No news...just a few pictures

I haven't posted news for a few weeks because nothing much has changed. We are still waiting to be matched with our baby boy. It could take up to 9 months (but we are praying that is closer to the 3 month wait period) to be matched with a child. Please continue to pray for our baby boy. Olivia asks me this daily, "Mommy..when my baby brother coming home?" Poor girl! She can't wait to love on him (and neither can his mommy and daddy!!). We know God is in control and will match us with the perfect child for our family.
I've been meaning to post pictures from our journey thus far, but I just haven't had time. Here are some pictures from our adoption journey (starting in May).



May, 2011-Filling out our homestudy documents.


-More paperwork



This is the picture we used with our dossier paperwork.


Our paperwork is ready to send off to the state of Illinois for approval.


These are some of the documents for our dossier.


Waiting to send off our dossier...she really is excited to bring her baby brother home!



September 13, 2011-We sent off our dossier to the Assistant Stork. Doesn't Olivia look thrilled here?:) These were the best pictures of our family. We want our little guy to know that we all went together to send off these papers. We can't wait to become a family of 4!


October 9, 2011-It's been about two weeks since our caseworker received our dossier (and a little over a week since it was sent to Ethiopia). We are going to try to take pictures every couple of weeks so that our baby boy can see how long we were waiting for him.

Dossier to Ethiopia

Our case worker emailed us today to let us know that our dossier was sent to Ethiopia today. One step closer..yippee!:)

We are celebrating tonight!!

Today is Jeremiah's 30th birthday. Olivia and I are so blessed to live this life with him. He is such an amazing husband and daddy. One thing we love is that he constantly makes us laugh! I look forward to seeing Jeremiah become a daddy to two kids. Our little boy is so lucky to have Jeremiah as his daddy!!
Today also marks another important event. We sent off our dossier this evening!!! Jeremiah, Olivia, and I went to the post office and sent it off together. I'm such a dork (I know!:)) because I made us all go together as a family and even had someone take our picture (I will post it another day). I told Jeremiah that I wanted to capture this special event. It has taken us almost 5 months to prepare our dossier and we are so thankful to be done with this part of the journey. When I was pregnant with Olivia we had multiple sonogram pictures and I took weekly belly pictures. It makes me sad that we don't have these pictures for our little guy. So, I am trying to take pictures of all the exciting steps in our journey. This is the reason I made our entire family go to the post office to take a picture of us sending over our dossier. I want our little boy to see how excited we were to send this over and to feel just as special as Olivia does.
Here is where our dossier will go now:
1. The Assistant Stork in Virginia-they will take our dossier to the Ethiopian Embassy to get it authenticated.
2. The Assistant Stork sends our dossier to CHI (our agency).
3. CHI sends our dossier (along with two other photocopies of our documents) to Ethiopia!

After the dossier is in Ethiopia we will be placed on a waiting to list to be matched with a child. We are celebrating both special events at our house tonight.:)

Our last piece of paperwork is here!

I'm holding back tears as I write this post. We got our I-171h in the mail today. It only took one week. We've heard of people waiting for months to receive this document. God is good! It's hard to explain to other people how much time and energy has gone into preparing our dossier and this document is the LAST piece of paperwork for our dossier.
So, what's the next step? We will take this document and two other documents to our local bank to get them notarized. After that we will take two of those documents to Springfield to get them certified. Once we've completed these tasks.....we will send off our dossier to Ethiopia! We are beyond thrilled to be at this step in our adoption journey.
We would love for you to keep praying for our journey. We both know that it will be tough to be patient as we wait for a referral.
In addition to praying for us, I would love for you to pray for my friends Mike and Brandy King. They are adopting a sweet little girl named Abi from Ethiopia. They went to meet her in July and are just waiting for the Embassy in Ethiopia to accept their paperwork. Pray specifically that they can bring Abi home soon and that their paperwork is accepted the FIRST time it is submitted to the court. During the past few months numerous people have had their paperwork rejected the first time (and multiple times in some cases) before it is accepted.
Thank you for your support. We appreciate it!:)

USCIS appointment

Yesterday, Jeremiah and I went to our scheduled fingerprinting appointment in Indy. We left our house at 5:00a.m. and got to the USCIS office by 8:15a.m. Indy time (7:15a.m our time). We went into the office and checked in at 8:20a.m. and by 8:30a.m. we were in the fingerprinting office. I was a little nervous (me nervous..no way-ha!:)) because the lady in front of us was told, "Your fingerprints aren't showing up. You'll get another letter in a few weeks and you'll have to come back for another appointment." Luckily our fingerprints were fine and we were out by 9:00a.m.
We are so thankful for Jackie and Canaan because they spent the night at our house on Thursday night so they could watch Olivia for us yesterday. Olivia had a blast with them and I think they enjoyed being with her too.:) We are lucky to have so many friends who love our daughter like their own.
Our agency said it will take at least 45 days for the results from the appointment, but other people say it'll take about 2 weeks. We can't wait to get our I-171h in the mail. Once we get this in the mail we can send our dossier to Ethiopia!
On a side note, Olivia is just thrilled about "our baby boy." She talks about him often and says, "I going to hug and kiss our baby boy. I share toys with him." We went with my mom and Kacy to the Peoria Zoo a few weeks ago. While we were there we went to the African exhibit. Kacy said, "Your baby brother is in Africa right now." Olivia responded, "No Kacy, my baby brother is in Ethiopia." We explained that Ethiopia is in Africa. Now Olivia says, "Our baby boy is in Ethiopia, Africa." It's quite precious. When we were driving the other day Olivia said to me, "Mommy and Daddy stay here...no go to Ethiopia." She loves little babies and often asks, "Where my baby brother go?" I hope that this process continues to go quickly so that we have a picture of her baby brother soon.
Please keep praying for us. We really appreciate the encouragement, prayers, and financial support!!

Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork!

This morning Jeremiah and I spent a little over two hours filling out paperwork for our dossier. We were able to complete all of the documents (we had already completed numerous documents before this morning) and then took them to get notarized at the bank. This is a huge weight lifted off of our shoulders. We are going to send all of these documents to our case worker this week. She will review our documents and let us know if we need to make changes. There are 20+ documents that we have filled out for the dossier. Each document has strict guidelines and our dossier will be sent back if we don't follow these rules.
The reason why we were so excited about getting our fingerprinting appointment yesterday was because this appointment is the last big step before we send our dossier to Ethiopia. Once we receive our results, we can finish up our dossier paperwork. One of us will take the final two dossier documents to Springfield to get them notarized. After that, we will send our dossier to Ethiopia.
We want to make sure that everything is done before we get our results back so that we can send our dossier over as soon as possible.

A letter from Homeland Security...

Jeremiah, Olivia, and I have been in Washington for the past few days. He has been at a conference and I have enjoyed spending time with my family. Both of my sisters were home and it was nice just hanging out with the my family. We came home tonight to find a letter from Homeland Security. It was our USCIS fingerprinting date!!! I really wanted to go before school started, but it just didn't work out that way. We will be going in about a week to the USCIS in Indy. Again, this is just another step closer to bringing home our little guy. We are thrilled that our date came this soon! Praise God!:)