Missing Clearances

I know what I write here is a lot of the same from the main blog. Just hang in here with us.

It seems our clearance requests were not sent to two of our previous states on our behalf. So now when our home study is completely finished and waiting for us to get I-800 approval we can't because we don't have out state clearances! I have no idea how much time this will add onto our time line. We are beyond frustrated. We have our whole dossier DONE except our notarized home study and the I-800. :(

There is some good news in all of this mess! As soon as Lauren receives a rough draft of our home study from our SW then we can send in our EA/LOI for Evan! Is that not the best news you've heard all week! I know that is what we are holding onto.

I do know the Lord will work this all out in his time.

Home Study Complete!!

We had our final home study visit this past weekend. We actually finished on our LID anniversary for Lia. All went well and we even thought we had all of our clearances for a brief moment. We only have ONE states. For some reason we are missing two and when I asked fellow adoptive families they all received them from those states in two to three weeks. We are now on six plus weeks! :(

Our social worker is going to look into it for us today. The first clearance reports were sent to the wrong place and the gentleman took three weeks to send them to our SW. I pray that is what happened with the other two state clearance reports. I think I might do some calling myself and see what I can find out.

Tomorrow we go to the School of Deaf to meet with school officials and tour the school Evan will attend. We will actually get to sit in on a class of children his age. :) We are looking forward to that. We are still not having any luck finding a sign language class so we are just learning via DVD.

Could you all pray that we get these clearances figured out and we can wrap up this home study. Hopefully we'll have some good news soon. Could you also pray that we hear some thing back on a sign language class? We are on three or four waiting lists for a class. Thanks!

One More

We have one more home visit with the social worker and we will be done. Well at least on our part. We are still waiting on our finger prints to clear but that will come. This weekend marks our 3 year LID for Lia and Sunday is our anniversary. What better weekend to finish our home study.

Please pray our finger prints will come back soon so we can proceed to the next step.

Waiting....

We are still waiting for our clearance from each state that we've lived in. I've read that it took three months for some adoptive families to come back. That would mean we could still have two months to wait before we could even send in our I-800A.

Good news is we will be done with our HS on the 16th! I can hardly wait. I pray that by the time we are done with the HS our clearances will be back and we will be ready to apply for our I-800A. It won't be long after that we can shout that we will be DTC (Dossier to China)! We are looking forward to that day!

As of right now China is not restricting travel but will quarantine anyone who is thought to be sick with the flu for 7 days. I'm sure we will hear more next week. Praying this will all be over with soon.

Bear With Us

This blog will be going under construction soon! ;) The link reads come home eli and that will be changing. You see that is what we were going to name another child but ended up not persuing his adoption. So we may have to re invite all of you again. I hope we don't but it is possible.

Next month will be an exciting month for us. We will finish up our home study and send in our I-800A. We have an appointment with the School for the Deaf on the 19th and we are looking forward to that. We will be able to sit in on a class that is Evan's age, go to music class and use their lending library! :) I can't wait to see the campus and learn more. May will be a busy month for us.

Updated Pictures!!

We receive a surprise today in our inbox. Today we received updated info on Evan! :) As you can see he has grown up quite a bit since his last pictures. He height is 45in and weight is 45.5lbs. He is wearing a size 12 in childrens shoe and has 20 teeth! We are so ready to go and get him! Lets get this show on the road! Enjoy the pictures! :)

Pictures!

We are still working on our paper work for Evan. I wanted to post his pictures for you all to see. We can not post them on our main blog until we get approval from China but because this blog is password protected we can.

This picture we were able to get from someone on his Orphanage Yahoo Group. He is on the far right in the orange sweatshirt. We have been informed by AWAA that we can request updated information, pictures and ask 3-5 questions on him as his paper work is 14 months old. We are not sure how long it will take to obtain this information or whether they will actually send it. Please pray we receive updated information.