Everything Made It to USCIS!

Our home study and all of our forms made it safely to the USCIS office in MO, and we are so excited!  We received a form called an I-797C from the US Department of Homeland Security, as confirmation receipt and notice of action.  This is the last stop, and everything should be processed by early January.  The next step will be to go and get more fingerprints done and the USCIS will schedule that appointment for us, within the next few weeks.

The Jewelry Is In

The jewelry from Premier Designs is here, just in time for your Christmas parties or to be wrapped up for Christmas morning!  If you live locally, your purchases will be delivered to you.  If you live out of town, you should have received it.  Thanks so much to each of you for your purchases and support!  We really appreciate your help.  We would like to say a big thank you to Trisha, our our Premier Designs jeweler, who helped us make this fundraiser a success!  If you are interested in hosting your own Premier Designs show, please contact Trisha by email at trishathejewelrylady@yahoo.com or call her cell phone at 623-986-9463.  

Happy Thanksgiving

We want to wish each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving and a special holiday season with family and friends.  We have so much to be thankful for this year, and God has blessed us with so much.  This is our favorite time of the year, and we can't wait to share these special holidays and family traditions with our own kids next year.

Our Forms Made It to Their First Stop

Our forms and home study made it to their first stop at a USCIS office in Lewisville, TX.  The forms wiill be logged in, and funds will be processed.  Then, it is off to their second stop at the National Benefits Center, located in Lee's Summit, Missouri.  This is the USCIS center that our I-800A forms will be processed at.  We will soon receive an appointment to do another set of fingerprints, which will be our fourth set!  Our hope is that everything will be approved by early January.  The next and last stop will be our dossier to Colombia!

The Candles Are In

  

The candles from PartyLite are here, just in time for the holidays!  If you live locally, your purchases will be delivered to you by this weekend.  If you live out of town, they should be arriving to you any day.  Thanks so much to each of you for your purchases and support!  We would like to say a big thank you to Jennifer, our PartyLite consultant, who helped us so much during this fundraiser!  If you are interested in hosting your own PartyLite show or would like to view their catalog and products on-line, please go to Jennifer's website at www.partylite.biz/sites/curriecandles

Our Paper Work Is Off to the Next Step!

We heard from Lutheran today, and are so excited!  They said our approved home study was sent today to a USCIS office in Texas, via Fed Ex.  USCIS stands for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and it is part of Homeland Security.  A USCIS approval means that the US government approves us to adopt from Colombia!  Once all of our paper work is documented in Texas, it will go to another USCIS office in Missouri to continue processing.  The next step is to wait for an e-mail with instructions to go and get our finger prints taken again.  This will be our fourth set of fingerprints we have taken since we began our adoption process!  Once USCIS in Missouri receives our fingerprints, they can continue processing our case.  This approval will hopefully come early January, and it will be our last big document needed for our dossier.  Then the last big step is to put everything together and Fed Ex it to Colombia.  Our dossier will include our approved home study, the FBI finger print clearance for each of us, our approval from USCIS allowing us to adopt from Colombia, a certified copy of each of our birth certificates and marriage certificate, 11 additional documents, and 23 pictures of us and our house.  All of our documents have been notarized and apostilled (a notary of the notary by the AZ Secretary of State).  It has been a lot of work to get all of this put together, but we are so excited it is almost ready to go.  Thank you for all of your prayers and support!

Operation Christmas Child

We had the joy of shopping and putting together Christmas boxes again this year, through the Operation Christmas Child program.  With each activity we do, we are so excited for all the opportunities we will have in the future to share with our own kids. When we think about what the holiday season will mean next year with the new additions to our family, we can't wait!

Sign Up To Be A Follower Today

We would like to extend a big thank you to those who are reading about our journey on this blog.  If you aren't a follower yet, we would love for you to become one, so we can see who is following our adoption process.  To become a follower, just click the word "Follow" on the right margin of this page, which is right below the title "Our Agencies".  Then click "Create a New Google Account".  You can edit your name a picture at this point if you would like.  Finally, just click "Follow this blog".  It's that easy.  We will keep updating you every few days, and are excited to share everything with you.

We Have FBI Fingerprint Approval!

We received our FBI Fingerprints today and are so excited!!!  When we called last week, the person we spoke to at the FBI said that they were only proccessing finger print requests from the first of September and they didn't receive ours until September 27th.  But, they came by FedEx today!  God keeps opening one door after another for us as we go through this adoption process.  We are now one step closer to finishing our paper work.  We want to thank everyone again for all of their support of us!

Our First Latin Festival

We attended a Latin festival today called La Gran Fiesta: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Culture.  We had the opportunity to see several performances.  These pictures were from the Mariachi Corazon Latino and Vista del Comino Ballet Folklorico.  We are so excited to continue learning about the Latin culture.

Our Second Fundraiser Event

We had our fundraiser party last night and we want to thank everyone so much for coming!  We loved having you at our house and appreciate all of your support.  For all of our out of town friends and those who could not come, thank you also for your support and friendships.  We wish you could have been here for the party!  We send a huge thank you to each of you for your help in making this fundraiser a success and your continued prayers while we are on this adoption journey. We have extended the ordering period until Saturday, if anyone would still like to order.

Our Fundraiser

This is the last week of our fundraiser event!!  We really appreciate everyone who has sent us a donation and order!  If you are still in the process of sending your orders to us, we will be ordering all of the prducts next week.  For all of our local friends, we hope you can join us for our fundraiser party this Thursday night at our house at 6:30 PM.  Please e-mail us if we can answer any questions.  We send a big thanks to you all!