Long Overdue Update!

     Sorry I guess I am a total failure at this blogging thing!  But I am going to try to catch up on all of the adoption happenings!  In my last post I had just found out that our homestudy was finally approved after a ridiculous wait for a phone call for one little bit of information that was needed for our social worker to be able to finish up our study.  So I spent an entire day, like 9 hours with my 2 yr old and my special needs adult daughter in tow driving all over WI to pick up the homestudy (there was no way I was going to wait for the post office to deliver it after this long!)  We drove from Sparta, WI to Milwaukee picked it up and turned around and headed to Madison thinking we would get all of the apostilles done at the Secretary of State's office and then head to Fed Ex to send off our dossier.  Simple right?  No such luck:(  We spent almost an hour in downtown Madison attempting to find a parking spot for my 12 passenger van within reasonable walking distance to the office.  Finally we found a spot, got out the stroller and headed off to get the apostilles!

      I was feeling pretty proud of what I had accomplished that day so when I walked into the Sec of State office and told them what I needed I was not prepared to be handed a form to fill out which asked if we wanted 3-5 day service or expedited next-day service!  I need them now like today!  It wasn't going to happen; not sure if I looked like I was going to cry but the lady said they didn't have many in front of mine so it shouldn't take the whole five days.  Then she looked through my pile and I had 5 documents that had been notarized incorrectly!  I paid for what I could and they gave me the forms to fill out for the others that I had to get re-done and I was on my way back to the van feeling extremely defeated at this point.  That was on  Thursday the 21st of November.  On Friday I got all the corrected documents and Fed-Ex'd them back to Madison that night along with a Fed-Ex envelope to send the entire dossier to Serbia.  The Secretary of State office received my corrected documents Monday morning, did the apostilles and sent the whole thing out via Fed-Ex at 11:53am that same day!  Our dossier arrived in Serbia the day after Thanksgiving.  We had also sent our immigration application in on the 22nd and it was received the day before Thanksgiving.  I thought our problems were over finally!

     We received our fingerprint appointment's for December 18.  We spent another long day driving to Milwaukee for those and then we sat back and waited.  Unfortunately USCIS wanted more information twice so we are still waiting for our final approval letter!  They do have all the information at this point so it is a technicality; that  being said we have not booked our flights because we cannot afford to lose out on the non-refundable fees just in case something else comes up!

     Our Ministry appointment is scheduled for January 16 at 11am!  We are hoping to fly out of Appleton on Monday the 13th.  Our flights were on hold until last night so hopefully tomorrow we get the green light from USCIS and the flights will still be available!  Prayers would be appreciated at this point for all aspects of this adoption.

     On the bright side we received pictures on Christmas morning!  And even though we would have loved our little guy no matter what he looked like I am thrilled to announce he is ADORABLE! And is going to be so spoiled by everyone in our house!  We are so ready to bring him into our home and family!  We cannot wait to share his adorable little face with all of you, unfortunately we can't until he is officially ours.