Still No Paperwork

Nothing to report on. We don't know what is going on with our paperwork. This has been very frustrating to say the least. We accepted both of our children's referrals on May 27 and still have nothing.

We have been printed!

Our fingerprinting appointment was really easy. You show up with your little card that has your scheduled appointment time on it, fill out the appropriate paperwork for adoption and then they call you back to be printed. It would be great if each step were this easy! One more step is complete!

INS Application

We sent our application to the INS office today. Now we wait for a fingerprinting appointment and approval to adopt our two children from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services in Orlando, FL.
They will send us a post card with an appointment time on it to be fingerprinted.
Here we wait again! There's a lot of this waiting that goes on!! LOL

Here's our angel!!!

Isn't she beautiful! We think so! It has been two weeks of pure torture waiting for these pictures but now that they are here and we actually know what our daughter looks like, we are so happy!! Turns out we had seen her before in a picture that a family took while at Cathwel but we had no idea at that time that she was ours! God is sooooo good! Cathwel will send her paperwork along with Chia-Ho's to our agency and then we will start the next step which will take a lot of preparation of gathering documents and so on. Pray that we will receive the paperwork quickly and all goes smoothly.

Pediatrician Approval

I just returned from Dr. Lockhart's office where she looked over the medical report on Ling-Wei. She said she appears to be very healthy. It seems that she has had excellent medical care too. I also took Chia-Ho's medical for the pediatrician to look over. He will have some testing done when he comes home to clear some things up as to his health. There is not much to go on for him. So.....we will e-mail our case worker and accept the referral for our Son Chia-Ho & daughter Ling-Wei.
That is so cool to be able to say that!!

Referral papers received

YEAH!!! We received Ling-Wei's paperwork today. She appears to be a healthy little girl! She weighs 35lbs. and is just shy of 3' tall. She came to Cathwel in April from foster care where she had been since birth. We got some background info on her birthmother and her birth grandparents. I have an appointment with our pediatrician May 27th so she can look over the medical reports.

We also got word from Penny at Cathwel that if we were interested in adopting both Chia-Ho and Ling-Wei, they will let us. Chia-Ho's medical and social history are being faxed over to us tomorrow for review also.

IT'S A GIRL!!!!!

We received a call today, May 23rd from our agency to let us know that we have been matched! This is what we know so far: She is 2.5 years old and her name is Ling-Wei. What a sweet name! She came to Cathwel the end of April 2005. We should be receiving her medical and social history reports within in a day or two. No pictures yet! Those will come after we have our pediatrician review her medical reports and accept her referral officially.

Here he is!!

Well, here is what we know so far......Chia-Ho is 7 years old and resides at Jonah House. He IS available for adoption. Frank & Kim have contacted Sister Rosa at the orphanage on our behalf to ask if they would consider our family to adopt him. We should hear something soon. We received a few pictures of him today! Isn't he a doll?? We think so. We are praying that God will show us His plan for our family and for this child who needs a family. Please continue to pray for us that we find something out soon. Yes.......we are still waiting for a referral for a little girl 0-24 months too!

OH .........BOY!!!!!!!

Thanks to our very special kind & sweet friends, Frank & Kim Farley......... looks like we may be adding another one to our evergrowing family!!! Frank & Kim just returned from Taiwan with their newest additions Hannah, Josiah & Caleb from Cathwel. Welcome Home!! Along with their new additions, they came back armed with photos of a little boy named Chia-Ho who also needs a home. They are on a mission! Nathan (one of Frank and Kims sons) and Chia-Ho were in an orphanage together in Taiwan so Nathan is excited about the possibility of him coming to the US. Mark saw the pictures of Chia-Ho and told Frank he was open to the idea of making him a part of our family. Well, that's all it took. Frank contacted Cathwel to find out if they would consider us to be his family and we have been on the phone with our agency to find out if Chia-Ho is actually available for adoption and what needs to take place. Now we wait to see what happens. We will keep you posted.

Updated Homestudy

Dr. Cotton came by to update our homestudy for INS since it had been more than 6 months and he also needed to see our new home and see Leyla. She came home with us on March 9th after a long hard road through the courts in AR. Thanks for all of your prayers for our family.

No Longer Homeless

That's right.....we are back in our brand new home and boy is it ever nice to be home! Everything is different so we are trying to get used to a new floor plan and figuring out where everything is but hey, it is awesome! There are not enough words to express how greatful we are to all of you who helped us with getting back into our home!! And to Mark's parents Bob & Barbara.....THANK YOU for letting us move in with you AGAIN!!! Hopefully, this will be the last time!

