Road Trip!!!

I finally got everything together for the dossier so my little sister Destinee and I decided to drive four hours away and hand deliver the dossier to be apostilled. Everything for our dossier had to be notarized then apostilled which just means the state of Texas made it an official document and put a gold sticker on it. Well I was hoping it was going to be a gold sticker turns out it is just an orange star on the paper (lame). Anyway Destinee and I had  a great time hanging out on the 3 or 4 hour drive there. I'm not exactly sure how long it took???

Once we got there we parked kinda far away from where we needed to go so we used me handy dandy GPS to help us find the building. The only problem is I didn't put it on the "walking GPS" so it took us a super long was cause it thought we were in a car and there were a lot of one way streets. Once we got there and realized we parked a block away not 5 we couldn't help but laugh.  

We made it! 

Destinee took this picture and I thought she did a great job :)

While we were waiting for the apostilles to get done we asked where the Capitol was and it turned out to be across the street from where we were. We were super excited to go check it out. Oh and everything went well with the apostilles I need to redo a few notaries and send them back in but I should be finished with those things tomorrow! 

Here I am in front of the Capitol! 

We gave ourselves a little tour of the building. This was a super cool door hinge. 

This heart reminded me of Melody and Madison.

This is the first time I have been inside of the Capitol Building and it was beautiful! 

This little stair case at the top was so neat and so randomly placed.

I have no clue what is done in this room because we didn't want to wait for the tour guide but whatever it is I'm sure it is important. 

We had a great time and I was so excited to get most of our apostilles done. We did this on Friday the 15th then I mailed then to our agency on Saturday the 16th and guess what we got in the mail on Saturday??? OUR FBI BACKGROUND CHECKS!!!! I was so excited it was the moment we had been waiting for! Those have to be federally apostilled so a friend is getting those done for me this week!

What does it all mean? Hopefully by next week our agency will have our WHOLE dossier. I can't wait to say this part is over. It has been hard but Baby A is so so worth it!

I will keep you all updated! 

WE HAVE THE GOLDEN TICKET..... now what??? and THEY ARE FINISHED WITH OUR BACK GROUNDCHECKS.

First and foremost I want to tell you all I called the FBI today and found out our FBI back groundchecks are finished!!!! They should be mailed out to us no later than the 12th of July. I called back to see if there was anyway we could rush the delivery since that is all we are waiting for to complete our dossier but they can't so we wait :) 

There is no telling what our mail man thinks about us we are always getting mail from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI haha

I was so excited about getting our USCIS approval I didn't really take time to explain what happens next so here goes...

The date of our USCIS approval has to be on the documents that our adoption agency has to create. That is why we couldn't really go any further in the process until we got this approval. So now that we have it I will take our dossier (without our FBI back groundchecks) to get appostilled then I will mail that off to our agency so that she can start working on the documents she has to create. It will take her a few weeks to finish everything she has to do and she also goes on vacation at the end of this month so that is why we are trying to hurry up and get our paperwork to our agency. We still need to raise 2000 dollars for our dossier prep fees. We will be having a garage sale on Saturday and we hope to raise a lot of money there but if you would like to donate please use the chipin on the side of our blog. All the money raised using the chipin will go directly to Baby A's adoption fund. Thank you so much to everyone who has already given!

Once we send her our FBI background checks and she finishes up with the documents she has to create then she will mail our dossier off to Eastern Europe.

Once it gets to the agency's office in Eastern Europe then they will translate it into English submit it then we wait for our travel date.

We will travel for the first time hopefully in September and commit to Baby A's adoption in Eastern Europe. We will get to meet him and spend some time with him that trip and I can't wait!

Then we come home for anywhere from 4 to 16 weeks and  wait for a court date. Once we get a court date we will fly back to Eastern Europe and officially adopt Baby A. There is a 10 day waiting period after the court hearing and we wont get to take Baby A until after those 10 days are over. After we get him then we get his birth certificate, visa and medical evaluations after that we will be headed home.

I know I have said most of that before but it took me forever before I realized exactly how this process was going to go so I like to keep putting it on here just in cause you all forget what's next.

This next picture is not for the faint at heart...

Kenya had asked me to show her the adoption papers and I said "okay give me just a minute." Well I totally forgot she had asked me that so later on that day I came to get something out of the adoption papers and I screamed and the sight of a BIG HUGE spider. Jason and Kenya DIED laughing because they had placed Kenya's spider ring in the paperwork to scare me. They were laughing so hard I couldn't help but laugh. I have tried several times to get them back but it still hasn't worked... Soon I will get them :)

On a side note I didn't realize our other chipin was expiring so it did and now I can't change the date on it. We raised 500 dollars using that chipin!!! I added that amount to the total raised on the side of the blog. Thank you so much to everyone who has given!!!

I hope you all have a great week! 

USCIS appointment & FBI

Jason and I had our biometrics or what is commonly called fingerprints taken today at the USCIS office and everything went GREAT. We were in and out of there in about ten minutes. We walked in handed them our appointment letters they gave us an application to fill out then we waited all of 5 minutes to go back and have our fingerprints taken. It was super cool how they did it no black ink for these guys they put our fingers on this little piece of glass that is somehow connected to a scanner and the computer and one by one our fingerprints were scanned in the computer. Then they handed us a comment card to rate their services and we were out the door. It was kinda funny they didn't really give us much of a choice on filling it out, they just handed it to us and said go sit over there and fill this out then you are free to leave. That was it after that we left and were both kinda in shock at how easy it was.

I called the USCIS office today to see if we had been appointed and officer and I was so bummed out to hear we have not been assigned an officer yet. Will you please join me in praying they will assign us an officer soon. I know the person I want to be our officer but we can't request who we want so if you could also be praying if it is the Lord's will that we will get the officer I am thinking of :)

The other thing is our FBI background checks are not even in the FBI's system yet so if you could also be praying that this would go quickly I would appreciate it!

We are almost done with everything for our dossier which I am so excited about so once that's done we will just be waiting on USCIS and the FBI. Kinda cool to say you are waiting on the FBI ha

Those are the only updates I have and I will keep you posted once more come up.

Have a great day!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming

We are just as busy as ever getting everything together for the adoption. The kids and I mailed in our FBI background checks last week and I have been working like crazy trying to get everything together for the dossier.



I called the USCIS office last week to get a better idea of the process the lady I spoke with was so nice and I am praying that she will be able to be our USCIS officer once it is time for us to have one. She said it could take up to 75 days to get approved but if there is a reason to expedite it they most likely would do that. I called back this week to see if we had an officer yet and we don't but I plan on calling back next week to see how things are coming along. I am praying they will be able to get our paperwork going quickly. From what I understand it will most likely take about 2 months to get approved. Then we will get all of our paperwork appostilled and mail it off to our agency. Once our agency gets it they have to fill out paperwork and get some things from their state all of which will take about a month. After that our dossier will be ready to send to Eastern Europe and be translated which will also take about a month. We might not be able to travel for the first time until September depending on long all of this takes. That makes me kinda nervous because we are not officially committed to Baby A in Eastern Europe until we travel for the first time and sign paperwork. There is nothing we can do about that part but pray that the Lord would work out all of the timing :)

I am super excited to let you all know that  Debby has extended the Thirty- One Gifts Fundraiser for Baby A's adoption until the 29th of this month. If you haven't gotten to order anything yet now is your chance. Click HERE and see all the great stuff they have to offer! Thank you so much Debby this is truly a gift to our family!

I hope you all have a great weekend!