oh well. At least its on its way!

Every email or blog post our agency writes that reminds us of the children waiting for a family it makes my heart leap.

Soon......

Patience

Isn't that truth?

I'm finding it hard to be patient this go around. I think the first time with Adiah I was just kind of clueless about the whole process. I mean, I knew that at some point I'd be finished with our paperwork. I knew that at some point we'd get a call about our little girl. I knew at some point we'd travel to go get her. They say ignorance is bliss and in this case I think it's a tiny bit true.
With Rhett, we found him as we were paper chasing so his sweet picture was in my mind as we were finishing up and it felt like time flew. It only took us 11 months from applying with AWAA to being home with him. Crazy fast!
However this time.....I think I know whats on the other side. The excitement of finishing up. The excitement of the call. The excitement of knowing the one God chose for our family. The excitement of traveling to get our sweet one. And so I'm finding myself thinking ahead too much. Not being in the moment and enjoying the process. And I don't want to look back on this time and not think of it fondly.

So today....I choose peace. I choose a good attitude. I choose to be in the moment. I choose to look forward with excitement as we go down this road to....whoever God has for our family. I choose to trust Him with that.

In other news, we finished up our home study visits on Saturday. We may need to add a few things because Emily is living in Tennessee for college right now but hopefully it won't hold us up too much. After our home study report goes through several people for corrections, etc then we get to apply with the govt for our approval to move forward. Exciting times, people! We're working our booties off over here!!