Our Dossier is Complete

This afternoon I received our last Authentication in the mail. I just finished Express mailing our Dossier to our agency. We are DONE! They said that they will be sending it out to China next Friday. They only send them out on Fridays. So we definately could have a LID by the time next month's shared list comes out. Please pray for a quick LID!

News on Locking a Child

So it appears that with this shared list comes new requirements. Apparently now in order for you to lock a child's file you need to have a log in date (LID). This is the date you get when your Dossier is logged in after it gets to China. We don't have one this month so we are not eligible to lock a file. Hopefully next month we will have our LID. I know that this is all in God's plan. It is just one of the many ups and downs of adoption.

Waiting for the List

Right now we are still waiting for our Authentication to come back, and I'm sure it will be here by the end of the week. But we are also waiting for the new shared list to come out to see if our daughter is on that list. As of yesterday it had still not come out, but they anticipate that it will be out "any time now". So hopefully we will know by the end of this week whether we have found our daughter this month or not. If not, the next list will come out in about a month from now. It is like checking every month to see if you are pregnant! (smile)

Our LAST Authentication Document

Yesterday I express mailed our last document to the Chinese Embassy to be Authenticated. When we get that back next week I will send my Dossier (all of my thousands of documents..or so it seems) to our agency. They will then send it off to China. If we can get it to China by March 1st we will have completed our paper chase in five months. Not bad considering the hold up with USCIS.

Missing my Baby

It is mid way through February and we are almost finished with all the paper work that is required to request a child from China. I can't believe that it has been four and a half months since we started on this paper chase. It was good for me to do it through the holidays because I have definately been focused on other things and not just the adoption. I am hoping that by the beginning of March we will have our Dossier (paper work) in China. Then comes the hard part for me...the wait. Now don't get me wrong, I know that we will not be waiting as long as most people do. I know that there are people on the non special needs list that have been in this process for four years! And I know that many others will wait MUCH longer to find their child. For me, I am ok if I feel like I am "doing" something. The paper work has been easy for me because I am organized and I felt as if I was accomplishing something. After the Dossier goes to China, my part is finished and I have to just wait on the Lord for the rest. I have gotten better about this in my life, but I am nowhere near perfect in the patience area. I do have a peace that we will find Ashlyn when the time is right. God has already written this story and I can do nothing to alter the timing of His plan. His timing is PERFECT. So I hope with this knowledge in my heart that the time will not bother me so much as I wait to see my little girl's face for the first time.

Being a mom to four bio children and knowing a mother's love for her child, it is a strange feeling to love someone who you know nothing about, except that she was made for you and your family by God. I don't love any one of them more than the other, it just amazes me how much I already love this child who God has put in my heart. This is definately much harder to me than pregnancy. Harder on my heart I mean. When I was pregnant (and I always have rough pregnancies physically), at least I knew that my child was growing well and I could feel them and attach to them. I have nothing with this "pregnancy" except what God has given me emotionally for this child. I do believe that God has given me a little of His love for her in my heart. I am not worried about her well being because I know that He is protecting her and taking care of her. I do miss her terribly! Sometimes I just want to look at her sweet face. We always wonder what our children will look like when we are pregnant. Well, I find that I want to know that more with this child, probably because I don't have the attachment of physically feeling her move. Also knowing that I am missing out on part of her life is not an easy pill to swallow...for any mother. I think that hurts the most. But these children do not belong to us, they are God's. And He is with her. It is not me who can do all for her, it is Him alone. I have to know that this is what He has always had planned for her life and accept that I am just a part of her life that God chose to give her. I pray that I can be all for my children that I need to be, so they can grow to be the people that God needs them to be in this world.

Our Last Certification

Sorry I am a little late at posting this, but our house has had the nasty flu going around. Donny is the only one of the six of us who has not caught it yet.

Monday I sent our last document out Express mail to be Certified by the State. As soon as this comes back I will be sending it off to be Authenticated. I can not believe that our paper work is almost complete. It really has not been that bad. Hopefully the wait for our referral won't be too long.

51 Days! That's Right, 51 Days!

I just found out that our I800A was approved on January 30th. That is 51 days! Not 120 days like we were originally told. My adoption agency said that was the fastest they have seen. Yeah! Now I need to get the approval Certified by the state and then Authenticated by the Chinese Embassy in Houston. After that our dossier is done! Now all we need to do is find our little girl! Thanks for praying with us!

Making a Point

Well, yesterday my hubby finally went and got his first shot (Hep A/Hep B combo). He had been harrassing me about not getting mine "because I was scared". Well, look who got thiers first! Who went and got theirs after his wife got hers? Just trying to make a point.

Authentication

Today I received our 12 documents in the mail Authenticated! So now they are done and ready to go to China. I am still waiting for our approval of our I800A. We are now day 57. Once I get this, I will have to have a copy of it Certified and then Authenticated. Then we can send our papers off to China! Slowly but surely we are getting there. Actually, this process has gone really smoothly. It has definately not been as bad as I thought that it would be. Yes, I do realize that I am not done yet. I also realize that the hardest part is yet to come...waiting to find our little girl.

