OFFICIALLY ON THE WAITING LIST FOR TAIWAN! THAT DEFINITELY MAKES A HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

BEAUTIFUL TAIWAN ABOVE AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We received an email today from our agency telling us that Taiwan has received our dossier and we are officially on the waiting list for referrals! How exciting! You know what else is interesting? Exactly 1 year ago today on Nov. 25th, I had an extremely prominent dream one night of a little Asian girl waiting for me. That is what began our journey of an international adoption of a little girl from Asia. (you can read about that dream on my very first post). Prior to this dream, I had often thought we might adopt some day (in fact I had attempted to adopt a little girl from foster care years ago, but it turned out she was not able to be placed into a home with younger siblings.) I hadn't thought of an international adoption until I had this dream. Ever since then, I have pursued it diligently. And today, one year later exactly we received our notice of officially on the list. We also received our I -171H - USCIS immigration approval to go ahead and pursue an orphan adoption. Jacob and I were very excited! That certainly is something to give thanks about! HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU ALL!

Hebrews 10:36

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

1 Chronicles 16:34

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

FED-EX TO TAIWAN!

After a couple of last minute details and our agency's paperwork approvals, our dossier has been officially sent to Taiwan today! It is a relief to get this first half completely finished. It was nine months ago that we had put in our application for a Thailand adoption which after a couple of months fell through due to that agency closing that program. Since then, we had found a wonderful Taiwan program and in 4 months completed our home study and our stage one dossier. I guess once Taiwan receives the dossier and approves it, we will officially be put on the waiting list. And then the loooong wait begins. We've got plenty of work to do during this waiting period to save up funds for the next payment due at the time of referral. We also hope to learn some Mandarin Chinese during this time, especially if we receive a 2-3 year old who we'll need to communicate with somehow! I can speak Spanish enough to carry a simple conversation and have studied Portuguese a bit too, so I am good with languages that have a Latin root. But this is going to be a whole different ball game and I have no idea if I will accomplish anything that will really work when the time comes!!! Well we've got plenty of time to work on it, that's for sure.

ANOTHER STEP CLOSER!

Last week, Jacob and I had our fingerprinting appointments that were set up by the Department of Homeland Security at the immigration offices in Tampa. So we will await the approval of our USCIS paperwork in the next month or two. We received our completed and approved home study! We have everything ready in our dossier to mail to the agency tomorrow! Thanks to a kind and very helpful gift from Jacob's mom, we can send that paperwork off and our next fees payment a couple of weeks earlier than I was imagining. That will get our dossier off to Taiwan soon and then we will be on the waiting list for our little sweetie! Wow, to get that dossier sent to Taiwan and to be officially waiting will be a huge step in our process!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had a great Halloween! Christina went as a baby doll, Matthew was The Joker, and Joshua was Spiderman. We have a wonderful, grandma-like babysitter, Jean, who lives in a small retirement community near us. She invited us over at 5 pm for Halloween dinner at their clubhouse. We had all kinds of wonderful home cooked hot dishes to choose from and baked goods. Of course all of the retirees oohed and aahed over the kids! After that, we came home and went trick-or-treating in the evening. Although not a lot of homes were participating this year (I guess a lot of people like to go to gatherings now), the kids still got PLENTY of candy! Did I mention it is so hot here in Florida still? 90's, Yuck! We were sweating all the way around the neighborhood! We need some REAL fall weather! Oh well, it was fun.