bodner004

What an amazing week this has been! Not only is every day one day closer to traveling to get Lily, but I feel like things have been going really well and coming together. man I have needed the good news that has been coming on the heels of so much anxiety and frustration. On Monday I called our USCIS officer to request to be scheduled for new fingerprints. We have to do so because ours expire on August 10th and at this time we are unsure if we will travel by that date or not. We were really nervous that this might set us back and hold us up from travel if we couldn't get in quickly. I am so happy to report that officer Mariah was able to get us an appointment in just about a week and we should not be held up at all by this process! As I was still riding on the relief and excitement of realizing that our fingerprint process would not hold us up when I saw an email in my inbox from my agency.  The title was "Strollers"....I was intrigued and proceeded to open the email.  As...

What an exciting morning.... While checking my emails this morning I was so excited to see that our NVC confirmation email had come in in the overnight hours! What is that you ask?  It is our case number and invoice number from the National Visa Center that we have to have in order to proceed to the next step (and FINAL step with immigration on our end) called the DS-260. That is the online several page document that has to be filled out so that you can proceed with getting your Article 5 (also known as your final approval to adopt your child) and ultimately your Travel Approval from CCCWA While we wait on our Article 5 to be issued (which will be exactly 2 weeks from now) we will work on getting our Visas issued for our travel to China. Things will be pretty hectic and busy between now and travel time. As we work through the visa process, begin to get packed and make sure our home is in order for us to be gone for 2 weeks while someone else comes in and takes over our home and the...

Well, after a 2+ week set back we are finally back on track!  Praise God :) It as a very bumpy time period to say the least. Things went from bad to worse and Monday was the lowest of lows I had been at during this entire 3+ year long process. I learned that the package the USCIS Hague officer had been waiting on in order to approve us had been inadvertently sent to the wrong office at a different USCIS location in another STATE!!  I was devastated and couldn't believe what I was hearing. I did a lot of crying - sobbing really! - and praying Monday and yesterday and 5:10pm I had happy tears streaming down my face as I held the phone to my hear and the USCIS officer, Mariah,  told me that the new package we had to overnight yesterday had arrived safely in her hands. And the incredible words we have been waiting to hear from her, "you are approved"!!  Well "provisionally"anyway...... While this was what we have been waiting for over the last several weeks now the ...

So about 2 weeks ago I updated everyone with some great new pics of Lily and I let you know that we had just sent all our paperwork in to USCIS for our immigration approval and the ability to be able to travel to China to bring Lily home. Unfortunately we have had a set back. Since our home study was more than 6 months old (by about 12 days - the forms were actually filed when the study was still "good", too - ugh!) the USCIS officer denied our application pending an updated home study be submitted. Needless to say this is an upsetting delay.  While we are here doing more paperwork our daughter stays in China needing surgery and her family. It is so hard to accept this. I learned about this issue this past Friday (today is Monday) and had to go through the entire weekend with no answers. The agency could not tell me exactly what we were going to have to do because we had to wait to hear from the immigration department. That left us waiting all weekend in limbo and not knowing...