Lately...

I thought it was time for an update! We are still waiting on our home study report to be written up by our social worker. I was told it would take around 3-4 weeks from our last home visit. Today was exactly three weeks since our last home visit, so I am hopeful that that will come in soon! I'm getting a little impatient... :)

In the meantime, our social worker at Lifeline emailed me a list of documents that she still needed on her end before we would be able to submit our I-800-A form for immigration. Just a little timeline as to what is coming: when our social worker finishes our home study report, she will send that to Lifeline and they will review it to make sure it is acceptable to send to China. While they are reviewing it, they will go ahead and send us the I-800-A form to fill out and then all of that (form and home study) will be sent to US Customs and Immigration Services, in Dallas. The approval we need from them should take around 2-3 months, and then we will be ready to be DTC (Dossier to China)!! Hopefully that happens close to my birthday on August 24th.

The documents that I have been working on getting to Lifeline have been:
- Child Desired form (more on this in a later post)
- Certificate of Income and Property
- Pay check stubs
- Financial Worksheet (information on insurance, prices of therapies, etc)
- Letters of Profession (per spouse)
- Proposed Guardian form
- Education certificates (saying we have completed our required hours)
- Autobiographies
- Questionnaires
- Medicals (more on this in a later post)

Some of these were pretty fast and some took a lot longer. We have completed everything as of today except for the medicals and Randy needs to finish his questionnaires. We should have all that wrapped up this week!

We are excited and ready to move on to the next stage. I have heard that it is harder to wait when you're not on the paper chase that we are now, but any progress sounds great to me! I am so ready to have our referral and see the sweet face of the little girl God has for us!

**Update on the Update**
I have finished my questionnaires :)
(and the medicals are complete - after 5 visits to the doctor!!) - Randy

Garage Sale!

We had a massive garage sale last weekend! We had a smaller one earlier this year, but since then a bunch of families have had stuff they wanted to donate to us for another sale to help raise money for our adoption. We started collecting donations a couple of months ago and set last weekend as the date for our sale. We had so much stuff!! It was really crazy. It started to take over our garage and I wondered how I would ever begin to go through all of it and sort it. Here is a picture of our garage pre-sorting:

Then I sorted it and it was still a lot! When I went through it all, and started to organize, it grew. I had to move a bunch inside the house and then even out onto the back porch!

We have had beautiful weather this spring and then the weekend we were planning on having the sale, there were crazy high rain chances! ugh. We debated on and off what to do and landed on deciding to still have it. It stormed very hard all night Thursday night but by Friday morning it was starting to taper off. We started with only what we had in the garage but were eventually able to pull everything out on the driveway. Thankfully - it was so much!

We had so many sweet friends help us with the sale! Not only did over a dozen families donate items for the sale, but I had help the week of and the two days of the sale! Michelle, Jennifer Watson, and Mary Margaret even came over Friday morning at 6am to help us get set up! Those are good friends! Stephanie came and helped later in the day on Saturday and Michelle was there the whole time both days. We are so thankful for sweet friends who sacrifice so much for us!

The girls did GREAT both days! They slept late in the mornings, then when they woke up they alternated between playing outside and watching movies inside. Kendall felt big that she was able to climb this ladder. Check out her crown, pajamas, and rain boots. She was stylin! :)

Cooper was in heaven. She just wandered around, would find things to play with and was just busy the whole time. We caught this picture of her playing with an elmo toy that was for sale, sitting on a lid to one of the totes of clothes. She is so cute.

They explored the puddles and checked out all the worms.

Molly did well, too. She would find someplace out of the way to curl up and sleep. This was a favorite spot - one of the totes of baby clothes. People would walk by and not realize she was there and then notice her all of the sudden and just laugh!

Check out this good deal! :) She really was such a good girl and had so much fun.

Molly at the end of the day! She was worn out and so were we!

We've never done a two day sale before and it was exhausting. It was very successful, though! We made $1,150!! Totally worth all the hard work. We're so thankful for all the friends who helped and who donated their stuff. Garage sale=success!

Home Visits Completed

This week we finished all our home visits with our social worker! Friday, April 27th she came and did Randy's individual interview. The girls and I just stayed in the back bedroom while they talked. Then Monday the 30th she came for my interview and Kendall's interview.

Oh. my.

First, I have to start by saying how understanding she was and how patient she was with us. She told me that our time was no crazier than any other interview she tries to conduct with kids around. So that made me feel better. But oh wow - it was nuts. Absolute craziness. I had Kendall in the living room watching a movie when she got there, because I figured that would keep her occupied so we could talk. Cooper won't ever watch tv, so I had just decided she would probably end up in my lap anyway. Our social worker got there and everything just started going downhill. The girls fought over toys, Kendall needed candy (it was 10:30am!), Cooper was up and down in every chair at the kitchen table, and basically it was just super hard to sit and have a conversation. Not just a light conversation either - we are talking about my life growing up, my family, favorite moments in my life, what I love about being a mom...heavy stuff like that! And we were interrupted constantly. At one point I even had to take Kendall to time out. Awesome.

With all that, I didn't have high hopes at all for how well Kendall's interview would go. But by the time we wrapped up my portion and she was ready to talk to Kendall, she came and sat right in my lap and was very sweet and answered all of her questions! I have had a lot of people ask me what kinds of things she wanted to talk to her about - I was pretty curious as well! She started off just by talking to her about school and about her friends at school. Then she asked her what she thought about having a new little sister, and asked if she knew where she was coming from. We've talked about it before, but she must not have remembered because she just said, "I don't know." Our social worker told her China and I said, "Yes, remember who we've talked about that she may look like?" Kendall said, "Yes! Mulan!" Our social worker said, "Oh, is that someone in your class?" Um, no. Like the (very popular) Disney movie. Ha! After that she just talked to Kendall about how she would have to help teach her English and then that was pretty much it! I'm sure it gets a little more heavy as the children get older, but there's just not a lot of information you can get out of a four year old! I was proud of Kendall for speaking with her.

So that's it! Now we just wait for her to write our report and send it to Lifeline. I am excited to be finished with this part of the process and move on to Immigration.

I intended to post a picture last time of the beautiful orchid our sweet friends Mike and Chantel gave us the night before our first home visit. They are in the middle of the adoption process right now too, and it has been so neat to have friends on the same journey with us as we've begun. She said she hoped that this would remind us of the new beginning God is giving our family and that it would be a symbol to us of our daughter waiting for us. I love it so much!