We Have Our Travel Dates!

Yay! We are going to fly out on October 18th and were told we could fly back on October 31st!!! It's so exciting that I don't even know what to do. It seemed like that was plenty of time and then I looked at the calender and noticed we only have one more weekend before we leave...that is just crazy! It's so hard to comprehend that we will be holding our baby in two weeks. We still have so much to do but I am looking forward to it.

We went shopping last night to get a bunch of medicines and bottles and practical stuff for Alexa for the trip and it was like Christmas:) I had so much fun going through it all last night and today and going through her clothes to decide what to pack. I still have a few more things to get and we need to install our car seats and baby proof the house. Plus, we have a lot to do regarding getting our paperwork ready. I have to make a bunch of copies and organize it all. Nic is mostly working on the airline tickets and is a little nervous about that. We've been warned against a few airlines so we are trying to make sure to pick a good one but it's hard to find a perfect itinerary. The travel agent was supposed to email some itineraries tonight but we never got them so we are stressing a little since we need to get these booked. We have our visas though and once we book our tickets we can relax a little bit and look forward to meeting our baby:)

We Are Still In Shock!

I can't even believe it. Nic woke me up this morning before he left for work to tell me some amazing news. We have USCIS approval to travel!!! I still don't even hardly believe it...it's a miracle that we got it this soon. We were told by the USCIS that it usually takes 60 working days and our agency told us not to be disappointed if it even took longer since they are behind but God is good and has blessed us and we got approval in 9 days! Of course, now I'm in a panic thinking, wow am I ready for this and we have so much to do that I'm overwhelmed. It may be a week or so before we actually get our travel dates and then could be a week or more after that before we actually travel but with how fast this last part happened I'm not taking any chances. I'm so excited and happy and blessed and now I am relieved to know we are approved and that we will have Alexa home before Thanksgiving and we should be with her in Vietnam in a couple of weeks. I just can't wait to hold her in my arms.

We have a lot to do to prepare to bring her home. I have to get medications for her for our trip, find a pediatrician, add her to our insurance, pack, put up baby gates on our stairs and baby proof the house, just to name a few things...YAY! I'm loving every second of it:)

Applied For Our Visas!

We got eveything sent off in the mail yesterday for our visa's so we should hopefully be getting them in the next two weeks or so. It is so exciting to finally be at this stage to be able to apply for them! It is starting to all seem more real now:)

Finally...We're Moving Again!

Well, after months and months and months of waiting without hearing anything we finally have some progress. We had thought months ago that our I-600 was being filed but unfortunately our agency just had us fill out the paperwork in preparation for it to be filed. Well, yesterday morning we finally got the email from our agency that Veitnam released our paperwork to the USCIS and that we should hear something within two weeks from them that they received it. Much to our surprise, we actually got the email from them this morning so we are officially in the countdown! They said they have most cases done within 60 working days but we are praying and hoping it will be sooner than that. For now, we get to apply for our visas and prepare for our trip and bringing our baby home!

Waiting For Our Updated Paperwork

I feel so relieved! We got our notarized medicals on Wednesday and I was able to get them county certified (which I had to drive to some county way out in the country) and then I went to downtown Columbus to get those and our addendum state certified. It was like a big weight lifted off my shoulders when I was able to overnight them to the Vietnam Embassy on Thursday. I got confirmation through the tracking number that they received it so hopefully in the next couple of weeks we should get the authenticated documents back.

I also was able to get an email response from the Ohio USCIS that they got our file from Louisville and are working on our new I-171H! After the scare we had the other day with them telling us our fingerprints were expired and we had to have new ones this is a huge relief to have this straightened out. I'm just not sure if we will have to have our new I-1717H authenticated once we get it.

For now, we are just waiting to get a confirmation email from Hanoi that they have filed our I-600. Hopefully we will get that soon because I'm not sure if our 60 countdown will start until then...of course that's an approximate but at least it's something:) Right now I'm just trying to get things ready and we finally got Alexa's crib put together. Now I just have to make her baby bedding so I have plenty to keep me busy.

We Finally Got Our Addendum!

