the finish line is close!

Thank you to everyone who has followed our journey and provided support to our family!  Sage and I entered into adoption knowing that simply, we wanted to help.  We wanted to provide a family to someone who without us may never know the love that every child deserves.  We had no idea how emotional this journey would be!

On October 15th China blessed us with our Letter of Approval (LOA) to adopt Haylie.  Since then we have rushed through more paperwork to different government offices.  The US has now approved Haylie to come to the states.  Our final packet of paperwork is being delivered as I type back to China.  We expect to receive our Travel Approval (TA) in the next 3-4 weeks!  Yes my friends, we are going to China!!!!!  Ideally we will be leaving December 26th and returning home sometime during the first week in January.

Unfortunately we still are quite a bit away from reaching our financial goal needed in order to complete Haylie's adoption.  The international fees include our flights, hotels, orphanage donation, along with visa for Haylie to return to the US with us.  If you feel pulled to help us reach the final steps of this journey, please visit our fundraising page  http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-haylie-home-/106230  We appreciate all of the love and support that we received from family and friends during this emotional journey!  One Less Orphan

I will not leave you as orphans - John 14:18

http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-haylie-home-/106230

Needing prayers

Update on our adoption process: back in May we received our pre-approval (PA) for our sweet Haylie. In July our dossier was finally completed and sent to China (DTC), hallelujah! Now we are "patiently" waiting for China to give us our letter of approval (LOA), which means they've reviewed our entire dossier an deem us acceptable parents for Haylie. We are on day 47 of that wait. Some people have received their approval in as quick as 30 days, others received theirs in as many as 140+....so yes, I'm a little on edge every day as I wait for that phone to ring! So here is where I ask for your help and ask you to lift our family up in prayer. In order to travel this year, and be back home before Christmas!, we need to receive our LOA this week! If not we will probably wait to travel until Jan. I know that I can't be in China over Christmas, it will break my heart to be without my children and family..... So, if you pray, please include one for us!  Plus, once I receive LOA I can share Haylie's picture with you all!!!! :-)

Big Updates!!!

I apologize for the lack of posts, but honestly, the work we've been doing you probably wouldn't find very exciting! The last five months have been spent "paper chasing". We worked with our home study agency to get home study approval, we dealt with KS, WY, and TX to get documentation that Sage and I are legit....lots of time spent with the Secretary of States, lots of money spent on our fed-ex account...and in return we got the big pay off! Our dossier is completed and was sent to China! Yessss!!!!! To those following this blog who have also adopted or are in the process, you absolutely understand how big of an achievement this is! So in a perfect world we will travel before the end of the year and our little princess will be home for Christmas! Let me stress, in a perfect world! 

fundraiser!!!!!

One of my favorite blogger friends, Shannon, is assisting us with a Scentsy fundraiser!  A portion of the dollar amount sold will be going towards our adoption.  I am very excited about this and have had good results so far!  If you are interested in browsing &/or making a purchase please check out this website http://shannonmc.scentsy.us and then click on my party, Kristen Dilka.  If you have friends or family that may need to refill their scents please forward them this link!  We'll be closing the party out the end of the month.  I thank you in advance!  Also, if you have any creative ideas for ways that we could continue to raise money, please share!

THANK YOU for helping us in our journey to bring Haylie home!

Update!!!!

Sorry that I haven't really posted a whole lot here, I feel like all I can tell anyone is that we're still working on paperwork.  Paperwork, paperwork, and a little bit more paperwork!  At this point though I do have more interesting news.  Are you ready for it?  Drum roll please.....

WE HAVE A MATCH! 

Yes!  We are matched with an absolutely beautiful little girl!  I cannot reveal much information at this point but as soon as I can, rest assured that I will flood this blog with as many details and pictures as I can! 

Our homestudy is in the final phase, it's off with a typist.  That's a HUGE releif!  I absolutely cannot wait to go get my little princess and bring her home where we can spoil the heck out of her! :-)

"deadline" came and went

Well folks, March 1st has come and gone! When Sage and I started this journey we had set a goal of shipping our paperwork off to China on March 1st.  This is also the date of our 5-year anniversary, so, Happy Anniversary to us!  Needless to say, um yeah, we missed the deadline.  Hopefully by the end of this week all of our paperwork will at least be turned into our home study agency, which will then mean our application can be sent to China  in about six weeks.  So, end of April is the new goal!  If you're following along on this journey, be patient, keep checking in.... we definitely understand that the patience isn't an easy task! :-)  Hope everyone has a great week!

trucking on...

This past week was pretty productive for us!  Logan and Riley needed to have TB tests done so we were able to get that done.  Now I just need to drop off the forms and proof of neg. TB tests to our pediatricians so that they can fill out that our kids are up to date on immunizations etc etc.... Then Sage and I need to go to the doctor's and have our papers filled out stating that we are over-all healthy people.  I sent off all of our paperwork to our employers to fill out employer verifications and also information on our health insurance, so just waiting to get that back.  Also waiting on a few reference letters to get sent back to us.  To you it may sound like a lot of stuff left to do, to us, holy crow it seems like we've come a really long way! We are definitely not going to make the March 1st deadline that we had given ourselves... maybe April 1st?  Fingers crossed!!!!!!

If you're new to this blog, family..... welcome!!!! :-)

Along with getting so much accomplished this week we also got nailed with a winter storm.... nearly 10 inches later...... and now they're talking about another wave hitting us on Monday with yet ANOTHER 10 inches! Yikes!