Where have we been?

{sorry -- this is a long post} :) 
Hi All. Sorry to those of you who keep checking for updates. I cannot believe 4 weeks have gone by so quickly! We’re here, just been crazy busy with school events, getting our dossier update together and baseball… and more baseball! With all of the rain, we have had a lot of rescheduled games so now we are jammed packed with something like 6 games in 5 days. . . all with baby in tow!

Faith is doing extremely well with our busy schedule! She just smiles and goes with the flow of things. She’s rolling now, trying to pull her knees up under her, and is getting quite the cute personality. The boys still adore her! She is quite the little princess.

Where are we with the adoption?

Glad you asked!  Honestly, the last 4 weeks have been tough with our schedules and getting our paperwork together for our dossier.  All minor things, but just general pain-in-the-rear-end things that kept delaying the progress.  I look at it as a little test from God to see if we are still really serious about the adoption, because seriously, some people would have said "forget it"... "it's too hard."  But, we're not giving up that easy! 
Here's what we've accomplished: 

• We completed our home study update and have that document in hand.

• We completed our dossier update to include the addition of Faith and update all of our documents. Our draft dossier is on its way to our Agency. Once they give us the go-ahead, we’ll head to our State Department for Authentication and then onto the U.S. Department of State and the Ethiopian Embassy again for the final Authentications. After that, it will go back over to Ethiopia to replace our original dossier.

• We had our one-time, no fee fingerprint updates for the USCIS (our previous ones expired).

• We submitted a request and our new home study update to the USCIS for a one-time no fee extension to our I600A, Application for Advance Processing or Orphan Petition (ours will expire in August).

The no fee USCIS request and fingerprint updates are a blessing because to re-do them, it would cost about $850. Hopefully, the USCIS will approve our I-600A request. (**This document needs to be current in order for us to go to court).

I talked to our Case Manager as well. Once baby Faith is 6 months old in August, we will become ‘active’ again. Before we become ‘active’ status, our case will go before the CWA review board. This is normal procedure, and we do not anticipate any issues. So, we are hoping and praying for a referral in August or September… but, it just depends what children are available at that time, and if they match our criteria – which is pretty much wide open – female, 0-60 months. A little girl around Faith’s age would be awesome! I admit, we’d have our hands full, but it would be great for them to grow up together and have each other as playmates.

After our referral, we’d have to wait for the courts to reopen from the rainy season and then get a court date. After that (and a bunch more paperwork that I’ll blog about closer to the time), we wait for our Embassy appointment. So, in a nutshell, it might still be 2012 until E comes home. We are praying for her to be home by the end of 2011, but not sure if that will happen.

So, wheeww, it’s been busy. Looking forward to school being done for the year and to relax and play in the sun. I’ll leave you with a bunch of pictures over the past month!

Faith -- the baseball princess!

Dylan - getting ready to hit!

Mommy & Faith on Mother's Day

Dylan in an All Star Game

Colton pitching for his team