Christmas (Weeks 1&2)

Brent with his i touch
Brent and Miley napping at Nana and Pa's
Playing Monopoly
Miley posing with our tree
We spent our first two weeks on the waitlist preparing for Christmas and having fun in Oklahoma! These pics. are just a few of the things we did the week we were there.

Waitlist!

This morning I received this email from Mary at Gladney:
Kate Sproat has notified me that she will be sending your complete dossier by FedEx today to Washington, D.C. for final authentications. This means that you are officially placed on waitlist to receive a referral! Currently, on average families have waited up to four to six months (which includes the full sixth month) to receive a referral. Please keep in mind that this timeline is an estimate and is subject to change at any time. Congratulations on making it through the tedious dossier process!
WOOHOO! Praying for our little one. It's crazy to think he or she is probably alive somewhere on the other side of the world.

I-171H

Well, our prayers were answered and we received our I-171H on Wednesday;six months to the day of when we began the adoption process. We got it notarized and I Fed-Exed it to Kate last night. It will be carried by courier service to the Texas Secretary of State next week and then our dossier will be complete!
I must say again that if you are using Gladney or another agency that uses KBS Dossiers it is VERY WELL worth the money. I can't imagine how long it would have taken if we had decided to do the dossier all by ourselves. With KBS it's pretty much just a matter of signing documents and getting them notarized.
Hopefully, next week we'll be getting an email that our dossier is on it's way to DC for it's final authentication and then we'll be on the waitlist!

Still Waiting

We'll we're still waiting for our I-171H. Hopefully that means that my prints went through and they are actually processing our approval. In the meantime we've been busy with church, work and of course, Miley! Here are some pics. from last weekend. She was reunited with one of her biological brothers, Oliver, for a play date. They LOVED each other! She was wiped out afterwards as you can see. The others are from her "mock" Canine Good Citizen test. She waited so patiently for her turn. We almost passed but the dog-to-dog part wasn't so good at first. As you can see she improved after a few "j-hooks." I LOVE the Lee Mannix Training Center and Paul, our trainer is the best! Next up is introduction to agility. I'm way too into this...

Fingerprints

Well, we drove to San Antonio yesterday to get our fingerprints taken at USCIS. Unfortunately, I don't take such great fingerprints. I guess the ridges aren't deep enough. They tried two different machines and the lady said they might go through, they might not. If not, I'll have to go back again and then they'll take the best of the two sets. This really wasn't a big surprise as I ran into the same problem with fingerprints for work. So, we're praying she got a good enough scan and I won't have to go back. We're getting our financial stament from KBS notarized today and sending our home study to Kate. Come on I-171H!!!

Biometrics Appointment

So, we got our letter today from CIS with our biometrics appointment. I think that means fingerprints and maybe some other stuff like height and weight. Not too sure... Anyway it's at 8am on October 31st in San Antonio. We hope our approval will come as quickly as our appointment did!

GO HORNS!

Wooohooo! My husband is jumping for joy. His beloved Horns have beaten OU! Miley enjoyed watching her first TX vs. OU with her daddy.

Gladney Approved!

Yesterday we received this email:

Dear Brent and Bevan,

Congratulations, you are now Gladney approved and ready to begin the dossier and ultimately the referral phase of your adoption process. I am mailing you both an approval packet with your approval certificate and quarterly training information for your “approved and waiting” period.

Praise the Lord that we have already assembled our dossier and Kate at KBS has almost everything she needs.

Woohoo! Now the wait for our fingerprint appointment. I will be checking the mailbox daily.

Thinking about adopting?

Brent and I just listened to this sermon by John Piper today.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/1991/Audio/
If you're thinking about adopting or wanting to know why we decided to adopt you should listen to it.
No news on the paperwork front this week. We're waiting for the final revision of our home study. God is teaching me patience and faith. We continue to trust in His plan and timing.

I've been meaning to officially recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the orphan situation in Ethiopia. I read it last year and it was a total eye opener. We already knew we were adopting from Ethiopia at that point, but it was yet another confirmation. Click here to go to the author's website to learn more http://www.thereisnomewithoutyou.com/.

The Battle-station

Well, our battle-station (aka black file box) for the adoption is officially taking a break. We're not completely through with the paperchase yet, but we've done all we can do. We put in final revisions for our homestudy and will just be waiting now for our USCIS fingerprint appointment. After that we'll need one more document and then we'll be done.

As you can see Miley is anxiously awaiting that final clearance so she can meet her baby brother or sister!

Happy Fall! It's still a bajillion degrees in Austin...

It's Been A While

So, I haven't blogged in a while b/c we haven't made much progress. We finally sent in the majority of our dossier paperwork to Kate on Saturday. We're just waiting on our home study to be typed up and sent to CIS. Then we'll wait for a fingerprint appointment and finally our last piece of paperwork, the I-171H ( I think that's what it's called). I'm really not so sure how long this could take. A few weeks to several months. After that we'll be officially waitlisted. The wait now for a referral is 3-5 months but that could change at any time. Still, it feels good to pretty much be done with our part of the paperwork. I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since we began the process. Thanks to all the people who wrote our reference letters and to Jackie our wonderful notary extraordinaire! You Rock!

