...AND our I-800A has been sent!!!

What a day!! Received the email that our home study provider received our home study approval from our agency. Then, drove up to Carmel to pick up our copies of our home study on my lunch hour. Then, on the way home from work, stopped by the drive-thru at our bank, withdrew the money for our I-800A (this is Kimi's immigration approval request), and purchased the money order for our I-800A submission. Next, came home, fixed dinner, and then, assembled the documents for our I-800A submission: double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking to make sure everything was complete, signed, etc.!! Then, put it all in a Fed-Ex envelope and sped over to the drop box, which unfortunately, showed I was too late for today's pick-up. Came home. Checked my email - and lo and behold, the Fed-Ex driver must have been running late, because my package was picked up 20 minutes after I dropped it off!! This means, it will arrive at USCIS in Texas before 10:30 tomorrow morning! Every single day I can save is one less day in the orphanage for Kimi, and one day closer to her having a family! Now, I need some sleep!

Our Home Study is DONE!!

Our home study is finally done, signed, notarized, and approved by our agency! Now we can submit our I-800A, which is our application to immigration (USCIS)and requires an original copy of our home study! This is a major milestone. So, we are one step closer to bringing Kimi home!!!

The story of our decision to adopt Kimi

Over the past few months, I have often been asked how we came to the decision to adopt another little girl from China - and how we decided on Kimi. At the bottom of this blog, I have written my response to those questions.

Regarding where we are in the "paperchase" - We have completed our required adoption training and all of our homestudy meetings. Our caseworker anticipates submitting our homestudy for approval to our agency on Monday (8/16). Once approved, we will submit our I-800A for USCIS (immigration) approval.

This week, we also received a response from Kimi's orphanage to the questions we submitted about a month ago. The orphanage staff has agreed to let Kimi's hair grow! In answer to my question about any illnesses, they responded "she rarely gets sick, even the cold". They also said, "She prefers stuffed animals" and "She likes to play with others..." and "Whenever she meet the nannies, she always smile, so nannies like her very much."

Slideshow added!

Unfortunately, we have not been given very many photos of our little one. However, we were provided with a short video made last November, from which I was able to capture a few frames. Although the quality is a little fuzzy, I made an attempt at creating a slideshow of all the photos given to us, including the video frames.

Regarding where we are in the process:
We have our final homestudy visit this afternoon! We continue the "paperchasing" phase of the process and are making good progess! We already have all our dossier documents, except for Mike's physical (his appointment is Monday), the completed homestudy, and the all-important I-797C (USCIS/immigration approval) which will take a little while yet. We have to submit the I-800A form to USCIS (which we cannot do until we have our completed homestudy); then, wait for our fingerprint appointment; and finally obtain our clearance/approval (I-797C) in order to have EVERYTHING. Then, we have to get all the dossier documents copied, state-sealed, and China Consulate-sealed. THEN, we can submit our dossier to China! Then...we wait...and wait...and wait...for travel approval from China. If there are no glitches with any of this process, we are still estimating travel to China in early 2011 to bring Kimi home!