YAHOOOO! One step closer!

Well the day I have been waiting for since March 25th finally arrived. Tomorrow morning our I-800A application goes out overnight by Fed ex to process that application and bring us one step closer to getting our dossier turned in. Our paperwork is due in China July 22nd, but that isnt going to happen as our Homestudy agency finished our last Homestudy visit on May 25th and finally just got us our finalized Homestudy report Friday, July 16th whew that is a long time for them to finish it. Especially when they sent me a draft to correct on June 10th and I sent the corrections back the next day. Well water under the bridge and we are moving on and taking one step closer to bringing our son home! We are so excited we just cant wait! Wishing our I-800A a speedy processing and praying we can go in early for our fingerprints as we are applying for an extension for our dossier but this process has to speed up at this point. Praying for our son to be home before Christmas. What an amazing gift for God to bestow upon us! Waiting to see your sweet face Luke Xin Hai!

Short Update

Just a short update, we are sending our paperwork off to the adoption agency tomorrow so they can send it out for Consulate Authentication. I have almost all of our paperwork State Sealed already. With exception of my NJ Divorce certificate (took 2 and half months to get it from NJ) my Homestudy as it is not yet finalized (I expect that this week) and our I-800A approval as we cannot send that out until our Homestudy is approved.  We are moving along and cannot wait to brig Luke home. As soon as our dossier heads off to China we plan to send Luke a package and introduce ourselves and let him know that there is a family that cant wait to get him home. There is no guarantee that the orphanage will give him our package, but there is a good chance they will. You have to wonder what he will think when he sees pictures of us for the first time.   Soon little man, soon.........We are praying and waiting!

Yesterday was Aaron's Graduation from HS and it was amazing! I just wanted to say Congratulations to Aaron. We are so proud of you and cannot believe that Aug 21st you will be a College Freshmen at Valley Forge Christian College! Crazy how fast life goes by! OH SO PROUD! So many amazing things happening to our family this year. Plus our agency said there is a very good chance that Luke will be home this year. YES I said, THIS YEAR! What an amazing Christmas present that would be! 
OHHHH I cant wait!

Homestudy Update

FINALLY we have our Draft for the Homestudy. We started the whole Homestudy process March 

5th, 2010, so that is a long time for a Homestudy but it is finally almost done. I now have to review the Homestudy and my Awesome Agency (Madison Adoption Agency) has to review and approve the draft and and then make any changes and our Homestudy agency will fix any mistakes. When that is all done I will receive a finalized Homestudy. YAHHHOOOO! That means we can finally move on to the next step in bringing Luke home. The next step is the I-800A (that means the application for determination of suitability to Adopt a child from a Convention Country) China is a Hague Convention Country so there are a lot of steps to be done and hoops to jump through. But at this point we are just saying "show me the hoop and tell me how high you want me to jump". Also when my Homestudy is finalized I will have the ability to apply for some possible Grants to help with the adoption costs . So lots of good things are happening. :)

John Waller- While I'm Waiting

Today has been a day of Moving Mountains and tearing down walls! We have hit some real rough patches with our Homestudy and some quite long delays, but today we made amazing headway and I am seeing a huge light at the end of the Homestudy tunnel. Things around the house have been crazy as I have been buried in paperwork, phone calls (trying to move mountains) and ofcourse both Aaron and Paige has Birthdays.. Yahooo Paige is now 4 and Aaron just turned 18. We are trying hard to get Aaron ready to head off to college Aug 21st as well, so busy isnt quite the word to use at the moment. Aaron is at his prom right now and he looked amazing, I will put up a picture for sure.

I mailed off almost all of our documents for State Authentication yesterday (3 different states but I am sure there are other people going through this process that have more states involved then that). It felt amazing to get those papers out of here. But now I cant wait for them to come back so I can send them to the Consulate. This sure is a unique process and I dont ever quite know how to explain it to someone that knows nothing of international adoption.

As far as our Homestudy's progress we are waiting on 2 pieces of the puzzle to come together and they are paperwork from 2 doctors that we need, as soon as we get those our Homestudy is done and we can move onto the next phase. I will keep you updated as to what that next phase is and how it goes. For now I keep looking into the light that just started to shine upon our progress. I beleive that God has a plan and he knows the perfect time for Luke to come home, I am praying that I get to travel with a friend of mine as she goes to get her new daughter in a province oh so close to our sons. That would be an amazing blessing from the Lord if he allows that to happen. We shall see.....

My first post

I am new to blogging so lets see how this goes!......
Our family is about to grow! Tom and I have discussed adopting a child for years and have now decided that it is the right time to do it! So here is our story!

I started looking at adoption websites (again) and researching the possibility of bringing home a little boy that is Deaf around the age of 7 - 10 years old. I found many children that were 3 or 4 and a few that were 13 but no boys that were Deaf in the age range we were hoping for. Then,on February 18th 2010, a friend of mine emailed me a photo and short blurb about an adorable 9 year old boy that was Deaf and needed a family. Tom and I opened the email and both gasped.. He is absolutley the cutest little one ever. We knew right away that this was the child we have talked about for years. I contacted the agency and told them we were interested in this little one. His name is Xin Hai but the agency called him "Boyd". February 22nd we put Boyd on hold to have his records looked at by an international adoption specialist. On February 24th I got an email from the agency saying that his file had been returned to China (along with many others) as China had changed some policies and had taken many children's files that had been on individual lists for awhile and planned to put them all on the shared list. The agency told us they would look for his file to show up on the shared list and if he didn't surface that there were many other children out there. We decided we didnt want to look any more for another child and if Xin Hai was meant to be ours then the Lord would keep him safe until we could find him. We spent quite awhile praying and waiting and then on March 19th I got an email from the agency that his file had showed up on the shared list! Yahoooo... only problem being that China's new rule was that you had to have LID (We did not at the time) to lock in a child on the shared list, but if the child was still there in 30 days a non-LID family could try and be matched. SOOOOO we waited.. and waited.. it felt like forever. Then on April 19th 2010 we received an email from our agency saying they had locked him in and sent all paperwork to China for matching. April 22nd 2010 we were official matched (PA) with Xin Hai. We are so excited, we just wanted to run around screaming! I actually did some skipping and running down the halls of where I work.... couldnt help it! This is only the beginning of our incredible journey, we are working on our home study and that shall soon be complete! YAHHOOO. I will try and keep posting as we take this incredible journey to our new son!