Received our fingerprinting appointment!!!

We received the letters stating our fingerprinting appointments will be on January 2nd - what a great way to begin the new year!!!! We received them on Thursday just before we left for Indiana, nice Christmas news! Just wanted to share that news with everyone. Merry Christmas!

Paperwork is almost complete...

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I’ve posted? Well, that’s how long it took to get the final draft of the homestudy. We received it in the mail last week and the agency sent a copy to the CIS (Citizen & Immigration Services). This is the final stretch of paperwork; the CIS will then request us to go have our fingerprints done and that will complete the paperwork for the I171-H. This is the last document we need for our dossier to be complete and sent off to China. The I171-H gives us permission to bring an international child to the USA and allow her citizenship!!!! Please pray that this all gets done in the next few weeks. Still hoping we make our January 15th goal!!!

Hard to believe the holiday season is upon us. The kids are very excited. They received letters from Santa last week and were very excited about them. We also received word that Santa has a message center you can call into everyday for an update on Santa’s workshop, as he gets ready to make his big annual trip. If you would like to share this feel free to do so, the kids think it is way cool: 800-972-6242.

We’ll be leaving Thursday evening to begin our trip to Indiana to spend about a week with our family; we’re looking forward to seeing everyone.

This week’s encouragement quote:

To care for another is an act of grace.

Have a Merry Christmas

and a Wonderful New Year!
May blessings of the Lord be with you all!

With Love,
The Downey Family

Received the Home Study rough draft!!!!

We got it; the rough draft of our home study came in the mail yesterday!!! I, of course, had to read through it right away – kinda weird to read about yourself and family. Jason read it yesterday evening – we found only a few small changes that were needed and notified our social worker of them. Now she will make the changes and send it to our adoption agency to be signed and notarized, then we should receive a copy and can continue with the paper chase. At this time I’m thinking we won’t be making the December 15th deadline but I do believe the January 15th deadline is well within reach.

We are hearing rumors that that length of time for a referral from China may be stabilizing; crossing our fingers that’s true. Will have to see how it goes. The next batch of referrals should be coming from China in the next week or so – wondering if it will be a big batch or not.

The following link contains photos of China that I really enjoyed.

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/china_patterns/

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

P.S. If you ever want to make a comment on a post we make, just click on the “comments” link found at the end of each post. These are viewable by anyone who visits.

Learn, live and love...

These are the weekly words of wisdom sent to us today from our adoption agency and it pretty much sums up how I feel about the past few years….

Know that the tapestry of life is unfolding just the way it was intended.

Our life has been a bit of a roller coaster ride lately, but then again, when isn’t it? Life wasn’t made to be easy; if it were, what would we ever learn? We are here to learn, live and to love one another and that is what I hope we teach our children. Learn from experience; Live life to the fullest; and Love as you want to be loved.

The adoption journey we have chosen to embark on is a way for our family to learn from a little girl that will become part of our family, forever. We will learn about her culture and learn that there is always more love left to give. Love is never ending, unless you choose for it to be. I hope she too will learn to trust and love us.

Perhaps we didn’t really choose to do this, conceivably we were already chosen to open our arms to a child who might not otherwise ever know what a family is and what it means to love. Everything happens for a reason and I’m glad that this little Angel has been included in our tapestry.

Our Homestudy visits are complete!!!!

Well, at least till we bring our China Angel home. We just finished our finally homestudy visit - YAY!!!! This all seems to be coming together rather quickly for us, knock on wood. They usually say to allow 3-4+ months to complete the "paper trail" and it's only been about 6 weeks at this point, though we have to get all the state and federal certifications/authentications complete so I'm sure that will take a few more weeks and we have to wait on the homestudy report, hopefully that won't take long - crossing fingers. Still hoping we make that December 15th deadline. Thank you to all of our friends and family members who wrote referral letters for us and were also our "unsolicited" referrals - we really appreciate your putting the time into helping us along with this journey.

At this point in time it is taking about 14 months to get a referral from the point in time when China enters you into their system (LID). One of the families at the agency we are using had a LID (Log In Date) of 8/25/05 and just got referral this week for a little girl that is about 9 months old. So if we get our paperwork completed and sent in December, we probably won’t get logged in till after the first of the year; therefore, we probably won’t have a referral till about mid-2008 – that seems so far off. Crossing fingers that China speeds the referral process up instead of continuing the slow down, their current trend. We’ll have to wait and see

We have all the paperwork together!!!!

I'm excited to say we have all the paperwork we need!!!! We received our passports this week and a few other documents, just waiting on the homestudy to be written and get everything certified, authenticated and translated and I believe it's complete and ready for China!!!! Yay!!!! Really crossing my fingers for that December 15th deadline, it'll be here before we know it even though it seems a ways off. Is it really November already?

How long have we been on our journey....

Halloween Party pics...

As you can see, I figured it out! I managed to get photos uploaded. It took a few attempts, I learned that it can only handle one at a time even though it give an option of uploading more than one.

So here we are, with our neighbors at the Halloween party they hosted! Lots of fun!

We acomplished a lot this week...

