Year's end progress

12 more days until the new year begins again.  I'm excited for what is to come and ready to make some changes in life as well.  All I can think about is the adoption and the child we will be bringing into our lives.  There are still so many unknowns about what is going to happen.  I'm thinking I will be less anxious once we finally have a match and know exactly who this little person will be.

In the past five months since we started the process, I feel as though we have acomplished a lot considering that there is so much a couple has to go through to adopt. I admit I'm pretty organized and like to get things done efficiently. I don't precrastinate when I passionate about something, and this, I'm definitely passionate about.

Right now our dossier is 99.5% complete.  We are waiting on our I600A approval from USCIS and then we will have that document and our lab results translated.  Then we can finally send everything to CAS.  We received our authentication papers back from the US Secretary of State and the Haitian embassy in Washington DC on Monday. It was pretty cool to see John Kerry's acutal signature on our documents.  I wonder if he actually reads everything, lol.  I get kind of anxious when I'm sending all this stuff through the mail. I always woner, what if something gets lost or misplaced. I would literally have a heart attack if our dossier got misplaced or destroyed. 

Tuesday we had our fingerprints taken at the US Citizenship and Immigration office. It was a pretty cool experience.  They took all 10 fingerprints and then rolled each finger across the screen.  I wonder what they can do with fingerprint ID, hmmm.  Maybe I will google it. Now that our fingerprints have been submited to the government, hopefully we will get our approval soon!!!!!!!!!! I'm so anxious, I just want to get everything down to Haiti ASAP.  I want to know who will be coming home to live with us.  This approval would be the best Christmas/New Yeas present ever!!

OUR COMPLETED HOME STUDY AND DOSSIER CHECKLISTS!!

Home Study Checklist

Dossier Checklist

This Christmas will be a quiet one with just me, Will and Rocco. We made reservations for Dinner on Christmas at "Flight" restaurant in Raleigh. Will's parents will join us, so that will be nice. We will catch a movie later that night, either "Mandela" or "American Hustle." We are also looking forward to our ski trip in a few weeks for my BIG 35! I'm getting old😏

*Making these check lists REALLY helped me with the process of preparing for the home study and completing our dossier. Without them, I would have been totally lost. Also, just seeing the list each day motivated me to get things done.