Nothing positive for awhile now.....

Well things have been VERY frustrating this adoption. I know just the process of adoption itself is quite a journey and surely gives one grey hair.  This time around is no exception. We are over 7 months into our journey to bring Elias home and 6 months matched with him and we still do not have our paperwork in China. It was due May 22nd.. Nope it is not there. Where is our paperwork you may ask? Hmm well it took 5 1/2 months for our very lazy homestudy agency (NOT our adoption agency we love them) to get off their butts and get us our homestudy "update". yes it was just an update and it took almost 6 months. Which is absurd as they had all of our info 5-6 weeks into the process.... Just absurd.

Since then almost nothing has gone right either. We have had our homestudy back for almost 2 months now and we still are not I-800A approved. I mailed it out April 5th and it came back 2 weeks later unprocessed as I sent the wrong amount (off by $60) somehow I used the amount from when I filled out Luke's paperwork, even though I knew the price had gone up...) That was so depressing and upset to me as I am meticulous about my paperwork and check and re-check and re-check 10 more times. Then we sent it all back with the right amount of money April 20th... Took quite awhile to get a fingerprint appointment but we got the paper and then headed in to get our prints early.  We walked in May 18th. That went well and I called our officer to tell her we walked in early and she actually knew that and had our file open when we called. She told me all looked good and we should be approved on the 18th.. Yahooooo. Umm nope.  Just this Friday we got an envelope from USCIS and Tom was SO excited to give it to me to open. The problem being the second I saw the envelope I KNEW it wasnt right. It was a pink paper inside.. It should be a very official looking blueish green paper..... We received an RFE (request for Evidence)... GRRRRR They are saying that our Child abuse clearances that we need for every adult in the house for every state they have lived in since they were 18 were not included in the homestudy.. UMMM YES THEY ARE. There is a chart on one page listing all of our clearances and then the next page explains everything in the chart item for item.. WOW how can they say it isnt included. So I called on Friday but they were apparently on vacation for the Memorial day weekend, so tomorrow that journey continues. My adoption agency is also trying to get to the bottom of this for us and quickly as we need to get things moving. Elias will be 9 in September and when we first started this process I thought for sure he would be home before he was 9. Now I know that wont happen. He will definitely not be here until late late late fall, early winter if we are lucky. Quite possibly not until next year. :(((((

So this is our story so far. Trying to be strong and just keep on keeping on. It isnt always easy when you are paper pregnant with no possible due date in sight. At least when I was pregnant with my kids I knew that they would be born NO later then 42 max weeks. With adoption our pregnancy due date is ???????????  So technically I am 7 months pregnant and soon to be 8 months in this paper pregnancy.. We started in Oct and were matched with Elias in Nov... I am thinking I am going to be pregnant for quite a bit longer.. Praying he is home before 2013........

Look at this little face.. he needs his family!

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A short Update

Well guys, we have our updated homestudy (took 5 1/2 months.. arrggg) but we have it! We mailed out our I-800A and got our receipt that they have received it. We are now 20 days into waiting for our "coveted" fingerprint appointment paper to come in the mail... praying for any day now, but this whole second adoption is moving at snails if not sloths pace. We are trying to just let it roll and go with the non-movement of the adoption and not stress beyond words.. BUT that is WAY easier said then done. SO for now we wait and wait and wait. Praying to see that fingerprint appointment paper soon as Aaron is heading off to Italy and he needs to be fingerprinted too.. So we really would like to get that done before he goes and not have to wait for him to come  back. We shall see what happens.  We are hoping to send for an update on Elias after we submit part of our dossier (we are re-using Luke's dossier, so we only have to send off about 7 things as compared to the 19 things you would send if we were doing it from scratch.) to catch up with the rest of our dossier and then wait some more... If you are a person that likes things done quickly then adoption might not be for you.. There is nothing fast about this process and patience is a highly valued quality while we wait and wait.... So for now that is our update. We will write more when we know more. Praying Elias is doing well and unaware of how long he needs to wait for us to come get him. Cant imagine waiting on his end.