Hurry up and Wait...

We had a very eventful week this week, regarding the adoption, and we finally have great news to share...

We are officially #4 on the waiting list!!

I finished gathering and notarizing all of the documents for the dossier, on Monday, and planned to drive to Austin to have them state certified Tuesday. However, I learned Monday night that the Secretary of State's computer system has been down. I tried to call their office on Tuesday, but of course could not get anyone to answer, so I decided I better wait before making the trip. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

Wednesday morning, we had our appointment with the Office of Homeland Security to have our fingerprints taken. I had read on several blogs that this was a quick appointment, so I told Robbie we would be in and out in no time. Well, of course this was not the case for us, and for those of you who know Robbie, you know that he does not have the most patience for sitting and waiting, especially on a workday. To make things worse, they will not let you bring cell phones in, so he was completely out of commission (work wise) for well over an hour. However, he made it through it. Now we just have to pray that our fingerprints take so we will not have to go back again. If everything does goes well, we should receive our I-171H in a few weeks. This again is our paperwork that allows us to bring our little boy back to the U.S.

Before going to the appointment Wednesday morning, I got online to check the Secretary of State's website. There was a message that their system was still down. I checked again after our appointment, and...still down. Finally, I told Robbie that I was going to make the trip anyway, hoping that they had some way of getting our documents certified. Our adoption coordinator only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I knew if I didn't get the documents to her on Thursday, I would lose several days. So, Paige and I packed up and drove to Austin, praying the whole way. When we arrived, everything was running fine, and we were in and out in thirty minutes, with our documents state certified.

Once we returned home, I drove straight to FedEx and overnighted our dossier to Colorado. I probably tracked the package 100 times between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, until I saw that it arrived safely at IAN. Then, I just waited for Allison to call. I waited until probably 2:30 and was just about to call her, when the phone rang, and I saw the Colorado area code. It was Allison on the other end of the phone telling me that she received everything and that they are going to go through it all next Wednesday, before sending it on to D.C. In the meantime, she had good news...we were officially added to the wait list at #6. Right where we thought we would be!!! But wait, she had more good news. #6 was deceiving, because they just received three referrals and one family already accepted one of them, so by 4:30 we were already #5, and Friday another family accepted their referral, so we are now officially #4!!!
She also informed me that #1 on the list is unexpectedly pregnant, so as long as she doesn't have any complications in her pregnancy, they will skip to the next in line. So, if the third family accepts their referral and the #1 does not have any complications in pregnancy, we are unofficially #2!!! Can you believe it? Already, that fast? As I said earlier, there is no rhyme or reason to how often they receive a referral, but after looking back several months it is about one a month. So, I am hoping to know something by October. Maybe for my birthday we will find out who our precious little boy is. I also learned that our dossier says we will accept a little boy up to 24 months. Allison asked me if there was an age in which we did not want to accept, but I told her that we were just going to pray for God to send us the right little boy for our family, regardless of age. I just feel like everything happens for a reason. There is a reason that we agreed to putting 0 - 24 months on the dossier, and there is a reason that we are where we are on the list. I just want to leave it all in God's hands. With that being said, please pray with us, that we receive the perfect match.

In the meantime, I guess we will just have to wait...