continued.......

So On May 18th at 12:21 p.m. we received the phone call with the referral of our two sweet precious girls! I cannot share pictures yet, but trust me when I say they are gorgeous!!! We now wait for our court date, and the first time we will finally get to meet our little ones!

Ok like I said I am really bad at this......

So like I mentioned before, I am really bad at this whole Blog thing. I thought it would be a great way for me to keep track of a time line, but finding time to get on here and actually type about it is REALLY hard for me! So where we left off is that our Dossier was being mailed to Ethiopia right?? Well yes it did get there, quite awhile ago actually, May 11th to be precise. On May 13th ( yes, just two days later ) we received a phone call from our family coordinator at America World. As I stared at the phone while it was ringing, thinking to myself I don't know anyone in that area code... it hit me! Wait a minute that is America World calling me!! I nervously answered the phone. It was Nicole. As I am shaking thinking I must have missed something in our Dossier, she surprised me. The reason for the phone call was actually to see if we would be willing to reconsider our request for one child to two children!They had two little girls in the orphanage that fell in our age request, that joined the orphanage around the same time and were unrelated but VERY attached to each other. Needless to say I could not breathe, could not talk, and just sat there staring. Nicole asked if I had any questions and I said I really could not think of any at the moment but I am sure I would be calling her right back. Sure enough as soon as I hung up I called right back asked a few questions and then proceeded to make the phone call to tell my husband. Of course I told Nicole we would need to talk about it though the weekend and get back to her. She said of course that would be fine, and she would be praying for us. My husbands reaction was the same as mine, shock,excited, nervous and many more emotions. So the weekend came and went. We spent much of it praying, talking with our kids, speaking with our parents and pastor, and just working through the details. What it basically came down to was this. There is no way on earth this would have happened had it not been in God's plan for us. It is almost unheard of to receive a referral that quickly after your Dossier arrives in country. We had always had a calm feeling about who our child (and now children )was. We knew God had chosen them for us before we even knew who they were. Monday morning came and we made the phone call to Nicole to say that yes we were willing to accept both girls into our home! There was more paperwork to fill out, we had to change our home study, and I submitted more paperwork to USCIS to change our approval of one child to two children.

DTE!!!!!

SOOO I am really bad about this blog thing I decided. We received an official email last Friday that said our official DTE ( Dossier to Ethiopia date ) is 4/30/10! This means we are on the official waiting list for a referral! Our paperwork will not physically be flying to Ethiopia until this Friday, but they said our date is the 4/30/10 date. The other thing we found out is that on the unofficial list that one of the girls in our Yahoo group keeps track of we are #2 in line for a referral! Hopefully that means we will get our referral really quickly! We are just thrilled, and excited that it may move quickly for us. Now we are just concentrating on fundraising, which included a garage sale that raised $2000.00! We are also making some really cool t-shirts, and will have a website up soon that people can order from. When it is ready I will post the web address. A lot of really cool things happening right now! Cannot wait to see what the next thing will be :-)!

Our paperwork is mailed!!!!!

I can't believe I am typing this right now!! We mailed our paperwork!!! Our Dossier is on it's way right now to America World!It will be there in the morning. Our family coordinator said that if we got it to them by Monday, then we could be DTE ( Dossier to Ethiopia ) by next Friday!!!!!!! We are so thrilled to be waiting for a referral. Seven months of paperchasing is finally done. We cannot wait to see who God has chosen for us!

We are approved ( again:))!!!!!

I am SO far behind in posting, BUT we have great news!!! We received our I-171 approval in the mail March 18th!! We had a pretty big bump in the process with our homestudy, but got it all worked out and was approved! So our next step is to finish our Hague online training course, put together our family photo pages, and get everything certified at the state level. Then our Dossier will be finished, and mailed off to America World for them to review and approve! We are getting REALLY close which is exciting, and nerve racking all at the same time. Exciting because we will hopefully be able to meet our daughter really soon, and nerve racking because now I REALLY need to focus on some fundraising efforts to raise some money so we CAN get her home! I will keep everyone up to date on what we have going on as far as fundraising goes!

