Adoption Update

I haven't received any recent pictures of Alesha so I thought I would post a few other that I received with the referral. The first is her referral photo and the other one was the first picture we received along with our referral information. I absolutely love the sweet smile she has on her face. I can't wait to see her smiling face while in am holding her in my arms......soon this will be a reality!

We have sent all our acceptance paperwork to our agency on November 23, 2009. Here is a photo of us at the shipping place. I told the lady who helped me that this was paperwork for our baby girl we are adopting from India. She was very excited for us and thought Alesha was beautiful...I couldn't agree more. I asked her to take a photo of us for our scrapbook....she honored my request. Here we are holding a priceless package of VERY important paperwork.


We didn't send the photo on the box....it was just for the photo :-)

At this point in the process our acceptance paperwork has arrived at our agency. We have a bit of a hiccup in the process right now. Our original I-800A (which took like 6 months to get) expired on Nov. 29, 2009. I had put in for an extension on November 10th to make sure it didn't expire since we hadn't received a referral. I am SO happy that I filed for the extension, because we would have had to start back at square one with the entire process if our original I-800A expired without the extension.

We worked very hard with our agency to get our I-800 in and have it logged into USCIS systems before my I-800A expired. If this happened we wouldn't have to worry about the extension and just move onto the I-800 portion of the process. Wouldn't you know it that USCIS logged our I-800 paperwork on NOVEMBER 30TH just ONE day after our I-800A expired, which included our fingerprints not being valid after the 29th. This delay was due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Since this happened they cannot process our I-800 without having valid fingerprints. Our fingerprint appt. isn't until Dec. 21st. At this point we are delayed in our entire process until we get our fingerprints redone. With valid fingerprints USCIS can process the I-800A extension FIRST AND THEN the I-800.

I am praying that we might be able to walk into the fingerprinting office with our paperwork on Monday or Tuesday of this week and they will fingerprint us without an appointment. If this happens we can continue without a 3 week delay. I am documenting this as it will be a move of God if this happens. I will just do everything that I can do to help move this process along and then wait on God for His perfect timing.

I'll keep you posted on what happens next. The journey of adoption is full of twists, turns, miracles, and surprises.