Apparently this is what you do when you are adopting

Well, I have started a blog. I don't necessarily think I am a good writer or have anything interesting to say, but apparently this is the best way to communicate with friends and family and keep everyone informed with the status of our adoption. Aaron will be embarrassed with my typos and question whether or not I proofread anything I type, for this I apologize ahead of time. I am just typing quickly to share and inform and may not always catch my mistakes. This blog is private, by invitation only, so if there is a friend or family member who is interested in following our adoption journey than please let me know and I would be happy to add them. I thought it was best to keep it private since I will be posting pictures of the girls and details about our adoption trip.

If there is anyone reading this who doesn't already know, we are adopting a little girl from China. We have not been matched with a specific child yet and are currently waiting for a referral (a match with a specific child). We started the adoption process last September and have been working diligently ever since. It is a long process with lots of paperwork and even more waiting.

We submitted our application for adoption Sept. 21, 2012. This was a very lengthy and detailed application with all sorts of personal information. China is one of the pickiest countries to adopt from, with a long list of pre-qualifications. Once accepted by our adoption agency, Lifeline, out of Birmingham (they have a local office in Louisville too), we went through the homestudy process which consisted of four visits with our social worker over about 10 weeks. During that time we both wrote detailed personal biographies, completed hours of education and training and had our house, finances and personal lives closely examined. Not to mention the physicals with our doctor, multiple sets of fingerprints, state and FBI background checks and hours spent gathering documents and paperwork. Once our social worker completed and wrote up our twenty-something page homestudy report, we mailed it off to U.S. Immigration. After about a month and a set of biometric fingerprints, we received our i800-A approval, permitting us to bring a child home to the U.S. Next, we sent our Dossier, a set of 13 documents which are sent to the county, state and federal level for authenticating, off to China. After several weeks we were logged in to China's computer system which means we are eligible to receive a referral for a child. Once our agency gets a child's file that matches our criteria we are interested in, we will receive the file from our social worker and have 72 hours to have the file reviewed by international adoption doctors before accepting or passing on that file.  That is where we wait currently. We are waiting for the phone call from our social worker that could come today or in six months. Please pray it comes sooner rather than later and it is clear whether or not the file we receive is one we are meant to accept.

So, many of you have asked when we will travel. We have no idea at this point. It will be several months at the soonest. If we received a referral tomorrow, it would still probably be close to five to six more months before we traveled to China to bring our baby home. There are a lot of steps that go on between us, the U.S. government and the Chinese government before you have permission to travel and adopt a child. We will keep you all informed but we probably won't have any updates any time soon. It is a very long and drawn out process with a lot of unknowns. There are about fifteen steps in the adoption process and we are on step 7-8.

Hopefully we will have exciting news to share soon. We will keep you all posted. Please pray that our baby Hope (That is her name for now. We are waiting to learn her Chinese name before deciding on her name.) is being well cared for, fed and loved until we can bring her home.

Thanks for reading!

Katy