Fun mail

For those of you that aren't in the adoption world, this will be very confusing to you. Sorry about that. The last set of fingerprints we had to do was for our I600A. The I600A is "Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition." Basically this step preapproves the prospective adoptive parents to bring an “immigrant” orphaned child into the United States. The approval can take up to 3 months. It isn't that we wondered IF we would get approval, it was just a matter of WHEN. One of those fun legal things to do. Well, yesterday I got our Favorable Determination Letter (FDL) in the mail. I was in such disbelief I had to fax our case worker at our agency to see if it was really the approval we were waiting for. It took 2 weeks!!!!! It was fun to look at it as the letter was also sent to the National Visa Center. (Once we are matched with a child, he/she will have to get a Visa in order to travel) It was also sent to the capital of Ethiopia. FUN!!! :) It doesn't seem possible that we got this already!!! We do have to pay attention b/c some of it expires in 15 months and some in 18 months. More than likely we will have to go to Sioux Falls to have our fingerprints done again since our wait time has increased. Thankfully the first renewal of fingerprints is free. Our case worker said that we have all paperwork completed until we get a referral. Now we continue to wait in hopes that we get matched up sooner than later. I was actually a bit disheartened after hearing the wait time up-ed to 12-18 months just to get a referral. It didn't take long b/4 God gave me a sense of peace. I was doing some reading the other night. I was able to get a little bit excited over all of this. It is so far away yet and seems so out of reach that it is hard to be super excited! God gave me peace and reassurance that it would all work out in His time.

In the meantime, I have day care secure. :) That is a tough issue in a town our size. We have 2 in home day cares. The day care we took our girls to is no longer open. :( We have a lady on our block that does day care. This would be ideal. She said she would have room for us. Since they up-ed the waiting time, I was concerned that we'd be out of luck. I didn't feel it was fair to make her hold a spot for us. It is hard to plan day care when we don't know when or what age, etc...Again she told me that she would have a spot whenever the time came. :)