Where We Are at

Hey all! Hope this holiday season finds you healthy and happy and busy!
A little about what is going on here. We have completed all of our paperwork for now. It was bundled up after getting all of the proper signatures and authentications that are necessary for adopting from her country.
It was sent by FedEx to Austin, Texas where our placing agency is located. I'll tell ya, it was not easy letting go of that pile of papers after working so hard on it since February. You become like a mother hen to that pile. They received it on Wednesday November 8, 2017. On Friday, November 10,2017, it was sent to China! What a huge relief that was.
I have received word that the documents arrived there safely, have been logged in, translated and are now in review.
We expect to hear something about the middle of next month, which will then take us to our next step.
While our girl is priceless, the adoption itself is not. The fees are mounting by the day it seems.
For this reason, we have set up a You Caring site. It works like Go Fund Me. We would truly appreciate any monetary donations you are felt led to donate. It is very comforting to know we have a village behind us. This girl is so worth it!! The link to the site is on the sidebar of this blog, and is very easy to use.

Homestudy Complete!!

Although we have been MIA for awhile on this blog, it was for good reason. We have been very hard at work gathering documents and preparing for our homestudy.
If you are not familiar with the world of adoption, a homestudy is a months-long process where I had to gather several different important documents. They needed to come to me certified, which sometimes took a little more time. They must also come from any state that you have lived in. We have lived in New York and now North Carolina. I am grateful we haven't lived in any more.
Once the documents are gathered, you have a series of meetings with a social worker who is trained in adoption matters. She spends several hours with the whole family asking questions, talking, interviewing and touring your home. At the end, there is nothing this woman doesn't know about us! LOL!
But the good news is that we now have a completed homestudy! All paperwork, etc. was fine. Our interviews and visits went great. Our social worker was awesome, and we cant wait to see her again when she has to come and do post placement visits. I would recommend this agency without hesitation.
I will be posting much more frequently on the blog to let you know where we are in the process.
We have a link on the sidebar that will lead you to our family page on Reeces Rainbow.
Any donation would be greatly appreciated as this is a very expensive process.
For now, I leave you with a sweet picture of our little cutie!

Waking up this sleeping blog

I know its been quite a while since I have used this advocacy blog. For the last few years, I have been using FB as a ways to communicate.
But since we have some big news of our own, we will be using both this blog and FB.
Many of you may have seen my posts on Fb about our sweet little host child. We hosted her thru Great Wall China Adoption Agency for the holiday season.
We had to say goodbye to her in mid January, but had decided that she needed to return ~ to be our daughter~ a sister~ a granddaughter~ a niece, and so on.
She has Down Syndrome just like our Theresa Lauren, and the two of them got along splendidly.
I hope in restarting this blog, to give updates, share photos, and fundraise.
Thanks for taking the time to read my little introduction, and for now I will leave you with this cute photo.

This photo was taken her second morning in America. Jet lag was in full swing at this point.