Please do what I cannot...

My mind was racing and I was having trouble sleeping, so I laid in bed praying for our baby.
"God, I cannot hold her or protect her - so please do what I cannot!"

When my other two are sick or scared and wake up in the night, I rush to their room and scoop them up and hold them tight. I whisper one of our three secrets in their ear:
-"you're my best buddy,"
-"you're beautiful,"
-or simply "I love you!"

As I was laying there praying, I realized my prayer is the same for all my girls.
"God, I will do what I can, please do what I cannot!"
They'll have broken hearts and broken bones that only God can fix. 
There's so much that I cannot do, but I thank God that He can.

I know there will come a time when our little girl is home. I will hold her, protect her, and tell her our secrets. But, my prayer for her will be the same, "God, please do what I cannot."
I know there will come a time when all my girls are grown. I'm pretty sure my prayer won't change, but I can always be their buddy, reminding them they're loved and beautiful - and our God can do what we cannot.

God, I thank you that you're good, and you've trusted me with these girls. Help me to do the best that I can, and to remember you can do the rest.  Right now, when I can do so little for our baby, I find so much comfort in knowing that you can do what I cannot. Hold her. Protect her. Tell her that she's loved!

You Are LID

That was the best title of an email in my inbox that I have ever seen! 

Here is what the message said, from our social worker at Lifeline:

I have some great news!  You are officially logged in as of 10/8/2012.  Therefore, you are now eligible for matching.  Your family is on my radar for a matching; however, keep in mind that the average wait time for a young girl with minor needs is 3-4 months from LID.  I will be sure to update you as we get any information on timelines and files. Congratulations!

Yes!! We are so excited and thankful this day is here!! Being logged in, or having your Log In Date, means that China has received your dossier, and you are officially in their system, eligible to receive a referral! 

When I read this email at 10:00 this morning, I immediately called Randy, he stepped out of a meeting, and I was able to tell him. I did a little dance for awhile, told the girls why I was acting so giddy, and then thought about what this means. And of course, cried. (Because I cry more now that we are adopting than I ever have before!)

It totally hit me how when we began this process almost 8 months ago, we had no idea if we would even be eligible to adopt from China. They have some pretty tough requirements. Age, financials, other children in the home. We didn't know if they would accept us, but we began the journey with the faith that if China wasn't where God had our next baby that He would lead us to where she was. 

Fast forward to now and we are IN! We have our log in date, and now all we do is wait for a match. God is so good and we are so thankful that He is allowing us this privilege of adopting a baby girl from China. It is only by his grace and we are overwhelmed with thanksgiving. 

Psalm 121:1-2 says "I lift up my eyes to the hills - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."

I have been praying this verse since before we started this process in February. So much about adopting from China seemed out of our reach and beyond what we could do. We have cried out to God for help and He has shown himself faithful. We are so thankful! He is a big God!!

Dossier To China!!!

Today was a big day - the biggest yet on this whole journey. Our dossier is officially on it's way to CHINA!!! All the work we've been doing the past 7 months has been in order to get this dossier together. We have been waiting for months for the day when our agency could send it off to China. And today was that day!!!

"What is a dossier? It is our entire lives in an envelope. Seriously, everything is in that envelope: birth certificates, marriage license, employment letters, criminal checks, background checks, passport photos, 6 photos of our family, financial statements, medical exams, and our I800A form. Also included is our home study…a typed document consisting of 4 interviews/visits with a social worker, life history, family histories, financial histories, interviews with our kids, parenting styles, beliefs, and just about everything else remotely related to us as individuals and as a family." (From a blog I love)

We were excited. 

Kendall was sitting next to me when I checked my email and saw that it had been sent. I squealed and told her that all the paper work we've been working on, all the letters asking China to let us adopt one of their little girls are all finally heading to China. She seemed to totally get it and was very excited too, which I loved! It was fun to celebrate being one step closer to my third daughter with my first daughter. 

Baby girl, we are coming as fast as we can and we are celebrating every milestone along the way! We are longing to see your face and know your name. Soon!! 

Now we wait for our log-in date. This should take 3-4 weeks. THEN we will officially be able to receive a referral for our baby! It could still be a few months until we know who she is, but we are one step closer today! 

Approved!

We received our I800a approval from immigration last Monday, August 27th! The approval was actually dated on my birthday, August 24 - we just got it in the mail on the 27th. We were so excited that that part of the process was behind us! We scanned our approval and emailed it to our agency and they began the process of authenticating and certifying our whole dossier. This takes around 2 weeks, so we expect to be sending our dossier to China very very soon!!

We passed a pretty big milestone a little over a week ago: my 30th birthday! We are now officially able to adopt a child from China, according to their rules on age. Randy got me the most special gift for my 30th birthday. Here's a picture:

I love it so much and wear it everyday! Can't wait to see the face of our sweet baby and to give the necklace to her one day!

First baby doll!

We are still waiting on our home study to be rewritten and resubmited to USCIS for approval. Our home study agency says they should have this ready tomorrow. The waiting hasn't been fun, but in the meantime, we've been keeping busy with Kendall and Cooper! Today we went on a shopping trip to Pearland. Kendall needed a hair cut, we got a couple of new dresses for school, some party supplies for Cooper's upcoming 2nd birthday party, we had a lunch date at Panera, and we found this!!

