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