House is complete

YEAH!!!!! We have a move in date.....February 27th!!!! Who would have thought that losing our house would turn out to be such a blessing for our family. A HUGE thanks to Chris Burton at Christopher Burton Homes for making his subs available to us during this trying time. To Howard Crisp, and everyone else for the countless hours you put in at the house over the past several months. We couldn't have done it without you. And to all of the church members who brought food to us and prayed for us. We will forever be greatful to each and every one of you!!!!!

Still no word from Taiwan

We still have not heard a thing from our agency. They really don't have any control over the timeline. We knew going in that this could take 4-6 months for a referral but the waiting is really hard! With all of the other "Stuff" going on in our lives, this is turning out to be a good thing! We are learning first hand that God has perfect timing and we need to trust Him.

Poem

Child Of Mine

I haven't met you yet or seen your little face,

but in my heart you hold a very special place.

My hopes grow with each passing day,

even though you're miles away.

I know you're there waiting for me,

as I am here waiting to see,

the child God has sent from above,

to make me a mother and share all of my love.

Author Unknown

Christmas 04

Uncle Tom & Aunt Nancy brought Leyla to Florida for Christmas. We all went to Disney World. What a fun time!
L-R: Aunt Nan, Tommy 14, Taylor 8, dh Mark, Leyla 6, Me, Barb (MIL)

First dossier complete and delivered

A lot has been going on since the last time I updated. As far as the album for the birthmother.....we took some photos from Christmas time that you could see some of the house in and did the best we could. We had only been in the house for about a year and a half at this time so we did not have an abundance of pictures. We could not take any photos of the outside of the house due to a BIG green dumpster sitting in the driveway but that's ok. We concentrated on family photos, vacationing photos and our extended family. It turned out pretty good if you ask me...considering! So the first big step is done. Our dossier should go out today!!! We now just sit, wait and pray for "THE CALL". In the world of adoption, we are officially "Paper Pregnant"! We will be notified by our agency when our family is picked by a bithmother to raise her child.
God is SOOOOOO GOOD!!!!! He knew that I am very impatient and needed a sizeable task while waiting to hear something from Taiwan! What a good sense of humor! I think rebuilding a house will be quite enough to keep me busy. Just trying to get answers from our insurance company is proving to be a full time job in itself so far.

The Plot Thickens

We have just found out that Mark's 6 year old niece Leyla is in the foster care system in Little Rock, AR. We have been praying about what God wants us to do in this situation. We feel very confident that we will be adding another little girl to our family real soon from AR!! We are so very excited and nervous at the same time!! What are we getting ourselves into?? What does God have in store for us?? Stay tuned.....this should be good!

Homeless????

About the time we got moved into Bob & Barbara's home, our agency contacted us and told us that we needed to start working on our photo album, "Dear Birthmom" letter and start our online parenting classes. Oh boy.....exactly how do you take pictures of the inside of your home to show the birthmother where her child will be living when you don't have a home anymore???? YIKES!! We were told by our agency that this would be a first for them so, they really didn't know what to tell us! We also had to notify Dr. Cotton who came to do our homestudy that the house he had been to see looked a tad bit different! I guess I won't be back for updates until we figure out where to go from here. This could take a while.......

Hurricane Frances

Well, needless to say....we are not very happy with Hurricane Frances. On September 4th, she ripped through Melbourne and took part of our roof with her. We left for Atlanta, GA when we heard she was coming and returned home to find out that basically everything in our house that we left behind was ruined. Very humbling to say the least. We will be moving in with Mark's parents until we can get our house rebuilt. Everything must come out. This means down to the framing inside. We are waiting to get the go ahead from our insurance company.

Homestudy complete!

That was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Dr. Cotton is very nice and quite thorough. He will send for our background checks from the state and we have to go to our police station for the local b/g check. We should have a rough draft of the homestudy to proof this coming week. Boy am I glad that is over!!!

Homestudy

These are the first few steps in the process:

We first had to apply to an adoption agency. We decided to go with Commonwealth Adoptions International based out of Tampa, FL. They accepted us into their Taiwan program on and now the next step is the homestudy. This process involves having a licensed social worker come to our house and "interview" us and find out if we are up to the task of parenting another child. He will go into great detail regarding our childhoods, schooling, religious beliefs, dating and marriage views and that's just the begining!! There are also 3 background checks we will go through. This is quite a lengthy and indepth ordeal. He will also be looking at our house to determine if we have sufficient space for another child and speak with our children to find out what they think about adding a child by adoption to our family. Our homestudy is scheduled for August 24th.

Welcome

We will use this site to keep our friends and family updated on our progress to bring home our child. We hope to have her home with her Forever Family by this time next year!! Thank you for praying for our family and the long journey ahead!