Dossier is on its way!

Our agency emailed this morning to say that our dossier was on its way to Colombia!  It will get there in 7 to 10 days and then it will be translated.

In the meantime, we are busy with 4H projects and gardening.  This is Laurel's first year in regular 4H and she is the most excited about electric and woodworking.  Carissa enjoys photography the most and Tyler likes electric.  This year he gets to wire his own lamp!

We got a late start on our garden this year b/c it's the first time we put one in.  We had to grind down the stumps from the trees we had cut and then we dug out the roots.  Then, we had to wait for all the rain to stop and finally we got to plant!  The three oldest children have their own garden plots.  So far, Laurel is the only one who has gotten to pick anything out of their garden - radishes!

Besides the garden, we now have one cat, a ton of chickens including a mama hen and 5 babies, 2 guinea hens, 2 rabbits, and 6 baby turkeys.  The cat kills the mice and snakes.  The chickens give us eggs.  The guinea hens eat the bugs and let us know when there are "intruders", the rabbits give us fertilizer for the garden, and the turkeys will be filling our bellies when they get bigger!  Ahhh, we are truly blessed.

Karen

Here we grow again!

I love that saying.  

Before we left for China to add Lyric to our family, God had already placed it on our hearts for us to adopt again - but this time, He was/is leading our family to the country of Colombia!  (Hola!)  We even did all the research we could and had contacted agencies before we left to get Lyric.  We knew our family wasn't done growing, but we did want to make sure that Lyric attached well to our family (and us to her), so we put talk of the adoption on the "back burner" for a little while and focused on Lyric and our other children.

Everything in China and at home with our new family went really well - and starting the process to adopt was again often talked about - and prayed over.  It was never far from our thoughts.  We called a few more agencies and found out that most don't really like to even take an application to adopt until 6 months after a major life event, which is what adoption is considered. 

Despite that, I ended up finding one highly recommended agency, Children's Hope International, that said I could write a letter to their executive director to ask for an exception.  That letter was quickly written up - and approval was soon granted!

That was a few months ago... since then we have updated our home study, gathered all of our paperwork, had two sets of fingerprints done, put our entire dossier together, and sent it to our agency - they'll get it Tuesday morning.  All of that was no easy feat!  Hopefully, our agency will get all the paperwork they had to request and our dossier will head to Colombia on Wednesday!

We were told it takes about a week to 10 days for the paperwork to get to Colombia.

Then, the whole dossier will be translated and  submitted to the ICBF (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare).  That should put us at the end of July or the beginning of August.

Then, we wait for a referral for our new children. 

Yep, I said "children"!  After much prayer and talk, our family has requested to be approved to adopt a sibling group, up to 8 years old.  We did make the request that one be a boy (Tyler really needs a brother!), and one be a girl, but that is just a request and not a guarantee.  Sibling groups in Colombia where one child is age 8 or older are considered "special needs" and are quickly processed, being placed ahead of any considered "non-special needs".  The rest of this adoption could move pretty fast, and I hope you will follow along with us.

I'll keep you posted on any updates we get, but in the meantime I'll have to get some updated pictures of our family on here and fix up this blog a bit.  

In Christ,

Karen