Addie our cousin's art project :)!

We are so VERY blessed to have the joy to be going through this adoption with our cousins Jon and Caycee Coffield, and their two adorable children Addie and Porter. They too are requesting a girl. Sweet little Addie came to her mom one day with an idea on how to help get her sister to them. I wanted to post her blog, so you all could read what an outstanding, thoughtful sweet little girl she truly is! If you can help her out it would be greatly appreciated, because as you all know adoption is not cheap, but worth every penny! her blog is familyofcoffields.blogspot.com! Cassidy and I were also brainstorming the other night, and have a pretty good idea on what she wants to start making. Keep checking in to find out :)!!

Preston's basketball game!

Now unfortunately when you have more than one child in sports one parent gets to go one place and the other another, so i did not get to actually see Preston's game. I did hear from a very proud Daddy that he did AMAZING! He shot 5 baskets and made 4 of them!!!! He LOVES playing, and is really enjoying being on the same team as his cousin Porter!

Cassidy'e BIG achievement!

This past weekend Cassidy had her first "real" gymnastics meet. She was having some difficulty with a skill on her floor routine that she had done in the past, but could not seem to do it lately. Well with her cute little toothless grin she did it!! She did her round off double backhandspring!!! She was SOOOO thrilled to do it!!! She ended up getting third place all around for her age group! We are so proud of our little peanut!

Another checkmark to check :)!

I had to post even though I am sitting at my computer TOTALLY exhausted from this week, and it is not even over yet :)! We received our final copy of our home study today!!! That means we are DONE with the home study! I rushed to the mail today and Express mailed it over to USCIS. This is our next BIG step in our adoption process. Once we get the OK from USCIS we are approved by the United States to adopt! Our home study shows we are approved by the state of Idaho to adopt. So now we need the national approval, and then our paperwork will be off to Ethiopia ( that is when I get the rest of the items done on our Dossier checkoff list )! We are getting closer, and everyday something new happens we are one step closer to our daughter! I think I have said that before, but I like it :)! Big gymnastics meet at Cassidy's gym this weekend which we are diligently working on putting together. Preston also has his second basketball game! Busy, busy!, but oh so worth it! - Goodnight :)!

God's sign..... ok another sign :)!

During this past week I was having troubles with what God's path was for us. After the tragedy in Haiti, every time I heard or saw something about it, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of are we supposed to help an orphan there? I spoke with my cousin today and told her how I felt I missed what God was trying to show me many times, because my eyes were not open to it. Laughing I said, he might need to make it a little more obvious :)! I needed to go shopping for my sister-in-law today for a birthday present. I headed into a Ross store that I never go into to find her a gift. Now, whenever I go to Ross I strictly look at clothes and shoes. As I was walking down one of the main aisles, I looked to my right and saw a cross with the word Believe. Jared had been wanting a cross to hang in our house so I ventured down to the back wall of the store. As soon as I got to the back I looked to my right and right beside the cross was a beautiful shadow box of an African women. I grabbed it an walked away. Going back up a different aisle, I happened to come across the books they sold there. Right in front was a hardback book. The title read Africana Woman Her story through time. It is a book about the history of African women! I grabbed it and went straight back to the crosses, and found a plaque with a cross that read Believe all things are possible if you believe.... Mark 9:23. I believe this was God's path to show me that YES, YES, YES are daughter is waiting for us, and YES she IS in Africa!!! I got back in my car and laughed out loud! OK God I finally see your path for us, thank you for making it obvious :)!

Update #1 of I am sure many.......