Africa Necklace

My sister bought me this cute necklace for my birthday. Check it and others out here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5208670

Ryan Family Reunion 2008

Here are some pictures from the family reunion held at the YMCA Trout Lodge. As you can tell we all had fun. There was a moonlight zip, jousting, karaoke, henna tattoos, swimming and archery, just to name a few.

No news on the adoption front. My wonderful reference writers are diligently working and we had a notary mix-up at the doctor's office so we're working on that. Hopefully, I'll be sending some things to Kate this week.

Read This Blog Post

I found this blog post on desiringgod.org. It really speaks to our heart for adoption as well as the purpose of this blog. We long to raise awareness about God's call on all our lives to minister to orphans. I realize this doesn't necessarily look like adoption for everyone. But, we do pray that He will burden hearts to step out in faith and obedience; to bring a fatherless child into their family and teach her about her Heavenly Father who longs to adopt her into His kingdom.

On another note, our home study went well. Amy, our caseworker, was awesome. The majority of the time was spent talking about our marriage, ourselves and parenting plans. It was very relaxed and natural. We were fingerprinted on Thursday and our prints are on their way to the FBI. Today we have our physicals/bloodwork. Our last piece of paperwork for Gladney and one of our last pieces of paperwork that we can control for our dossier. Once USCIS receives our homestudy we'll be scheduled for more fingerprints then their final approval will be the very last thing we need before our dossier is complete! God has been so faithful during this paperwork process.

Home Study

Well, Amy from Gladney called us on Monday to schedule our homestudy for this Friday. It starts at 8am and lasts about 4 hours. It was a little quicker than we expected but it will be nice to have it out of the way before school starts up. I'm going by the fire department to get some professional advice on fire escape ladders. Then I'll need to go purchase one as well as one more fire extinguisher for the upstairs. Other than that I think we're pretty much covered. We had a great time in Port A. I'll post the pictures soon.

Gladney App. 2&3

Today I sent off parts 2&3 of our Gladney application minus our health forms. Our doctor's appointment isn't until August 5th. But it does feel good to have most of it completed.

This weekend we're going to Port Aransas in the midst of "Dolly." It should be interesting. Hopefully, it will clear up by Friday. So far no rain here in Austin which is good because Miley has obedience class tonight. Above she is obediently posing for a picture....

I'm off to make Munchy Crunchy cookies. If you like chocolate chip cookies you should google this recipe.

More Progress

Today I got the bank letter for our dossier and Miley's vaccination records for Gladney. Tomorrow I go to pick up my employer letter (again, my fault), I got brent's today. Brent is going to arrange our FBI fingerprints for next week. I'm hoping that my insurance company has faxed the letter that verifies my coverage to Gladney.
The paperwork is beginning to seem somewhat manageable and we're so HAPPY to be using Kate at KBS Dossiers. I might be speaking too soon but so far everyone at the various places I've had to get notarized letters from have been EXTREMELY helpful which makes the paperchasing process quite bearable and exctiting!
That's all for now!

Longing for the Word

So, brent has been preparing a lesson on longing for the "pure milk" of the Word for a teaching class he is in at church. I guess Miley thought she'd help him out with an illustration by shredding the very page he was teaching on. Oops!

As far as the adoption goes, we've now begun collecting documents for our dossier such as an employer letter, bank letter, references etc. We're also waiting on a call to schedule our homestudy in the next 30 days.

I forgot to mention this last time in case anyone is wondering what age/gender the child will be. We didn't pick a gender (we'll let God decide) and the age range we chose is 4months-18months. We're so excited!

Lots to be Done

Well, today I started working on our official Gladney Application. They have it broken down into three chunks. I'm a little overwhelmed b/c I was reading through the Dossier Manual as well and it's all a little confusing and complicated right now. So far we have our doctor's appointment on August 5th. Not too much progress...yet :)

Welcome To Our Adoption Blog!

This blog is dedicated to the adoption of our child from Ethiopia. The Lord has burdened our hearts for the orphan for a few years now and we are excited to finally begin the adoption process. We know it is going to be a long, crazy, joyful and sometimes frustrating journey. We pray that this blog will raise awareness about international adoption and be a tool to educate those who are considering the adoption process. On that note, we will be posting the many details involved in the journey to our child.We hope that the more information people have about the adoption process the less intimidating and scary it is. We also hope our child will someday be able to look back on this and see how they were loved and wanted by us from day 1.

So here we go...

Our first step in the process was to fill out an initial application with Gladney over the internet. Judy then contacted us to schedule a phone orientation a few weeks later. The phone orientation consisted of going through the highlights of a 55 page orientation manual. From there we sent off a request for the official Gladney application. We are awaiting its arrival this week. We also sent our I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) to the USCIS office in San Antonio. This required copies of our passports and marriage license, as well as a few other things. We are also proud holders of a fedex account which Gladney recommends for all the paperwork.

Once we receive our Gladney app. we'll work on 4 reference letters, blood tests, physicals and some other things I'm not sure of. We'll have a homestudy as well. When the homestudy is complete it's sent to USCIS. At this point we will receive a fingerprint appointment. All the while we'll be working on our foreign dossier which requires many notarized official documents. The whole "paperchase" can take up to 4-6 months.

So, that's where we are as of today. Above is a picture of our first set of official adoption documents.