More Updates, More Delays

Here's an update on where we are in the paperchase for the adoption:

We have two documents to completed for the homestudy, our financial statement and our letter of petition to adopt. Neither of which are difficult, we just need to sit down and actually finish them and then have them notarized. As soon as they are finished all of our documents need to go to Jeff City for certification and then we will ship them to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for authentication. If we're lucky, we'll have this done by the first week in March. At that time we can send all our documents in to CHI and they will translate them and then send them to China.

What does this mean? One, it means we're almost finished with the paperwork, THANK GOD!! It's amazing how just doing some paperwork can be so frustrating and tiring. It also means that as soon as we can get a log in date (or LID), we can start the wait for our referral.

One development that has crept up on us is the longer wait for referrals from China. When we began this process the wait time from LID to referral was 6 months. The wait time has now increased to 9-10 months. What this means for us is that we will most likely not travel to China in 2006, but in early 2007. We are still holding on to a small sliver of hope that the wait times will decrease again (as they often are cyclical) and we will still travel and be home by Christmas. If not, then we will still believe that everything is happening as it was supposed to.

Our plan is to use our wait time to get things done around the house that we had planned on finishing, and getting the baby's room ready. This will be one year that I can honestly say I hope goes by quickly!

Update in other areas:

Tony is still enjoying his job as a police officer. He is still training so he has not been on patrol on his own yet. We are both looking forward to when he will be on a set schedule so we can settle into a routine.

In January we were blessed with a beautiful nephew, Kellen Christopher, born to Tony's brother Chris and his fiancee Casey. Kellen and mom and dad are doing wonderful and we are all so excited to have another little one in the family.

My sister Bethany is turning 17 tomorrow, which makes me feel even older, and my other sister, Jessica is getting married in April. I don't remember anyone giving them permission to grow up! Though I'm incredibly proud of both of them and enjoy seeing them grow into the wonderful young women that they are.