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Where we are now... an exercise in waiting

SO, last week was a big week.  It's been crazy, but I've finally found a few minutes to update...

 After what felt like a million delays, our homestudy was FINALLY ready, so last Monday (8/17) I went to pick it up. Since the homestudy agency is in the OKC metro I took the bulk of our dossier to be apostilled at the same time.  An apostille is a state seal, where the state verifies that the notary is valid.  Anyway, we live about 4 1/2 hours from the homestudy agency & state capitol, so we drove up to take care of it in one day.  We saved probably about 2 weeks of mail time that way. 

 My mom went with me (BLESS HER!), which was awesome because it was a very stressful day.  We had a couple of hiccups, a lot of driving across the OKC metro, and a crazy day, but at the end of the day, this is where we are at:

 Our completed homestudy was overnighted to USCIS to catch up with the application that we filed last March.  They have had it over a week now, so we are hoping for a letter giving us a fingerprint appointment soon. 

 Our dossier is about 90% complete and is now in the hands of the facilitation team in Eastern Europe.  We basically lack 3 sets of documents - one of which is our USCIS approval.  The other 2 sets are in the works & will be easy to finish up.

 SO, what does that mean?  Now we wait.  Which I obviously love.  But, besides that...  We are in a holding pattern, waiting on an approval from USCIS, so that we can have our dossier submitted to her country.  However, PRAISE THE LORD FOR PROGRESS!  Seriously, I can't get over the fact that the homestudy is DONE, and we are finally able to make some progress!

 Our next big step is to fundraise while we wait.  We'll crunch numbers this weekend and post an update, and maybe even a cool thermometer or something if I can figure it out!  Ha!  In the mean time, please pray for us as we continue this process, and for our daughter as she waits. 

 For those of you just now following our story, please check out a couple of my posts that talk about what we are doing and why, written back when I had more brain power! Haha.  I recommend: 

 http://15milesfromnowhere.blogspot.com/2014/04/were-adopting.html

 and

 http://15milesfromnowhere.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-you-have-enough-kids-already.html

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