Christmas Picture

Merry Christmas a few days late, everyone! We took this on Christmas morning at my parent's house. Ali was feeling a little under the weather, but we managed to get a smiling picture. Christmas was a fun day for us, and crazy. Two other families with young toddlers joined my parents and my brother and sister-in-law for a wild day. I love celebrating with a crowd, though!

I've been dreaming a lot lately about what it will be like when we are a family of four...who knows, maybe next year our Christmas picture will have another child in it! I am content, though, in the waiting. It's been so much work just to get to this point, but I'm so grateful to God that He has given me peace in the waiting. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with your prayers for us. I know He will provide the resources to complete this adoption, the wisdom we need to raise our two kids (maybe more in the future), and His never-ending presence. I was reminded again this Christmas that Jesus is Emmanuel: God-with-us. I know that's "old news" to so many of us, myself included, but wow...I mean, Jesus is with me all the time, wherever I go. So I remind myself to praise Him, and to make my praise glorious for Him, dancing, singing, leaping, praising all day long!

URGH...Revisions Necessary

Hello All who are patiently waiting with us in this adoption process. I went out to check the mail this afternoon on this blissfully warm day in December and saw an envelope from none other than USCIS. Unfortunately, I saw yellow paper peeking at me from the clear little slot in the envelope where our address was. Surely, I thought to myself, they do not put our approval on such paper. I was right. We have officially been told by USCIS that our homestudy lacks one thing: our homestudy preparer's signature with a declaration that she wrote all the information in our homestudy "under penalty of perjury under United States law that..." and then it lists a bunch of fancy language that has to be written verbatim into our homestudy (which, by the way, is already in our homestudy, just not all fancy and at the end with the signature). Craziness.

But the good news is that our file is actually in the process of being reviewed by USCIS. This change shouldn't take too long, and we'll hopefully get our US approval very soon!

Big Big News

So...we're still waiting to receive our USCIS approval (hopefully sometime next month), but our file was finished being translated, and yesterday, after I called our case worker with an update, she told us our file was finished being translated and was at an orphanage. First, I was surprised because originally we were going to adopt through the central authority in Colombia (their child welfare equivalent), but now it looks like it's a better fit for us to adopt from a private orphanage in Cali, Colombia called Chiquitines. Well...our case worker told us that once our USCIS approval was in our file, the board of directors at the orphanage would review the file. To our great surprise and delight, the board reviewed our file before that approval. We were contacted by our agency today and sent a letter TODAY notifying us that we are officially accepted...we're just going to fax our USCIS approval once we receive it! How cool is that? So, we are "officially waiting." I cannot tell you how excited we are. It's still a long journey of waiting, but we're approved. Now, to pray for patience some more...I'm off! Check out the link...on the word Chiquitines above...if you want to see the orphanage where we will meet our child for the first time!

Heroes Commentary

So...in my blog reading, I came across this interesting take on Heroes. Read and comment if you want to!

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/11/03/the-racialicious-roundtable-for-heroes-37/

For myself...I am constantly reminded of how much I take for granted...I, as a white girl, am always represented in the TV shows I watch, movies I see, books I read, etc. and I don't need to worry about whether or not I will be portrayed favorably--there are enough of my demographic represented that even if there is a villainous white chick, there are plenty of white "heroes" to make up for it. It makes me again dedicated to more critical viewing. It's my job to be a catalyst for change; I know I'm not anywhere near the positive agent for change that I would like to be, but I'm learning (hopefully)...and I want our home to be a place where we discuss these issues.

I Couldn't Help Myself...

...I just called USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) to find out about the status of our application. People keep asking where we are in the process: We have all of our paperwork in Colombia as of October 3rd. It is being translated and should be finished soon...but an official in Colombia cannot look at our file and approve us until the US Government approves us to adopt internationally. So we're waiting. We're going to be doing a lot of waiting during this process. I was hoping USCIS would be quicker, but they are telling us 90 days at this point to process our application...90 days from the receipt date: September 17th...90 days is December 16th. That is so far away...and is it 90 work days or 90 days. I counted 90 days. It better be 90 days. After 90 days, I'll call USCIS again, at which point they probably won't be done, but at least then they will assign us a case worker to review our homestudy. Hopefully they will not need any more information...then they will mail us our approval letter, titled the 797C, which I will fax to our country director. She will send it to Colombia, just in time for the holidays....so our file will most likely not even begin the review process in Colombia until after Christmas (and by that I mean mid-January), where it is estimated to take another 90 days to review and hopefully approve. Aaahhh. I am so glad I didn't know all this BEFORE we started. It's a LOT harder than I thought and a LOT harder than being pregnant...but no one knows except other adoptive parents. They all have a lot of sympathy for us at the moment b/c they understand the struggles of doing this paperwork stuff and then just waiting for governments. Imagine waiting for the government to tell you when you could deliver your baby and not knowing how much longer it would be until you give birth. That's about what it feels like. I know we haven't even really begun the official "waiting" period. God knows how much He'll be teaching me about patience. Aaahhh. Not doing so hot now.

Adoption Updates

Several praises:
1. Our dossier was sent to Colombia on October 3rd for translations. It is not complete yet as we are still waiting for US Government approval. Once it is complete, the Colombian government will review it and either approve us or ask us for more information. (You can start praying now that our file will be acceptable!!!)
2. We have been assigned a fingerprint appointment at USCIS (Citizen and Immigration Services) for October 14th...a necessary step for government approval.

Several prayer requests:
1. Please pray that we will receive our US approval in a timely manner.
2. We are in the process of applying for grants.
3. Pray for the families in Colombia now, as the court system is on strike and all adoptions have halted at the moment...keep some families in limbo in Colombia with their children. I'm sure they are stressed out wondering when they will be able to finalize their adoptions and return home and wondering how long their finances will hold out as they are in Colombia indefinitely.

Fun Picture of Aliana