Today was absolutely beautiful and full of God's blessings! The weather was as warm as a spring day, the house was sparkling clean, and our home study visit went smoothly!
Thank you dear friends and family that were praying for us. God's peace was so evidenced in the calm we had as we went through the process today. Funny thing is how we stress...I was worried about our individual interviews and Nate was worried about the visit today...we balance each other so well :)
Although we have not met any other case workers, I must say that we pulled the luck of the draw as she is just so good at putting us at ease. As soon as our last two references are received the home study will be wrapped up and sent to Holt for approval. We will be considered Home Study ready! YEAH!
The next step in the process is to submit our I-600A form with USCIS, then they will schedule our fingerprint appointments with the FBI. We are stunned that we have already been in process for three months this Friday. The time passes so quickly when you are constantly filling out papers and trying to meet the next deadline!
Since our Christmas preparations are complete. We can focus on getting our family update letter (a first for us) and our adoption prayer cards in the mail! We also can relax for the next couple of weeks and spend some quality time with our boys!
The boys are so excited to get a little sister and Ethan says daily how he wishes she could be here this Christmas...we are praying our little girl will be home before next Christmas! The boys did very good with our Case Worker today. Although Isaiah started to have a mini meltdown as the meeting was during lunch/naptime, we were glad she was able to see our parenting skills in action :) Also, I think it helped that they were promised ice cream if they were good...a little bribe every once in a while can be a very effective parenting tool, right?
If you are following the blog we would love to know who you are...you can email us at missionforannalee@gmail.com or leave us a comment! Thank you again for all of your prayers and support.
P.S.
If you were planning to order a cake for Christmas please let us know...our last day to bake for delivery/pickup is December 23rd! We were hoping to break our Thanksgiving record of 23 cakes, so we need some orders! If you have friends in the area please feel free to pass along our email or you can email me and we can exchange phone numbers. Also...check out Mission for Annalee Coffee Shop...coffee is a great gift for the coffee lovers in your life!
So glad it went so well. I know you are so relieved! We're working on a family update letter too-a first for us! Glad you are doing the coffee fundraiser. We haven't had great success with it but I keep reminding myself that every little bit helps!
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