We're on the waiting list!

God is good! We are officially on the waiting list! We mailed in our dossier last week and there were a few things that we accidentally didn't include. I mailed our documents to Holt last week and Villa Hope's missing document was received by Holt yesterday. Today Holt offically approved our dossier and they will mail it to Thailand on Friday! They didn't give us a "number" or anything but just said we are estimated to receive a referral in January! This is only an estimate but how awesome would be it to receive our match only 1 year from starting the process! WOW. We are super excited and cannot wait to see our baby's precious face! Please pray for patience as we are waiting!

The dossier has been mailed to Holt!!

After 21 days we finally received our dossier back from US Pack (the courier service that walked our dossier through certification at the US Dept of State and Thai Embassy in Washington D.C.)! We received it from FedEx yesterday morning so I quickly gathered everything together to mail it off to Holt, our adoption agency in OR. We had to include 2 copies of the dossier, passport photos, family photos, and the US processing fee. I got everything together and overnighted the package. Holt emailed me this morning letting me know they received the package and will be reviewing it soon. She said they will be getting back to us on Tues or Wed of next week. So once they review it and hopefully approve it we will be on the waiting list!! Holt did say though that we will not be able to be matched with a child until our 3 year wedding anniversary in January. We knew this would be the case since this is a Thailand requirement but we started the process anyway since it takes a while to get everything submitted. They said we will still work our way up the waiting list but they would just skip over us until January IF we were to get to the top of the list by then (but there is a good chance that we wouldn't by January anyway) But who knows... It is totally in God's timing anyway!

For the I800A, we are still waiting for approval. We did receive our fingerprint appointment which is scheduled for June 9th at 2pm in Atlanta! So once we have this done hopefully it won't take too much longer for approval. I did ask Holt if this would delay us from getting on the waiting list and she said no. It is common that families get the dossier submitted before I800A approval. I was relieved because I thought this would hold us up!
Everything is moving forward and we are so, so excited and feel very blessed to be this far along! Thank you for all of your prayers! We will be keeping you updated!

Dossier Certification!

BIG NEWS! So, last post I was discouraged because of paperwork confusion. On Wednesday morning I woke up to my doorbell ringing. It was the FedEx guy! He delivered the last 2 documents we needed! So I got up and got ready really fast and called my friend Christine. She agreed to come with me to Montgomery to get the dossier certified (I didn't want to go by myself). So we went to the Lee County Courthouse first for the county certification and then we drove to downtown Montgomery for the state certification! and I will just let you know after waiting for these 2 documents for what seemed like forever neither places even looked at any of the documents. It literally took less than 5 minutes in the Secretary of State (Montgomery office) I was like..REALLY?! When we were leaving I asked Christine why they didn't actually look at any of the documents and she said it was probably because I had everything tabbed and super organized and if I had been fumbling around in a pile of paperwork they would have probably looked at every single thing I had.. Anyway it was such a relief to have this part complete! So when I got home I had to get ready for work really fast! The next day on Thursday I gathered everything I needed to take my dossier to FedEx to send to the US Pack which is the courier service that will actually walk my dossier through certification at the Dept of State and then the Thai Embassy. I overnighted the package on Thursday before work and it was delivered to US Pack on Friday afternoon! YAY! I spoke with the lady there and she said it will be about a 10 days process. We feel so relieved and blessed to be through this big step!!

On Saturday we had our International Adopting Clinic seminar at Children's Hospital in Birmingham. It was a really great seminar that told us about what to expect when traveling and once we get home with our baby! We met a few families there who are adopting from Moldova (eastern Europe) and China. For one family they were on their 8th adoption from China! It was really cool to meet other families in the adoption process across Alabama!

Anyway it was a great Mother's Day weekend and we are truly very blessed! We cannot wait to be on the waiting list! We will keep you updated!

The longest post ever.

