Breakdown

Today has not been a good day.  I had my first post-referral breakdown.  Now that we "know" our little girl, it seems very hard to wait until July/August to bring her home.  I was looking at her pictures and crying.  People had told me this would happen, but the feeling of helplessness that I have right now is oppressive.  I cannot do anything to speed our paperwork through the process and that is very frustrating.  I'm trying to remember that God's timing is perfect, and that He has planned this adoption for us since the beginning of time.

Acceptance Paperwork On It's Way

Our letter of acceptance and all of our other acceptance paperwork left for China today.  I'm so excited about this little girl.  She is already such a blessing to us.

Referral Accepted

We received a referral late Monday night and had until Wednesday morning to decide if this was our little girl.  We accepted the referral for An A'li who is in Xi'an, ShaanXi, China.  Her birthday is August 21, 2008, so hopefully we will have her home before her third birthday.  We are very excited, overwhelmed, happy and scared.  We asked God to send us the perfect little girl and know that she is the one meant for us.  We will post pictures soon once our acceptance paperwork reaches China.

Wait, Wait, Wait

We are still waiting on our paperwork to make it to China.  After that, it should only be a week until we get our referral.  Hopefully, we will know who are little girl is in the next two weeks.  We'll keep you posted and put pictures up as soon as we have them.

I-800A Approved!

We just received the email stating that our I-800A application has been approved.  They have sent an electronic copy to our adoption agency and will send us a hard copy tomorrow.  I'm so excited!  Things actually feel like they are starting to progress and fall into place.  Continue to pray for us and for our sweet little girl.

Trevor told me yesterday morning that he woke up at 2 a.m. that morning and was starving.  It was the perfect opportunity to talk about how fortunate we are.  I told him "Just imagine what your little sister feels like right now.  She probably doesn't get enough food and she can't just grab something when she's hungry."  The boys are really getting excited about bringing her home.

Update

We completed our biometric fingerprinting at the immigration office in Birmingham on Monday.  Now we just wait for the FBI to approve them and then wait immigration to approve us to bring Katie into the country.  It's exciting to be one step closer.  I know summer will be here before we know it and I'll be fretting about getting her room ready and preparing for the trip.

We go back to Birmingham bright and early tomorrow morning.  The International Adoption Clinic is hosting a seminar on the joys and struggles of international adoption.  It should be very interesting and helpful for us to hear what the doctor and other presenters have to say on the subject.  We will also get to meet the doctor from the clinic, whom we will use to review our referral and who will also evaluate Katie when we return home from China.  We are hoping to receive a referral by February and will let everyone know as soon as we find our little girl.

It's Been Awhile

Our paperwork has been sent to immigration and we're waiting on our receipt to get our biometric fingerprints done.  A new list of children has been posted on the waiting children page of our adoption agency, but none of them actually meet our requests.  We're in a lull stage of the adoption and I'm actually quite frustrated right now.  Once again, I'm supposed to be learning patience, and I'm failing miserably.