It’s been a busy week here at the Downey household, we’ve accomplished quite a bit on the two “ventures” we are pursuing. As I think I mentioned last week, we had our second homestudy visit last Monday and then we had our third one today!!! Our final one set for Saturday; this completes a milestone in the adoption process, Yay!!!! From the meeting I had this morning, with one of the ladies at the adoption agency, our homestudy has moved along rather quickly. To me, the quicker it gets done, the sooner we can get all the paperwork together and the sooner we’ll get to meet our little Angel!!!! We have to wait for the caseworker to write up her observations but it sounds as though she has been working on that along the way, crossing my fingers that means it won’t take her long to finalize it so we can get it sent off for “certification and authentication,” the final step for all our paperwork before our Dossier (what they call the completed paperwork that gets sent off to China) is complete and ready to go to China!!!! With all luck that everything goes smoothly and no papers disappear along the way, our Dossier will be complete by the December 15th cutoff. Our adoption agency, Gift of Love, only sends these off to China once a month. What a wonderful Christmas present that would be, guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m trying really hard not to set my heart on it, as things can, and do go erroneous on occasion with the paperwork.

As for the other endeavor, our minor remodeling project, the wall is up, taped, mudded, textured and painted. We also got the stairwell painted to match the rest of the wall and painted our living room. The final touches, our new laminate floors for those two rooms, should be complete by the end of the week. We then have to get some furniture for Michiael’s new room, a new couch for our living room, and then probably a rug for each of the rooms. I’m anxious to see how much the laminate floors change the appearance of our living room. I think the almost burgundy red on the walls was dramatic, seems more elegant and I’m not sure we are by any means, elegant. Hopefully the new flooring helps it to look more contemporary.

Well I hope everyone has a fun Halloween, we had trick-or-treating (or Beggar’s night as they call it here) – it was way too cold and windy. The temp earlier today was great – upper 60’s but very wind – guess that wind brought along with it the cold air. We only went out for an hour, though we got plenty of candy between the three kids so I’m not complaining. Now if I can just stay out of it – ugh, this time of year is so tough with all the holidays and food being involved.

One of these days I’ll figure out how to upload photos so I can share how our remodel looks and how the kids looked in their costumes. Perhaps I can even get my hands on a picture of Jason and I dressed up as Fred & Wilma Flintstone from the party attended this past weekend.

A little remodeling...

Well we've decided in the past week to close off one of the rooms on the main floor and make it Michiael's bedroom, since we really weren't using it for much of anything else. The boys are excited to get to each choose their own decor. Logan has chosen a "variety" of sports theme with deep blue and white on the walls and Michiael has chosen NASCAR with Red and White on the walls. We are also going to have the carpet pulled up on the main level and lay laminate, should look really nice once it's done. So the wall & door to close off the room are up, just waiting to get the mudding of the wall finished up so we can get it textured and begin painting Michiael's room. We are also going to paint our living room a deep burnt red, hoping to get all the painting done before the new floors, so we have about 10 days, maybe. Can't say we doing have anything to do.

As to the journey to our China Angle, I met with our social worker, Marg, for our second homestudy today- two down, two to go. Marg is very easy to work with and is making the process pretty easy. Last week we received our new birth certificate copies so I was able to send off our paperwork to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to get that process started. Now we wait to get confirmation that they received it and then send our homestudy report to complete that process. Waiting, waiting and more waiting - guess we need to get used to that.

Kailey had her first ballet class last week and loved it I think. She can't wait till Thursday for her second class. The boy's soccer season is coming to an end, we have one more game on Sunday and that's it till spring season. I think Jason & I have enjoyed coaching a little more this season than the last one, the kids are finally getting things figured out, makes things a little easier. It's fun though!

The kids are getting excited for Halloween, hard to believe October is almost over already. Michiael is going to be a cowboy, Logan a Ninja (I think that's what he's decided on) and Kailey is going to be a Fairy Princess (would you guess anything else?). We didn't purchase actual costumes this year, a first for us, we are putting them together on our own. Jason and I are going to a Halloween party at our neighbor's house on Saturday and are dressing up as Fred & Wilma Flintstone, our neighbors are going to Barny & Betty - should be fun!

Not much progress this week...

Not much progress this week, still waiting to hear from our social worker to make our next (2nd) meeting, there are to be 3-4 in all. Jason and I did get our physicals taken care of though, now we're just waiting on the blood & TB test results so the paperwork for it can be completed.

Kailey still talks about her "baby sister" with enthusiasm, I just hope she holds onto that excitement for another year. I did sign her up for ballet classes this week so that will occupy her time for about 45 minutes each Thursday through November. She's looking forward to it, we had to go purchase a leotard and ballet slippers so she is ready to go!

We're on an adoption journey

Jason and I recently decided that we are ready to expand our family and fulfill something we discussed doing before we even had children. So along with the compliance of our children, we have decided to go on a journey to bring a "China Angel" into our family. We began the process last month, on September 20th, and have a little ways to go with the paper work yet but will hopefully have it done before the end of the year. Then we will have to wait about 12 months to get a referral from China. So about a year from now we will have a little china girl who is 9-20 months old!

We are all excited about our new addition and can't wait to meet her, though I think Kailey is the most anxious. Every day she says something about doing this or that with her little sister, and is very specific that it be a little sister, not a big sister. One day, she was very insistent that we go get her sister now, I wasn't sure how to explain to her that this was going to take about a year and make her understand, so I told her she would be 4 (showing her on her fingers) before we get her sister. So now she tells everyone when she is 4, she will have a sister. I'm not sure what we are going to do in April when she turns 4.

As for the boys and how they feel, Michiael has no problem telling everyone we are adopting and Logan is always thinking of names for her. We will be including them in choosing an American name for her.

So that is our exciting news, we will use this site to keep our family and friend updated on our journey.

I'll tell you more about our decision to adopt from China and their culture in a later post.