I had seen some people mention that Carter's had this in our Lifeline facebook group, and after I had already checked out there today, I remembered it! I went to see if they had it and they did! I was super excited. This is the first thing we've bought for our sweet baby in China and Randy and I just love it. We love that she will have a baby to love that looks just like her. Now to keep it safe until she gets here...these two big sisters are ready to meet their new little sister!

Request For Evidence

Translation: NOT what you want to get in the mail from USCIS.

We got home from our trip to Ft. Worth on July 30th, totally expecting to see our immigration approval from US Citizenship and Immigration Services in the mail. It was not. So, we were confident we would get it one day that week. It didn't come.

This Monday, August 6, we went to the mailbox and DID have a letter from USCIS. So excited, thinking this was our approval, we opened it to find that it was a Request For Evidence.

Stink.

Apparently, before they can send us our immigration approval, they need more detail in our home study report - our OH SO DETAILED home study report. Our representative at Lifeline said that this is actually becoming more and more common and that she has actually had three clients lately get this RFE notice.

So what this means is that we get with our social worker here in Texas that wrote our home study report, she adds the information they are requesting to our report, fixes some wording, and when that is complete we re-submit our home study to USCIS. And then, (hopefully!!) we get our approval.

I was pretty upset at first, understanding that this was just more of a delay in this crazy road to our daughter. I am so ready to see her face. SO READY.

But....I realize that things are moving as quickly as we can possibly make them on our end, I realize that all of this is in God's perfect timing, and I am choosing to trust and rest while we are waiting. Even choosing to be thankful. We have so much to be thankful for, and we trust in our God who sees the whole picture. He knows why we needed this slow-down and we believe He will give us our daughter in His perfect timing.

Please continue to pray with us to that end. We are still praying our big prayer for a referral by Christmas. Even if we do not have our dossier in China on my birthday, we still believe this is possible for a God who does what seems impossible to us. Thank you for your support and your prayers for our family and for our daughter! We are so thankful for you!!

"Don't be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm." Exodus 14:13-14

Biometrics Appointment...Walk-In!

Two and a half weeks after our I800A was mailed to USCIS, we received our biometric fingerprinting appointment in the mail. We were so excited to open it...and then we saw that they assigned us to an appointment on this coming Tuesday, July 24th, when we will be out of town! The only rescheduling option on the appointment notice was to write a letter to the main office in Virginia and then they would mail a letter back to us with a new appointment. Ugh. I was thinking by the time we wrote the letter, received a letter back, and got home from our trip, it would delay us at least a week, if not more. So this Monday morning I called the USCIS headquarters and they said that the only option was to write the letter requesting a rescheduling. Bummer. Then I called L (our Lifeline representative - not sure if that's private or not?) and she said that sometimes people have success just walking in to the office they were assigned to and asking to just go ahead and do the fingerprinting. But, there's no way to call each individual office - everything goes through the main office in Virginia.

We thought about it for a few days - we were assigned to the closest office to us which was in Sugar Land (south Houston....1 hour away). So driving up there on the chance that they would take walk-ins meant Randy taking a half day of vacation and making the 2 hour round trip, which is a lot of gas! All for the chance that they would take us early or possibly send us right back home and tell us to reschedule. Randy and I both did some research and we decided from some things we were hearing that it was worth the risk to go up there.

So yesterday morning, we got up super early, pulled the girls out of bed at 7 and put them straight in the car in their pajamas and set out for Sugar Land - praying the whole way! When we got there a little after 8 when they opened, Randy went in to see about us walking in and I started to get the girls out of their seats and try to get the clothes on them that I had brought. He came back out pretty fast and said, "Let's go! Just grab the girls in their pajamas - there is no wait and they said they would take us now!!" SOOO excited!! We were in and out in ten minutes and now we have our biometrics DONE!!

When we got back in the car, Randy said, "Who wants to go for celebration pancakes?!" Both the girls screamed "yes!" so we found the closest Dennys and had breakfast with them in their pajamas still. Such a fun way to celebrate - and such a fun thing to be celebrating! :)

So what does all this mean? Why are we so excited? Our immigration approval is waiting on those fingerprints. The latest I've heard is that we could possibly receive our approval notice 5 business days from yesterday. So we could possibly come home from our trip to Ft.Worth on the 30th and have our approval in the mail!!

This week I sent the final documents for our dossier to L so she could make sure they were all ready to go to the authentication and certification stage. Once we have our immigration approval, we'll scan it, email it to her, she will add it to the 12 other documents that go in our dossier and she will send it off for certification and authentication. This typically takes 2-3 weeks. THEN....we will be ready to send our dossier to China!!! L said we could do this 2 or 3 days before my birthday on August 24th, so we may still have everything by then.

Finally, just a quick summary of what happens after that: After your dossier gets to China, it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a Log-in Date. Once you have this, you are eligible to start receiving referrals (a referral is a file of a child we could adopt!) Referrals are typically made when the Shared List comes out once a month, and this is usually at the end of the month (around the 23rd-25th?). So, if we have our dossier there at the end of August, get a log-in date mid-September, I think we could possibly start receiving referrals when the September shared list is released! Ahhh!!! We are prepared to wait several months for our little girl's referral, but just knowing that we will possibly be logged-in so soon is super super exciting.

Thanks for reading all this if you have stayed with me this long. We are excited and are excited to share our journey with you!