Tuesday, September 30, 2008

First Birthday Pictures



So here are some pictures of Ali enjoying her presents and cupcake at her birthday party!

On the adoption front...guess what I'm mailing today? Our completed dossier documents (with the exception of our US government approval). Our program coordinator is going to send our documents to Colombia to be translated (after she looks them over...please let them all be correct!!!), and then we'll just fax our approval from the US when it comes. So, we are really close to being done with the majority of the work we have to do...next steps: waiting, reading, praying, enjoying Ali and our family and friends, waiting, applying for grants, saving money...lots to do while we settle in for the long wait for our second child!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Birthdays & Coffee Trucks

There is an ice cream truck that drives by our house every late afternoon. Our next door neighbor buys one for her and her dog, and on nice days they sit in the yard to enjoy the treat together. Very sweet. I just think in my head I would never spend money buying ice cream for a dog, and then I wish the ice cream truck were a coffee truck. I would wait everyday and spend a whole lot of money on a nice hazelnut latte. How awesome would that be?

Well...I can't get that wish, but I do get to enjoy my beautiful daughter all day long on her first birthday. Can you believe it? I am so grateful to God for her and for the joy she brings us. I am remembering back to trying to get pregnant a lot these days and comparing it in my mind to our adoption. Both have required so much trust, more than I can come up with on my own. I am praying so much that God will help me remember that He is in control of everything. As I pray, I am remembering my disappointment at not being able to get pregnant on our own and then going through fertility treatments and wondering if we'd ever get to hold a baby and call her our own. God didn't have to, but in His mercy He allowed us to get pregnant. I vividly remember the joy of finally holding Ali in our arms one year ago; I know I will experience joy again when we hold our next child in our arms. I am praising God for so much today...for His son, Jesus, for helping us have faith, for being sovereign, even over our small lives, for His faithfulness to us, for our daughter, Aliana, and for the child we do not know yet! I can't wait to meet him. (or her.) :)

Monday, September 15, 2008

Well-dressed, Appropriate, and Pleasant?


So our dossier instructions say that in the photos we submit, we do not need to be in formal attire, but we should be "well dressed, appropriate and pleasant-looking." What do you all think...is this an okay photo to send. I keep trying to get a good one when we're (semi) dressed up for church, but I'm making the mistake of having our teens take the picture...so we've got a bunch of fuzzy, head cut-off, eyes-closed, Ali crying pictures. This is the best picture we have so far of us looking "pleasant," but do you think we're "well dressed" enough?

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Done (With One Stage)

We are officially done with our homestudy and our psych evaluation and all of our other paperwork...we've sent everything to various states to be apostilled/authenticated (a necessary step to make our papers "legal" overseas). We've had some bumps on the road, but we're done with one huge step. Our social worker mentioned that we have 3 hoops to jump through: the homestudy, the US government, and then Colombia. After that, we'll be waiting, and waiting, and waiting. (Can you tell which part I'm dreading?) We applied with USCIS (the government) on Friday, so who knows when we'll hear from them, but our Colombia program director said that once everything else in our dossier is done, she'll send it to Colombia to begin translations and we'll just send the 171H (approval from US) when it gets done. It makes me feel better that at least our paperwork can get to Colombia even if the US takes a while...which hopefully it won't.