Another step forward!

Just a little update!  Today we received our hard copies of our updated homestudy from our social worker so I will be mailing that, along with other paperwork, to the USCIS ( U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) office.  Because our fingerprints haven't expired from when they were taken for Asher's adoption, they will be able to be refreshed instead of having to travel to Indy to get new ones done.  We will then wait for approval to come back.  When we have that, we will have all neccessary paperwork to update our dossier!  We will just need to go to Indy for the stamps/seal from the Secretary of State office and then we will mail the documents to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for their stamps/seal.  After that, they are off to China!  I can't believe how much faster this dossier process is with a reuse instead of starting from scratch!

We are so blessed and excited to be Hannah's parents.  We've gotten her room (she will share with Avery) together and we've been buying clothes and things for her.  Yesterday I layed out one of my favorite outfits we've gotten and just imagined her in it.  I can't believe we will be meeting her in 6 months or less!!

As always, thank you so much for your continued support through prayers, donations, and encouragement.  This is truly a village thing and we wouldn't be able to do it without you.  Love you all!

~Carly

Puzzle update!

I am so excited to tell you all that 114 puzzle pieces have already been sponsored!!  What an incredible blessing!  This is a 300 piece puzzle so there are only 186 pieces left to be sponsored.  We'd love for you to be a part of this journey to bring Hannah home and give her what she has been waiting for over TWELVE YEARS for: a family of her own!  This money that has been so generously donated so far has paid our 1st agency fee, our homestudy update fee, and it will pay for our dossier to get the proper stamps/clearances at the Chinese Consulate in Chicago, our 2nd agency fee, and our CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption) fee.  This means we have the money to get our dossier to China!  I can't tell you what a blessing it has been not to worry over how/when the money would come in.  With Asher's adoption we had to wait over 8 months just to get our dossier to China and Hannah's entire adoption will be done in 8 months or less, wow!

Here are a couple pictures of the puzzle progress!  Thank you all so much for your continued support through prayer, financial gifts, and encouragement!

Where we are

I thought I'd just share a little update of where we are in the process.  On the 5th we had a visit from our social worker.  He was here for Asher's 6 month visit and also to update our homestudy for Hannah's adoption.  The visit went really well and our homestudy should be done in a couple weeks.  When that's done, we will be sending a copy of that with some forms to the USCIS (immigration) so they can update our fingerprints and info in the system.  Once we get that approval we will take a trip to Indy to the Secretary of State's office to get their stamp and then we mail those papers to Chicago to the Chinese Consulate for their stamp.  After that, our dossier is all updated and ready to head to China!  I LOVE that we can reuse our dossier and only have to update instead of the huge paper chase again.  With Asher, it took almost 8 months from when we got preapproval from China until our dossier was on it's way back.  This time it should be half that, woohoo!

As far as funds go, we have raised $5,000 of the $20,000 we estimate that we need!  This money will pay our first and second agency fee, the fee to update our homestudy, the fees to send our documents to Chicago, and possibly most of our 3rd agency fee!  This is incredible!  With Asher's adoption, we came down to the day the payment was needed before it was there.  We are so thankful to not have that stress yet.  If you want to help us get closer to our goal of being fully funded, you can check out our puzzle fundraiser: Puzzle Fundraiser and we will most likely be doing a cookbook fundraiser as well (more info on that later).

We were also able to get a small update on Hannah recently with 3 new pictures and her current measurements so now we can take a better guess at what size clothes to get for her.  As soon as we have LOA (full approval from China to adopt her) we will send her a care package like we did for Asher so she can see pictures of our family and have some treats to share at her orphanage.

We are so excited to get back to China and to meet our daughter and we are very excited to be taking the whole family this time.  Thank you all for your continued prayers and support, we love you all!

~Carly