We Have Updates!

Yea! Good week in the Flowers family in lots of ways! As far as our adoption goes, I mailed off our part of the dossier to be certified by the secretary of state this week which was exciting. For those of you who don't speak "adoptionese" the dossier had a million (it was actually 24) forms that I typed and then we had signed and notarized.....they included employment verification forms, criminal clearance forms, insurance verification forms, tax forms from the last 3 years, medical forms, and much, much more! Crazy! I do think that being in a small town REALLY helped us get the paperwork done so quickly. We know almost everyone we dealt with and everyone has been so supportive.....it really wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I cried the day I opened the dossier and saw what we had to do but then a couple days later I blocked out about 6 hours to copy and type all of the forms the way they needed to be and felt much better....just like everything else in life, you just do the forms one at a time....having lots of friendly faces to deal with helps, too!! So....that is done. We also had our 2nd (out of 3) homestudy meeting yesterday and good friends watch our kids which was so helpful! Our family and friends are unbelievable! We drove to Dillon to meet our social worker since it is close to halfway....we met at Starbucks.....which was interesting but fine....and we think everything went really well! These meetings are not nearly as scary as I thought they might be before we started and have gone really well!
So.....where are we?? Let's see.....our homestudy has to be complete before our dossier is done.....it is the other half of the paperwork needed.....and our dossier has to be done before we are on the waiting list. We have our 3rd and final homestudy meeting next Friday (the 17th) and then we are meeting briefly on Saturday the 25th to read and sign our homestudy. At that point it is just a waiting game for our background checks & fingerprints to come back. Our social worker told us that she has received our background checks from CO & MO...Yea! And she has our fingerprints from the CBI....that just leaves the FBI fingerprint check.....that's right.....the FBI has to check our fingerprints! She said they should be here in the next 1 to 2 weeks......then our homestudy & dossier will be complete! So...what does this mean??? It means that hopefully (God willing) everything will go as planned and our homestudy (complete with FBI fingerprint check) will be done by the 1st week in May.......and that means we will officially be on the waiting list!!! YEA!!! We are so close! As of right now, there are 11 people on the baby girl waiting list so if that stayed the same we would go on the list at #12. Some people definitely might get on before us but hopefully some others will get referrals for their babies and come off the list! As of this moment, the waiting lists are moving at approx. 5 mos........so that is the wait we are looking at after we make the list (approximately, of course). God is once again showing us that He is in control and we have seen him provide in multiple ways this week....in unexpected ways....thru unexpected people......and we are so blessed!
As you pray this weeks, please pray for the families from our agency that have court dates on April 13th.....the court date is what gets assigned after you get your referral. Our agency sends a liasion to court and if you "pass court" then your baby or child/children is officially yours and you travel about a month later! So, needless to say, you REALLY want to pass court the 1st time....if you don't pass it means a 4-6 week delay waiting for a 2nd court date (you wouldn't pass if the judge wanted to see more paperwork or something like that.....it is not necessarily a big deal not to pass except that it means a longer wait which you can imagine is a huge deal). Several families have court dates on Monday so pray that they would be successful and can bring their kids home! There are also alot of families traveling to pick up their kids end of April/early May so pray for good travels for them. And as always, there are many families sitting on waiting lists waiting to see the child God has given them! Pray for them if we come to your mind!
Wow! That was more than I thought it would be! The rest of us are great.....Nathan is working hard trying to get ready for the summer....I am getting on top of the laundry again now that I don't spend the boys' entire nap time doing paperwork....Eli is huge and crazy and becoming a great big brother (finally!) which makes us so happy.....Abel is learning to talk more and has figured out how to make us all laugh so that is fun!
Thanks for caring about us and we hope you have a blessed day!!