Dossier's (finally) out of my hands!

Our dossier was officially received by Holt. Hallelujah! I'll have to say I was a bit shaky and emotional as I put it all into the Fed Ex envelope and let some stranger drive off with it. But it's now much safer at Holt than sitting in our home.

Just an update

Just a quick or not-so-quick update on our progress. I recently talked with Holt and got a list of questions answered. Let me add that they have been WONDERFUL! in guiding us through this process. We are blessed to be partnering with them. They said there are currently 23 families in the India program and we are #15! So, we've made some small advancements. We were officially put on the waiting list in March when they received a draft of our homestudy. Well, then the Hague Treaty (agreement between various countries on international adoption standards) which was implemented in April added more paperwork which put a halt to submitting the final draft of our homestudy as well as our dossier. Fortunately, that has not affected our spot on "the list". There are many other factors that go into matching children with families such as age, health and if the adopting couple has NRI (non-resident Indian) status, so our standing of 15th place doesn't really tell us a whole lot - just that we're further along than we were before. :)

I told Holt that I had our dossier completed, but that I was waiting to send it because the guidebook says to mail the finalized homestudy with it, but they said I could just mail it anyway. YEAH! I can finally get it out of my hands!! Tomorrow's the big day!

Our homestudy should soon be finally complete as well. One of the new requirements that was implemented is that we have to complete child abuse clearances for each state we've lived in since age 18. That's 10 states between the 2 of us!

Our fundraising continues as well. We have made $1,000.00 doing rummage sales this summer. If I added up the hours put into it, I would suspect I've made maybe $2.00/hour, and I've wondered at times if it's been worth it. But God has provided and has worked in other creative ways through our rummage sales. Will and Logan have enjoyed counting back change and talking with customers, too.

And while I'm on the subject of those two booger boys, they have both learned to swim this summer! It was been so much fun to hang out with them at the pool and I'm so proud of them. Will heads off to 1st grade on Friday and Logan begins preschool in another 2 weeks. They both start soccer this week. This will be Logan's first official sport. He has his first practice this evening. It should be quite entertaining. Say a prayer for the opposing teams he'll be playing. I don't think they have any idea what they're up against!