So as of today we are waiting for our Notarized Home Study to be delivered in our mailbox this week. Once that is done we can send our I-600A form to USCIS. They will look over everything and then send us our fingerprinting appointment. Once that is complete they will mail our approval to us! This can take up to 6 weeks, so we want to get it in as soon as possible. This step is a big one, and once it is done we will feel some relief. While this is going on I will be making some photo pages of our family for our Dossier. Ethiopia likes to see pictures of the family, home, and activities we participate in. This will be a good way to keep my mind busy, and not thinking about the waiting. On the home front Cassidy lost her first front tooth today! She has been talking a little differently, and sure looks cute! It was Preston's turn to cook dinner with me tonight, so guess what we had.......you got it Mac and Cheese! He said many times what a big boy he was when he was stirring it! Mason is looking forward to maybe playing some basketball. We are trying to get him signed up for a team! That is all for now! Thank you again for following our journey!

So far what has happened

Okay so my mom said to me the other day " you should start a blog " about our adoption! Well little did she know I had already begun to create this blog! It still isn't EXACTLY how I want it to look yet, but it is getting there so I have decided to share it with everyone now! So first things first WE ARE ADOPTING!!!! Our family is SO very excited and we feel very blessed that God has chosen us to care for and love one of his orphans. God has chosen a girl from Ethiopia for us, although at first we were confused about his signs and thought we were supposed to be in Rwanda :)! He steered us to where we were supposed to really be, and our daughter who is between the ages of 3-5 is there waiting for us! Here is how our journey started.

Jared and I had always talked about adopting one day. We were very blessed to be able to have three healthy biological children of our own, but even after the third I felt in my heart that we were not done yet. Now it was up to God, and myself to show Jared the same! It did not take long! We attended an America World Adoption seminar ( that I promised Jared was just to get information on adoption, which it was ) on August 15th, 2009 . After we left there Jared said ok we need to adopt. While there we both felt this overwhelming sensation that God was giving us a HUGE sign that a child somewhere was waiting for us. Of course we sometimes overlook what God is telling us to do, and although we knew for sure that we would adopt someday, we did not know when that day would be. We thought sometime in the near future, maybe a year or two down the road. God had a different plan for us. Now I had not been pregnant or given birth to my own children since 2004. On August 25th, 2009 I went to the mailbox to get our mail. There was a box inside. I pulled it out and addressed to me was a box of Similac formula! The only other time in my life I have received formula is when I have been pregnant or given birth to one of my three children!I ran inside and called Jared and said I think God is saying now!

We had already decided on America World being our International agency, so we began the process of filling out applications, and completing our Homestudy. Now being self employed is a little tricky when you are trying to adopt. We had to get multiple documentation of our income, along with letters from us, and our accountant. After three months of paperwork, and being on an emotional rollercoaster of whether we would be accepted or not, we got a phone call. On December 4th, 2009 as I was walking through Target I received a phone call from America World saying we had been accepted into the Ethiopia program! Needless to say my cart was abandoned as I ran to my car to call my husband! We were elated, and could not wait to tell the kids that night! We told them at dinner and all three of their mouths dropped to the floor! They were more than excited, and started drawing pictures for her, and setting toys aside for her, and arguing over where she would sleep! We now have a calendar up to mark off everyday that goes by, because as hard as it is for us to wait, it is even harder for them! Our Homestudy was sent to America World on December 24th, and our Family Coordinator just looked it over this past Thursday and got back to our social worker on any changes that needed to be made.

As for now we are in the paper chasing part of our journey. I have heard it can take up to 6 months, but we are determined to be done sooner than that. I have had several very vivid dreams about our daughter since this has started, and know she is waiting. If I could I would have it all done tomorrow so we could go and get her! As soon as we have our paperwork in our Family Coordinator told us it could be between 0-5 months before we get our referral. It seems like FOREVER, but I have to remind myself everyday that God has a plan, and I have to surrender myself to him, and know that it will all come together! I will continue to post updates about our adoption, our family, and how things are going! Thank you for being our friends and family, and supporting us in this journey!