YAY! I am so excited...after a week or so of completely stressing out over it we finally got our addendum to our homestudy in the mail:) The best part is, the agency already had it county-certified for us so I don't have to drive two and a half hours to go do that. We went on Wednesday to get our new medicals after finding a new doctor and we have to go back tomorrow to have a TB test done. Once we get the results from that on Wednesday we will get our notarized medical forms and I will be able to take those and the addendum to the Secretary of State and have them state certified and send them off to the Vietnam Embassy to be authenticated. We already put our request in to the USCIS office here in Columbus for our new I-171H and our agency sent them our addendum so hopefully we will be getting that soon. It feels good to be making some progress again. I'm just looking forward to getting the email that our I-600 was logged in and filed and then the clock begins:)

Filing Our I-600!

I was totally surprised yesterday when I checked my email and had one from our agency saying that we were ready to file our I-600! It happened a little sooner than we expected which is always great:) It was so exciting to get the I-600 from our agency with our baby's information filled out. We got it sent off last night and our agency received it this morning. I think this is our last leg and from here on out it is in the hands of the US gov't. I think the next step (besides all the moving updates) is waiting for the call!

Of course, everything can't go smoothly and quickly. Unfortunately we are still waiting for our homestudy addendum and after calling the homestudy agency for about a week I had a little freak-out session. It is so frustrating when they won't even call you back. Well, we finally talked to her this morning and apparently the social worker that had done our visit hadn't sent her the addendum yet and she was hoping to have it today but of course it didn't arrive. The social worker told her that if she didn't have it in the mail tomorrow she would overnight it so hopefully we should have our copy by Tues or Wed...we'll see. We also found out we are going to have to get a new I-171H...boy, does it ever stop? I feel like we are starting all over again sometimes but I know that God is in control and it is all going to get done somehow. Our homestudy agency is supposed to send our addendum to the Ohio USCIS office and I emailed both they KY and OH USCIS office to have our file transferred. I'm just nervous about how long it will take to get it and if it is going to hold us up.

Once we do finally get our addendum we have to have it county and state certified along with our new medicals and then send them all off to California to be authenticated. I had such a hard time too trying to make doctors appointments for us. I called several doctor's offices and most of them were scheduling 2 or 3 months out! Well, obviously that wasn't going to work for us. I finally found an office that could get us in sooner but they wouldn't do physicals on the first appointment and they didn't have a notary which we need. Well, FINALLY I found a doctor that is going to see us on Tuesday and they have a notary and they are going to do our vaccines for our travel. It's all starting to come together but I just really have to lean on God so I don't go into panic mode again. I still just don't see how we are going to be able to get all the stuff done without it holding us up be we are trusting Him. God's timing is perfect and we are going to go get Alexa when He thinks the time is perfect. Well, hopefully my next post will be about us receiving our addendum...oh, and any prayers would be greatly appreciated:)

It Finally Happened!

I can't believe I have been so bad about updating our blog...especially since we have the best news ever but in the move we were so busy with remodeling the house and I didn't have computer access, BUT... we got our referral of our beautiful daughter! I'll never forget the day our agency called. It was May 6th about 4:30pm and I was working out in the yard and fortunately I went into the garage to get something (where I had left my cell phone) and as I was getting ready to leave my phone rang. When I saw that the caller ID said it was my agency my heart started racing. I kept trying to tell myself not to get too excited because she was probably just calling to ask me a question about our move. When she said she had good news for us and that she had a referral for us, all I could say was "are you joking with me?" and she said she would never joke about something so important:) I then screamed a little and started jumping up and down. Once I caught my breath she told me a little about this precious baby that God was making part of our family. She was born on February 24, 2008 so she was about 2 and a half months old. She told me she was hitting the submit button on the email to us with her photo and medical information but that she had been having problems with her email and to let her know if it didn't go through. As soon as I hung up the phone I screamed and jumped a little more and called Nic and basically told him that he needed to come home immediately because we had a baby and I wanted to look at her picture for the first time together. He was in shock when I told him that we had a referral because we just weren't expecting it that soon...we hoped but didn't think it would really happen.

I went upstairs and checked my email and I hadn't received it yet so I called our caseworker back and she said she would send it from someone else's email. Well, after about a half an hour Nic was home and we still hadn't gotten the referral and we started to panic because it was after 5pm and the agency was closed so we thought we would have to wait until the next day. But finally, the email popped up and Nic and I prayed together, took a deep breath and opened the email and fell in love. I know I am a little biased as a new mother but I have never seen a more beautiful child in my life:) She was just more beautiful than I ever imagined and my heart was in her tiny hands at that moment. Unfortunately I can't post her picture until we have her home but she has the biggest round brown eyes ever and the cutest nose and mouth and in spite of the huge sweatshirt and pants they have on her you can tell she is tiny.