Update: I have been going from the date that I mailed our I800A in as the date that I am counting from. It should be from the 10th of December instead of from the 3rd of December, so we have been waiting 50 days, not 57. Oh well, what's a week?!?

My First Shot in a Series of 3

I just got back from getting my first Hep A/Hep B combination shot. I have to get one next month and then one five months after that. It was not as bad as I thought (and those who know me know that I HATE shots). Getting my baby girl from China is definately a good motivator to get my shots. Two more to go!

I had a very nice lady, whom I do not know, email me from our adoption web site www.waitingforashlyn.com to tell me that she wanted to send me a square for Ashlyn's quilt. I was so blessed by this. No one has sent us a square for my baby's quilt yet (hint hint). So, hopefully I will start to get some pieces in the mail so that I can make her quilt for her before she gets home. You know I love you all!

Also~ we are day 54 in our wait for approval for our I800A! Some people have been getting their approval in 68 days! Hopefully we will have it in the next two weeks and then we can send our dossier to China sometime in March! Wouldn't that be amazing!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Xin Nian Kuai Le! That means Happy New Year in Mandarin. Today is Chinese New Year and this is the biggest holiday for China. They all get together with family and celebrate the coming year. This year is the year of the Ox. The ox is considered a hard working animal so they feel that if you work hard you will prosper.

On another note... I am desperately missing my Ashlyn. This weekend has been the hardest for me yet. I guess with Chinese New Year coming up and her not home celebrating it with us, has been a bit tough for me. Our family is just not complete without her. We talk about her everyday. She is very much a part of this family. The kids pray for her everyday "because she is not home where she belongs". Jordan is even missing her so much now that he is asking to go to China with us because he just wants to hold his baby sister. So needless to say it is hard on ALL of us...well, except Noah, who keeps telling me that he is the baby and he likes babies, but when I ask him if mommy is going to bring a baby home he tells me "no". He then explained "I the baby". So besides Noah, our hearts are longing for this baby girl who we have not even seen. That love could only be from our God!

Happy Chinese New Year, and God bless!

Approval Soon?

Today on one of my Yahoo groups someone got their USCIS aproval in 77 days! That is so exciting! That means ours could be very soon. I am finishing up our Dossier right now so that when the approval comes we can finish this process.

LOTS of Paper!

Today I am printing copies of ALL of the paperwork we have done so far. Three copies of everything to be exact. That is ALOT of paper! I have literally locked myself in my office to do this. I am getting our papers ready to be mailed out today to be Authenticated. I realized that I should also make the copies for the Dossier now too. And of course, I always make a copy for myself. My little desk printer is chugging along. It is really exciting because we are almost done with our paperwork part of the process. After talking to my agency today it seems that USCIS has sped up too and it will not take the 120 days now. (We are on day 48) She said that approvals are coming quick now. That will be one of the last pieces to this puzzle. We are very excited! Now all we need is our referral!

Fingerprints

Yesterday we had our fingerprint appointment and all went well. I talked with our agency yesterday and we are hoping that our I800A will be processed faster than the 120 days. We are on day 42. She said that a couple had come back at around the 90 mark. That would be nice. That would mean that we were half way there. Again, God's timing is perfect, so we will wait on Him.

Certification and Fingerprint Update

Yesterday our twelve documents came back certified. Now I will need to send them off to be authenticated. We also have a new date for our fingerprint appointment. So we are still moving forward, just not much more I can do at this end. Really we are waiting for the I800A to be approved. I could go and get my Hepatitis A and B shot started, but, yes, I am a chicken and I hate shots. Donny says I need to stop procrastinating, yet he has not gotten his first one either! We need three over the next six months...YIPEE!

Fingerprints

Today in the mail we also received paperwork to get our fingerprints done for our I800A. The scheduled us for the Saturday morning that we are leaving to go to North Carolina. So needless to say, I have to reschedule.

Certification Already?

Not really... today I received the package in the mail from Certification. I was really excited that it had been so quick. Well, turns out that they sent everything back because I sent them too much money. Their web site gave misleading information on some of its fees. So now I have to go to the post office and do it all over again. Maybe I will just wait until everyone is done mailing things for Christmas!

Same Blog...New Look

Don't be alarmed, you are at the right place. I just changed the look of the blog. Do you like?

Next...Certification

This afternoon I sent 12 notarized documents express mail to be Certified by the Department of State. I will need to get one more document Certified, but I went ahead and sent out what I had. After these documents come back I will need to send them out to be Authenticated. We are day 6 into the 120 day wait for the I800A application to be approved.

Our I800A is out the Door!

I did not know that I would be this excited, but I am! Today we received our notarized homestudy in the mail. I got all of our I800A papers together and our BIG certified check and headed to the post office. I was anxious/excited as I was standing in line to express mail our envelope. And then, off it went, and it was finally done. This is so exciting! Another big part of this paper chase process is done. Now I can get together all of our notarized papers and send them off to the state to be certified. I will probably get to that next week sometime. Thank you all for your many prayers for our family.