UPDATES: LIFE & ADOPTION

I know most of you are thinking the same thing that I am thinking, "Where on earth has the summer gone?" I cannot believe that we are nearing the end of August already.

We have had a fun summer full of days spent at the beach, tons of birthday parties, days spent outdoors playing, day trips to the zoo, different parks, and Sesame Place. I have a bazillion photos that I will share soon...hopefully before the summer is over.

September is drawing near and I am already thinking about Halloween, Halainah's 3rd birthday, and Christmas...I know...I know...don't rush it!!

And as we are trying to enjoy that end of summer and squeeze in all the things that we weren't able to do this summer, or squeezing in as much beach time as we possibly can...we are also running full steam ahead with Mei Mei's adoption.

So in my last update, I posted that:

1. Our Dossier was sent to the Chinese Consulate for Authentication
2. We were awaiting our fingerprint appointments for our I-797 Approval
3. And we were trying to reach our deadline of the end of September to have our Dossier in our Agencies hand.

WELL...and I capitalized that because there are ALWAYS mountains to climb in the adoption world.

1. Our Dossier was REJECTED at the Chinese Consulate for Authentication because it now needs to be hand delivered in person. Aghhhhhh!! Information my agency should have told us, rather than wasting precious weeks and money since it cost me to send it to them with a return label.

But today, we all jumped into the car and braved the short trek into the city. I like the city...but do not like traveling into the city. But we made it, we drove in ourselves and were able to accomplish the task at hand. So in a few days we will trek back into the city to retrieve our documents...our final step in the paperchasing phase of our journey.

2. The Great news is that we finally received our appointments to get our fingerprints done and we went and accomplished that task. AND we received our I-797 approval within a week after our fingerprint appointments. For Halainah's adoption it took 7 weeks to receive our approval from the date of our fingerprint appointments. That was truly by the grace of God.

3. I believe that we will be ahead of our deadline for our Dossier to be at our agency because of this. We have a document that will expire in October that is why it is so important to have our Dossier in China before October 15th.

So we are so close to finally being logged in. And once we receive our Log in Date, the rest is left up to God. He will find our daughter and bring her to us through this amazing miracle of Adoption. It could be 1 month from Log In....it could be a year...it could be longer...only HE knows. And we trust him fully.

I'm sorry that I have been such a bad blogger and I have neglected some of my most favorite blogs. I promise I will be back to normal...or at least a new normal soon.

Below are a few photos we recently took to submit to China with our Dossier.

God Bless!!