After looking at her medical history and hearing back from the adoption doctor we were a little concerned with some of her red blood cell counts. The doctor told us she could just be anemic or be malnourished or it could be more serious and to think about that before we accepted the referral. Well, Nic and I prayed about it and individually decided that we felt like this was the child God had made for us and we both decided we wanted to proceed with the referral and I have never been happier. We accepted the referral and asked if there was any way we could have the orphanage give her iron formula. The neatest thing was the dream my mother-in-law had a few months ago. She had written it down the night of her dream and after we got our referral she called me and told me about it. In the dream a baby was born and God told her that this baby would be part of our family. She looked at the baby and she had big, round brown eyes and clear, pretty skin (which looks just like Alexa:) and she looked at the date of the dream and it was on February 24th!...wow!

On Monday, June 16th I couldn't believe it when Nic told me we got an email from our agency with updated pictures of our baby! I ran to the computer and we opened it together and we were very excited to see that they had sent us four new pictures of her. She looks very healthy and happy and is cuter than ever. She even has a small smile in one of the pictures and I can see more personality in them. The email said that she was doing well on her new formula and that her caregivers say she is active and happy. It's just so hard because I want to hold her in my arms and have her now. It's hard to know that when we get her she will have changed since her pictures and I don't want to miss a minute of her life. We are praying that we will get to travel sooner than the 5-6 months that we were told. It's already been a month and a half and I am praying we will get to travel in September (or sooner of course)

Our Monthly Update

Good news...we are now 4th on the waiting list for a referral! Of course we were hoping we would be #1 or 2 but at least my fear of still being 7th didn't happen. I just can't believe there are only 3 families ahead of us! We are really hoping that we will get our referral in May. Since they got 7 referrals last month and 10 both months before that, there is a really good chance that in the next 30 days it will be our turn (if they have another good month of course:) Our prayer is to get our referral before Memorial Day weekend so we can have Alexa's picture before we move so we can show everyone right away. In the meantime, while we are waiting we will be plenty busy closing on our new house next Friday and fixing it up. We will be working hard on the house for the next month and then moving at the end of May. Hopefully before we know it we will be done with it all and planning our trip to Vietnam:) We still haven't had any offers on our house yet and as stressful as it is, we are trying to leave it in God's hands and let him take care of the situation. We know that it is God's will that we move to Columbus for Nic's job so we just have to trust Him that He will allow our house to sell.

Updating Our Homestudy

It's been awhile since I've posted. We've been pretty busy traveling and making our plans to renovate the house we are buying in Columbus. On top of of that we are having to update our homestudy when we move to Ohio. It seemed a little overwhelming and frustrating at first. We thought we were finally done with all of our paperwork but not yet. However, it actually hasn't been too bad. We have found our new agency in Ohio to do our addendum to our current homestudy and have sent back the application to them. We've also already submitted our paperwork to have our child abuse checks run in Ohio and we've had our background check and fingerprints run for Ohio. We called and set up our appointment to have our fire department do a safety check on our new house. I think the only thing we have to do now is actually move and then our agency will inspect our house and we should be done. Our agency told us it should only take a couple of weeks to have everything completely done and written up once we move so overall it hasn't been too difficult. I'll just be so glad when we are home with our baby...it will have all been worth it then:)

We also finally got to register at Babies R Us a couple of weeks ago. That was so much fun but a lot harder than I thought it was going to be:) We were there for several hours and still didn't get done and it was just so hard to decide what to get. We had to come home and read all the reviews on stuff we registered for so we wound up having to change some things. It was such an awesome feeling that we were finally getting to register for baby stuff and we are finally going to have a baby! There were days when I never thought this day would be here and I would go to Babies R Us and just dream about what I would get "someday"...and the day was finally here!

I get to email our agency next week to get our monthly update. I'm a little nervous. I'm so afraid she's going to tell me that we are still #7 and haven't moved up any. I don't really know what to expect this time. We moved halfway up the list last month so this time we could be next on the list or maybe only move up one. I know God is in control so no matter what number we are it is His plan to bring us to the child that He has made for us. My prayer right now is just that she is healthy and will bond with us. Oh, and that our house sells:)