The Long's

The Long's
Wind River Ranch - where our journey to Chazz began!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

What a difference a few weeks makes

Wow, last month I posted and said we'd finally started making progres, but really not.  After we found out that our home study was finally done, I didn't catch an error that I told people about back in April.  At first we were going to leave it, but it meant saying we had a bunch of money just sitting in our checking account, so we had to decided to get it changed.  Then we found out we had documents missing in our agency file, no big deal.  However, things didn't take off like I had planned.  I need to remember that I'm NOT in charge even thou I want to be. I need to work on giving everything over to our Savior!  His timing is way better!  Anyway, I mailed documents that were missing on July 3 and finally was able to pick up our home study yesterday, July 16.  Hanna and I drove over to Indy(after her very first sleep over), got the home study, and went to the Secretary of State's office to get documents in our dossier state sealed.  Have I said that our dossier is finished, just need USCIS approval?  Well, thankfully each document passed and got sealed. This is the nice part of today''s post.  Our dossier is done!  It is ready to be sent to GR to get authenticated and then it could be sent to China, except we're still waiting on the USCIS.  This is a relief though. I don't have to redo anything.  Just wait.  God's trying really hard at getting me good at waiting!
  Ok, now for the best part of the post, the reason for all of the  heartaches and trouble...  We have a son!  We had submitted our waiting child paperwork in June and hadn't heard anything.  He's, that led to some frustration on my part!  Yesterday we received a message from our agency that they had locked our son's file.  This means he is ours and no one else can swoop in and try to get him!  He's ours-again!  If you've followed/know us at all, our son is the same son we started to adopt 3 years ago.  For some reason it wasn't the right timing then, but it is now!  I can't share too much about him yet, but he's Hanna's age and from her orphanage.  They used to be friends, but remember we adopted her at 2 years 10 months. I doubt they'll remember each other, but we do have pictures!
Ok, what next you might ask. Well first we're going to enjoy a short vacation at Kings Island, watch Reese play in a baseball tourney, and drop the boys off for church camp.  Then we're going to have a conference call with our agency, fill out our Letter of Intent, and pray that our USCIS fingerprinting appointment gets set quickly (I just applied today and they should get it tomorrow).  Then we get to wait on our USCIS approval, send dossier to China, wait some more, and then hop on a jet plane!  Most likely it will be early 2014.  Jerry's thinking that we'll get him on Reese's birthday, but of course I'm hoping for much earlier than March!
As soon as I can, I'll tell more and post pictures.  We have to wait on our LOA(letter of approval) from China.