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!