I am disobedient

Well yesterday I did what I was told not to do by our home study agency but told to do by everybody else in the adoption world; I mailed our I600-A to USCIS without our home study. This paperwork is for us to get permission from homeland security to bring an orphan, or in our case orphans, into the U.S.A. They have to have your home study report before they can give you the form you need for your dossier,which is called I171-H, but they don't need it to make the appointment for your fingerprints, and since that appt. can take up to 4 weeks to make I figured I would go ahead and send in what we can to get our fingerprinting appt. and get that out of the way. I'm hoping that we will have our approval from DCFS by the time we get our fingerprinting appt., that would be like the cherry on top:)

So one more step closer to sending in our dossier. I have all but my employer letter, our home study agency's license and the I171-H (which is what we get from sending in the I600-A to USCIS) to be finished with our dossier. I'm so ready to be done with the paperchasing. Once we get the above three documents we then need to get them notarized then state authenticated and then we can get them sent to our placement agency to do the next step which is get it to Ethiopia so we can get on the waiting list. There is still a lot of time before that will happen, but it is still exciting. I figured that if everything goes the way it is supposed to with no hang-ups we will hopefully be traveling or getting ready to travel this time next year. WOW!! Fingers and toes crossed;)

Hooray!!!

So we got our home study report today and it is corrected and ready to be sent to DCFS. It will be sent either today or Monday depending on when Mike is able to get it signed by the director of ICM. It feels so good to know that this part of the process is done. Now all we have to wait on is DCFS to write of referral for adoption, which means that the state of IL has to okay us to adopt an orphan. Once we receive that letter then we will send it to the USCIS (Homeland Security) to approve us to bring an orphan into the U.S. Once we receive the appropriate paperwork from them then we can send in our dossier and be a waiting family. YEAH!!! But first things first, we have to get past DCFS, it can take up to 4 weeks or more to get the letter from them. So we wait. Adoption is full of waiting. I am not a patient person but I think I will have to become one, which will only help me with the joys of parenthood. Okay so many prayers that DCFS will get us the referral letter in record time!