No pictures, no fun!

          Sorry I don't have any exciting pictures to show you. So you'll just have to bear with me. Can you believe we now have checked off 28 of the 29 boxes for our home study? All we have left is our parent training (need lots of that!! ;) ). Our home study visits are coming up quick, next week already!! I'm not really nervous about it, just trying to prepare myself for the emotional exhaustion I will be feeling when it's done.  I might need a day (and a drink, haha!) or two to recover.  The social worker might need a drink or two herself when she's done with me. "Oh but wait, there's more..."  Who knows maybe it will just be good times.  And I can just talk about all my blessings. Because I have lots of blessings and lots to be thankful for! Enough about that....I'll let you know how it all goes. Maybe......:)


         I came across this article someone posted on Facebook. I thought it was really good. So much truth to it. I think there are a few people that think that one day we just woke up and said,"Hey, let's adopt from China! Because it just sounds like so much fun!" and that very day got started. Maybe it's because we didn't really talk about it a lot with many people. I don't know. This is not just a flippant decision we made. We know this isn't the "easy" way to have more kids, we know it's going to be challenging. We know it's going to be heart wrenching and hard. We've done hard before, maybe not this kind, but we've learned lots while walking through the fire. If it were just us doing this, there is no way, no how, that we could. We are never alone though. I think about our wedding day and I think that if someone had told me all the stuff we would have to go through in our marriage, I would have probably given up right then and there. You hear people say all the time, " oh I could never go through that, I could never handle that" Well guess what? I would have said the same thing! Somehow, someway you get through it. Certainly not of your own accord. You also hear that God doesn't give us more than we can handle. So obviously everything we've been given he knew we could handle, right? I don't believe that for one minute!! He does give us more than we can handle, sometimes more than once! It's only through Him that we get through it. And maybe this will be the hardest challenge yet, it's probably a good thing we don't know what's ahead of us. But maybe, just maybe, it will also be the most rewarding. So here's the link:

dear-friends-of-waiting-adoptive-moms_b_3795132.html


Now that our home study paperwork is pretty much done, we've been working on our dossier paperwork. This is where things get confusing to me. It was pretty  easy to get it all together, but now we have to notarize, certify and authenticate it all. So these are the things we need for our dossier:

Adoption Petition-done
Marriage Certificate-it's in Ottawa right now getting authenticated
Employment Verification-done
Non Employment Verification-done (this is for me)
Financial Statement-done
Physical Exams-done
Doctor's Letter-done (this is for me too, aren't I special?)
Police Reports-done (passed!!)
Approved I-800A form- the I-800A application has been done and has to be sent out with our approved home study report. Basically getting permission to adopt a child from a foreign country
Home study-almost done!!
3  couple photos- I have one, it's amazing how we don't really have pictures of the two of us
8 family life photos-working on it
3 passport photos' each
Passport copies- these are in Olympia visiting the Secretary of the State to get Authenticated

So then you get all these documents together (minus the pictures) and send them off to get Notarized, County Clerk Certified, Secretary of the State Certified, U.S. Dept of State Authenticated, then Chinese Embassy/Consulate Authenticated. Are you still with me?? Once that is done, it goes to our agency, they translate everything then send it off to China and you are DTC, which in the adoption world stands for Dossier To China. And you can celebrate because your paper chasing is done! Then we wait and wait and wait. This waiting generally takes 3 months. Then you get your LOA which is code for Letter Of Approval. That is a BIG one!! Then there's some other things you have to do (not really worrying about this right now, got bigger fish to fry) and then you get to travel which is about 2-3 months after LOA.

Some random thoughts now.....

Both our home study and placing agencies have told us separately that we rock. Kinda funny. They think we are getting stuff together really quickly, so that's encouraging. We just have to keep at it.

Last night as I was putting Tyler and Dylan to bed, Tyler mentioned that he just realized that they were all 3 years apart and Dylan is 3yrs older than Anna. Bless him. Then Dylan piped in and said that he wished we could just go get her now,  and how many more days till we see her? Bless him too.

We have to have a plan when we have our home study visit of where Anna will sleep, so we've decided to put Tyler and Dylan upstairs and then she will get their room. Dylan was more than willing and very happy about this new arrangement. I told him that because upstairs would be their bedroom we would be taking the T.V. and game cube out. WHAT??? but WHY???  Just you asking those questions Dylan, makes it very clear why. :)

While Joel was getting his physical done the Dr. asked him if he was dating. hahahaha!!! I think Joel's eyes popped out of his eye sockets a little. It was really funny. The sad thing is, he (the Dr.) was probably asking because he knows of 12yr olds that are.

Joel- Way too young to date!!! :) 

This is the one couple shot that I have to submit. They need one for the cover of the Dossier, I think this one would be good for that. Thanks to Alyssa Brown Photography! 

I guess I lied about the no pictures part. ha!