Somehow I feel like I lost a month . . . seriously, where did March go? I realize that I haven’t blogged in forever. I’ve barely posted on Facebook. But blogging about our adoption journey is important for many reasons, including my wanting to remember this process and share it with Sibyl when she is home. So time for some catch-up!
January 2015 saw us waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the home study process to move along as well as finishing collecting our dossier documents. On January 22, all of the original dossier documents were mailed to our agency! You know that feeling you get when your tax return has been submitted (and you are getting money back)? That feeling times 10! We also got 3 precious new pictures of Sibyl on January 5th and the disc with the original pictures/video from August 2014 PLUS pictures and 1 minute of video that we hadn’t seen. It is such a treat to get to see her sweet face!
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| Original Dossier Documents Ready to Mail! |
February 2015 had some WONDERFUL milestones! On February 26th, after more delays than we’d hoped for (but not uncommon to this process), we learned that our home study was approved by our placing agency! HUGE news because it meant that we could start the immigration process . . . the next big step!
February 28th was a beautiful day as we celebrated our adoption with a fantastic fundraiser put together and ran by friends and family.
We cannot express enough our thanks for the contributions of time, auction items, desserts, direct donations, ticket sales/auction bids, and well-wishes. We were blessed to raise $4,763.00, approximately 1/6 of our total costs! To date, we are approximately halfway funded for the entire adoption.
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| Fundraiser Logo Designed by Adam |
March has been our waiting through the next part of the journey, the Immigration Approval (Phase I). Our completed home study and our I-800a have been filed with the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS). Tomorrow, Hubby and I will be fingerprinted (second time for the adoption), and then we will receive our approval notice via mail. THIS IS THE LAST DOCUMENT NEEDED FOR OUR DOSSIER! And I am happy to say, we should be completing this phase about 4 weeks ahead of estimation. Once all documents including our I-800a approval have been certified and authenticated, our dossier will be sent to China. At that point, we are waiting for LOA!!!
To clarify a point that can be confusing, we will have to obtain immigration approval TWICE. Phase I approval will approve our family to adopt from China. Once we receive LOA, Phase II approval will approve us to adopt Sibyl specifically. It is rather like a ping-pong ball going back and forth between two countries’ governments.
And on March 24th, we received a disc in the mail with new pictures and 2 new minutes of our 2-year-old! We are so grateful to one of the agents from AAC who made sure to get updated pictures for us while she was in China as well as delivering our care package to Sibyl. I envy her getting to see our little one in person! Pictures can’t go up online until after LOA, but I have them on my phone, so if you see me in person, you can ask to see our little one! The video showed a sweet little girl who is walking like a pro! She had lots of smiles, even for people she didn’t know, and showed no anxiety meeting them and having her picture taken. She kept trying to show some books to the people looking in the window from outside. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched the video of our darling one! Every day, we are closer to when we are the ones taking her picture and holding her close.
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| Care Package: PJ's and an outfit |
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| Care Package: A soft book |
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