I800a Time!

Our home study has been finalized!  Our agency submitted our application to adopt a child from China to U.S. immigration, and in the last two weeks we've received both our receipt and fingerprint appointment.  Yes, more fingerprints!  This time we get biometrically fingerprinted at the immigration office in New Orleans.  Anyone else ever wonder why all fingerprints would not be considered "bio metric?"  Am I being too literal?  :-)  Although the state and federal levels have run our prints, immigration also needs prints as part of approving us to adopt internationally.  This entire approval process seems to be taking 30-45 days total lately, which is faster than two years ago!  Once we have approval from immigration, we can send all our dossier documents through the certification and authentication process, preparing the entire packet for it's trip across the ocean.

Time to celebrate this milestone and welcome summertime!

• It's finally adoption shirt time, and I am so, so excited about these!  Be looking for a new post soon with design photos and purchasing into! 

• And until then, a friend is throwing a Jamberry nail party on Facebook, benefiting our adoption.  If you haven't been added and want to start off the summer with super cute nail wraps, let me know!  Here is the link if you just want to shop: 

http://tonyasmith.jamberrynails.net/party/?uid=3a3ce681-4cee-43f7-b24c-e482398fd2c6

Finally, I am also very excited to announce that we were approved by Adopt Together!  This allows for tax-deductible donations to be designated to our adoption through the Adopt Together button on the right column of this blog.  If you look at the tabs on the Adopt Together website, you can learn more about how this works.  While we hope to offer fun opportunities to help, we personally have had times when we preferred to give a small amount to a family's adoption rather than make a purchase.  There's absolutely no expectation, only our sincere appreciation if we even make it on anybody's "to think about" list.

If you are following our progress,

Adoption costs covered to date: $6,805.75
Next milestone in costs: $3,857.75

And just because she says it so well, I have to include a link to an article written by one of the women who encouraged me to look deeper at our desire to adopt a couple years ago:

http://showhope.org/guest-post-stefanie/