We are finished, we are just beginning! October 29, 2011

We completed all of our paperwork.  It has all been notarized, authenticated, stamped by the Haitian Consulate in Chicago.  Copied, correlated, organized, sorted, double checked, triple checked. Through facebook, we found a nice lady in New Jersey who is traveling to Haiti on Halloween.  She offered to carry in our completed dossier!  It cost us $14 to mail it to her as opposed to $200 to mail it to Haiti.  She is going on  a mission trip to hold and play with the babies.  There are still many, many months (or years!) that these papers will need to get stamped, signed, approved by judges, verified and eventually a visa and a passport will be issued for a little girl who will become part of our family.  Scary, nervous, excited and content because we know that this is the desire God placed in our hearts a long time ago while playing with children half a world away in a Russian orphanage.  Feels like we are going full circle.

We also got fingerprinted this week.  This will (hopefully) grant us approval from the United States to adopt.
Dixie is out of Haiti for the month of November so we are not sure where this will leave our paperwork, but at least it will be there waiting for her when we return.

On to Chicago! October 3, 2011

Received our French translation of everything today. Mailed out the mail 8 documents (IBESR letter, Power of Attorney, Homestudy, Psych Report, 2 References, 2 Doctors notes) with there State of NJ authentication and the French translation as well as a money order to the Haitian Consulate in Chicago.  They should receive it by noon tomorrow.  After that I am not exactly sure of the turn around time.  When we receive it all back, it will get mailed to God's Littlest Angels orphanage while we wait our referral.  We have still not made the final decision as to one or two.  Everytime we think one would just be just fine, we think of keeping a sibling group together as well as the ease on race issues if it wasn't all white kids and one black child.  When we think of two, the reality sets in about driving a big van, the extra money it would cost to adopt a second child etc etc