     So, a lot has happened since our last post! Our Home Study was approved by both Holt and Villa Hope which was HUGE for us! Once we received our notarized copies of the HS we were ready to file our I800A (which was tricky). The I800A is a form we send to the US gov't to determine our eligibility and suitability to adopt a child who currently resides in a convention country (Thailand). We basically have to ask their permission to adopt our child and send them some money.. So, our baby will be coming home on a different visa than the more common kind since the adoption will be finalized here in the US instead of in Thailand. Every country is different but it is more common to finalize the adoption in country so that when the child steps on US soil they are citizens. This will not be the case for our child. We will have to go to the Thai Embassy in Washington D.C. about 6 months after we return home to finalize everything. ANYWAY, our HS agency didn't know this about Thailand SO it caused a lot of confusion. In the end, after speaking to a friend that I met on our Facebook Thailand Adoption page everything was more clear. She explained the process to me which I then explained to the HS agency. I was freaking out that the HS agency didn't know this (because it affects how you file the I800A form) but everything worked out. So, we mailed our I800A last week! BIG STEP! I received an email stating that they received the form (YAY!) but then I checked the mail yesterday and they had mailed us a form that said I forgot to send in the money for the "biometric fee" which is the fingerprinting fee. Oops. So I mailed the check yesterday. Yes, more money. I hope that's all I forgot!
     Now we are working on the dossier (which is the accumulation of documents that will ultimately go to the Thai gov't for them to review). Basically its everything they need to know about us and our agencies. We only have 2 more documents that we need to add to it. Our HS agency didn't realize we needed these 2 documents so they mailed them to us last week on Friday. I have been a crazy person. I thought we would receive the documents in the mail yesterday since she sent them on Friday. Nothing. Then this morning I called the post office and asked them to hold my mail this morning so I could come pick it up (our mail doesn't run at our house until 2-3pm). When I got to the post office this morning they told me I didn't have any mail today...WHY??!! So, I called my HS agency and she told me she sent it regular mail (no tracking or anything) so she doesn't know why it isn't here yet. She told me she will FedEx the documents overnight so I should receive them tomorrow. So the reason I have been a crazy person about this is because once we get these 2 documents we are waiting on, I have to get everything certified with the county and state. This means I will have to go to the courthouse in Opelika for the County Seal and then drive to Montgomery for the State Seal. I have to work Wed and Thur this week and then we are leaving for Birmingham on Friday so this delays us another week. :( After the State Seal we will mail it to a courier and they will physically walk it through certification through the US Dept of State and then the Thai Embassy in Washington DC. Once that is complete the courier will mail it back to us and we will mail it to Holt and then we'll be on the waiting list for a referral! So, that being said we are getting closer and I'm getting antsy!
     But I know this is just part of the journey and I need to be patient. We are so blessed to already be at this stage in the process and we only began this journey in January. One family I know is about 2 weeks ahead of us in the process but they started their adoption journey 2 1/2 years ago. We have a lot to be grateful for! Please pray for patience and wisdom! Yesterday I found myself being so careless. I had to mail off that check I mentioned earlier and I didn't realize the address was a PO Box so I can only mail it through the post office. DUH. For some reason I had it in my mind I was mailing this FedEx so I went to 3 different places looking for someone to ship it FedEx. The 3rd place I realized I couldn't even ship it FedEx because it was a PO box. I felt really stupid.
     Anyway, sorry this one was so long but I just wanted to let everyone know the details of whats going on! Thanks for following! We have received so many encouraging words and we really appreciate your support! We'll keep you updated!

Final Home Study Visit

We had our last home study visit tonight. Yay! The social worker emailed the draft of the home study on Tuesday so all we had to do tonight was go over a couple of corrections. The social worker said she will now send the home study to Villa Hope then it will go to Holt for approval (2-4 week process). Once approved by them we'll get 2-3 notarized copies and we'll send in our dossier and I800A. Once that's done we'll be on the waiting list! We'll keep you updated!

Home Study #3

We are moving right along! The social worker came tonight for the 3rd visit. This time we talked about our jobs, marriage, finances, and more parenting styles. It was the longest visit but it went really well! We scheduled our next and last visit for Thursday where we will just review the completed home study. She said it'll be about 10 pages long (wow!) and then it will be sent for review! Sorry for all of the exclamation marks I'm just really excited!

Home Study Visit #2 & Fundraising

We had our 2nd home study visit tonight. It went really well! This visit we talked about our family history and shared our parenting styles so it took a little longer than the last one. So we only have 2 more visits to go!

I also want to share that we will be doing some fundrasing to help bring our little one home. We have created an account on JustLoveCoffee.com. If you love coffee (or if not it's a great gift idea) when purchasing through our name on the website a portion goes towards our adoption! The link is https://justlovecoffee.com/meadowslovejourney. Its really easy to purchase and everything is fair trade and organic! We really appreciate your love and support!

Home Study!

So, we have been really busy with paperwork since our last post! We had to submit things like finacial info, background checks (which have all been cleared YAYY!), physical exams, psychological exam, birth certificates, marriage license, copies of passports, etc. So like 20 things in all. It was crazy but we have finally collected everything and submitted the very last thing on Friday March 14. Then on Tuesday the 18th they assigned us our social worker. We met with the SW for the first time today and she is amazing! She was super nice and the first visit was very simple. She asked us about our neighborhood, our home and we gave her basic info about us. Then she took a tour of our house and that was it! I was a little nervous about the whole home study process at first but the SW made everything really easy. We are so happy to already be this far in to the process in such a short amount of time. Since the social worker is so flexible with time our next visit is on Tuesday and then the 3rd visit is Sunday. For the fourth visit she will have written everything for us to review then it will be ready to submit to the home study agency then Holt. We are trying to go as fast as possible through this process since we know the wait will be long. God has blessed our family so much already through this journey and we cannot wait to see what He has planned for our family!

Application Approval

God is good! Today we have been officially approved in to Holt's Thailand program! After 2 weeks and 2 days of anticipation and lots of prayer Holt emailed us the good news today, along with a very long to-do list. We will now begin the process of the home study and the preparation of the dossier. I have never been so excited to do paper work in my life! Let the paperwork begin!

Adoption Application

Today is our 2nd year wedding anniversary which is also the day we are saying yes to adoption! Conner and I have been praying, planning, researching and praying some more about this very day. We have talked about adoption for years and have finally decided to take the leap of faith and start this love journey! We submitted the application to Holt International for the Thailand program. We know this journey will be long so please pray for patience as we already cannot wait to hear back from Holt! As most of you know I am a nurse, not a writer; so this blog won't be perfect :) Conner and I wanted to create this blog to document our adoption journey so that all of our family and friends can join us! We appreciate your love, support and prayers along the way! 

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." 1 John 3:1

                                      Our 2nd year wedding anniversary trip to Colorado!