One more step done! On Monday, I cancelled my clinic, my husband took time off work and together with our nanny and our two little guys we made the trek to our assigned USCIS office for our fingerprinting appointment. We drove out at 6AM and twelve hours later we were home! :) For all you other adoptive families, take heart! We did NOT spend all twelve hours in the USCIS office! Most were spent on the road in torrential storms and bad traffic :) Then, we stopped by the CCAI office that handles our side of the US and got to meet Chaunda and Jaime and drop off all the dossier paperwork we have so far! That was fun, and a relief! I kept dreading that somehow in our crazy home someone would manage to pour jam on the dossier or catch it on fire...just saying! Now we are just missing the sealed I-797 (what we got fingerprinted for ) and the fully sealed homestudy. So thankful to be this far. The slowest part in this process has definitely been the homestudy, though we turned in all our paperwork first week of August and got our visits done in less than two weeks and supplied all supporting financial documentation. The homestudy wasn't completely written by our agency till late November. I can't give any helpful tips on avoiding this delay, as there were no issues with our paperwork, homestudy visits or background checks. Our homestudy agency seemed to have us on the back burner, probably not intentionally, and I tend to try to not bother people...perhaps I should have been more insistent! Finally, after nearly 3 months of little being done, I did start to call and ask, and, thank God, they got to work on the report and processed it! So now we are in the process of immigration approval (parent side). I need to daily remind myself that God wants me to trust Him in the timing of all this, and my attitude is important! I heard this song yesterday by Third Day and it brought tears to my eyes.
THIRD DAY: Merry Christmas
