They are here!

I've been anxiously checking the mailbox every day this week, and today we received our appointments from USCIS to be fingerprinted! Our appointments are Monday, August 10th, at 8:00 am about 1.5 hours away in Fort Smith (the closest facility to us). So just a bit over a week from now! Looking back, when I'd follow the journeys of other families in the adoption process, the fingerprinting appointment was always a big step in my eyes; in most cases it meant those families were getting pretty darn close to being matched with their child. Now that Robby and I are officially at that same point in the process, it's difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that we are approaching the final leg of our adoption journey. As of right now, we are mere weeks away from mailing our dossier to Latin America (LA). That is almost crazy to me. If things keep moving right along as they have been, we should have it mailed no later than October 1st, if not before.


For those of you who need a little refresher: everything we have accomplished up until this point (and I do mean every.little.thing) has been for the purpose of compiling our dossier (the giant folder that contains all information about our life and family). When we mail our dossier to LA, we will be sending a letter of request to ask to adopt Lene, specifically (which is not what typically happens; most people send in their dossier to ask for general permission to adopt a child from LA and once they're approved, they have a list of children with files they can request to learn more about and, ultimately, ask for permission to adopt). It typically takes LA about three months to get back to a family once they've mailed their dossier. So if we mail ours mid-September, we're looking at hearing back about it around mid-December. If holidays fall within that three month time frame, the wait will be extended (LA takes holidays very seriously). When we receive a response it will be one of three things:

1. A denial to adopt (not uncommon)
2. An approval to adopt
3. A request for more work to be done in order to prove ourselves capable, in some capacity, to adopt Lene

The vast majority of the time, LA responds with the latter; they want every family to go way above and beyond to prove themselves capable. I respect that, but at the same time I admit that I can see how it is often times extremely frustrating for many families because they've already done so very much to prove themselves willing and able in the first place. However, whatever it takes to bring our daughter home we are willing to do.

Today I am rejoicing in another leap forward to finally having her here!