It's a BOY!!

We had our 20 week ultrasound today. Everything looked very healthy and we are praising God for that. However, the little one was being very stubborn by keeping his legs crossed. The nurse thought we might not be able to find out the sex. After some pushing and jiggling of my belly, he finally revealed to us that he was a boy! We are very excited and can't wait to meet him in December!! Here is the 4D picture of his little face. He's so cute!! :)

Dossier submitted!!

Today we submitted our Dossier to our adoption agency. It will be sent to the National office in Grand Rapids and then they will put a hold on our eligibility to receive a referral until next summer. It feels very good to have all that paperwork turned in!

I had my 18 week appointment today and everything is still going well. We are very thankful to hear a strong, healthy heartbeat each time we go. :) We scheduled an ultrasound for Thursday, July 30th to find out the sex of the baby. We can't wait!! We haven't had an ultrasound since 8 weeks so it will be fun to see how big he or she is now. We will definitely post that day to let you all know what we find out!! We are off to Seattle and Canada for the next couple of weeks. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!!

Change in Adoption Timeline

Sorry we haven't written in awhile. We have had a lot going on and we're now ready to give an update on things. In mid-April we found out we were pregnant. Because of my history, we went to the doctor right away for blood work, and had three ultrasounds up until 8 weeks. Everything looked really good. When we made it to 10 weeks, the doctor said it was time to talk with our adoption agency. Bethany Christian Services told us that we could go ahead and submit our Dossier, but they will put a hold on the referral until our biological baby is 6 months old. Our due date is December 12th, which means about a year from now they will re-open our adoption case so that we will be eligible to receive a referral. Last week we received our I-171H approval form in the mail and that was the last piece we needed for our Dossier. We will head down on Friday to the Secretary of State's office to have it State Sealed and then we will drop it off at Bethany. We appreciate your continued prayers for the pregnancy and for the timing of the adoption.

Fingerprinting completed

We had our fingerprinting appointment yesterday morning at 8:00 downtown.  There were quite a few people waiting so we were a little concerned it might take awhile. But at 8:05, we were called back!  It only took about 15 minutes. Ryan had a person who was training so his took a little longer. :-)  They scanned our four fingers together and then thumb on each hand. Then they did each finger one at a time rolling it on the glass. It was neat to see our prints on the computer. So, now we are officially in the FBI system. We expect to wait about 3 - 6 weeks for the 171-H approval form so we can finish our Dossier.

Homestudy

I picked up our homestudy at Bethany this afternoon.  We will now mail it to the Department of Homeland Security. We are being fingerprinted on Monday and then hopefully within 3 - 6 weeks we will receive the 171 approval form so we can finish our Dossier. Then we will be completely done with all paperwork until the Referral! I am on spring break this week so we decided to paint the nursery. Here are some pictures.

Fingerprinting Appointment

Just a quick note to inform everyone that we received our fingerprinting appointment notice that will be at the Department of Homeland Security. It is Monday April 13th at 8:00AM in downtown Indianapolis.  This is part of the process of the I-600A application.  We are still waiting to receive our home study from Bethany, but hope to have it in the next couple of weeks to submit that as well.  

One month down...

Our Home Study was approved on Friday, February 13th which was the official start of our waiting period. One month has flown by. We pray the next five to seven months go just as fast. On Monday we filed the I-600A which is the form sent to the U.S. Center of Immigration Services to get approval to adopt an orphan. It usually takes about 3 months to process. In the next couple of weeks we will be looking for a letter that informs us of the date and time of our fingerprinting appointment. When we receive the approval form we will submit our Dossier and officially be done with all of the paperwork! Please continue to pray for no delays in paperwork and that our I-600A form will be approved quickly!