DOSSIER APPROVAL!!

I am beyond thrilled to report that we received our agency's approval to begin working on our Dossier!! A.K.A our BFF: big fat file. Lol. This is awesome news. It happened WAY sooner than we had anticipated.

We just had our final home study interview on Friday, and then at 3:40 on Monday we received approval. Per our social worker A., it could have taken 1-2 weeks to get approval. Not sure how it happened so quickly, but I do not care. haha! The more I keep thinking about this, the more I think of what someone spoke to KC about the adoption back on September of  2011:

        A woman told KC while praying over him - "This is going

to happen much faster than you think it is".

This being the adoption. J

           

Well this part is definitely going by faster than we thought. Those initial 6 months of waiting for the home study were well worth it. I can't barely contain my joy. I know we still have a lot of work ahead of us - paperwork, preparing the funds needed to complete these next steps, getting our home ready, etc. - but I'm ready to jump in! This is just so real now. We pay the final portion of our first chunk of the adoption fees on Friday. While I'm a little nervous about that, I know God is taking care of us. It's crazy to think that after Friday, we will have 1/3 of the adoption paid for. We'll still have travel fees, but that's a HUGE deal! When you look at something costing upwards of $20,000 it seems impossible. But looking at how we've already knocked so much of it down, it's doesn't look so daunting anymore.

We're praying that everything goes smoothly with our home study approval, our Pre-Immigration paperwork, and our Dossier. If we have no snags or hiccups, we could have everything approved and submitted in June. What does that mean? It means, we could officially be on the "wait-list/in-line" for a referral for a child from Ethiopia in June. HUGE HUGE HUGE STEP! So unbelievably blessed by God. (I wish you could see the big, cheesy grin on my face right now! J)

Other than our fun adoption updates, things at home have been pretty relaxed. We had absolutely no plans for the weekend (after our previous ones were cancelled). So, we enjoyed the muggy and rainy weather and just…. lounged. Saturday we played games and watched movies. The Tale of Despereaux was new on Netflix and they loved it. I made homemade blueberry muffins. Healthy, blueberry muffins. While I thought they were good, they weren't as sweet as I had hoped. Hello Sandra - HEALTHY remember? Lol. But, amazingly, the boys LOVED them and devoured 4 each. Lol. So, I made another batch but accidentally turned the oven to broil instead of bake. Luckily I caught the error pretty fast, so they still turned out good; not pretty, but still yummy.

We had a few tornado warnings on Sunday after we got home from church. The boys were worried in the car since KLRC wasn't playing music, only weather updates. But that all changed once we got home and prepared my closet just in case. The boys were running around with flashlights and their blankets screaming 'Oh no! The tornado is coming! To the closet!'. They were just excited to each have their own flashlight. Haha. Our area was fortunate enough not to be hit with much more than severe thunderstorms. The boys soon forgot about it as we ate lunch and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Ollie's request. Caedmon normally "veto's" any movie suggestion made by Oliver, but he agreed that Oliver made a "great idea!". Haha. So, that's how our Sunday ended. Movies. Perfect rainy weekend if you ask me.  J 

Caed intrigued by The Tale of Despereaux 

Ollie informing me that he wants his muffins to look like this 

 KC bringing me wildflowers. hehe!

 My flowers

(Sorry that the pictures are flipped, they aren't like that in my files)