biometrics

We received our completed Home Study on January 13th.  We overnighted our i-600a to USCIS on the 17th.  We received our fingerprinting appointment on January 31st.  The problem is that our appointment wasn't until FEBRUARY 24th!  Almost a MONTH away!!  Well, I'm not always as patient as I probably should be.  Especially when it comes to this adoption process.  I've heard of LOTS of people "walking in" to USCIS to get their fingerprints taken BEFORE their actual appointment {as long as you have your appointment letter}.  We decided to risk it.  Kansas City is only about an hour away.  So, we tried it.  We were done in 15 minutes!  No problems!  The girl that did Jason's was a little snippy and mentioned to him that we were VERY early for our appointment.  But all in all we no problems at all!  Praise God!!!

Chinese New Year

Once a year we go down to Joplin to celebrate Chinese New Year with other families who have adopted children from Taiwan.  We love it!!  We had a wonderful time!

 they're my favorite

 Mia would NOT smile when her brother and sister weren't sitting with her.

 Madison's face painting

{FAITH in Mandarin and English}

 Madison pointing to Taiwan

Mason {very seriously} posing with the dragon he made

His Hands Blessings

You may remember JaiLi.  She was at His Hands in Taiwan the same time Mia was.

 August 2010 at His Hands in Taiwan

We met her when we were there to get Mia in August 2010.  In December 2010, JaiLi's parents got to go get her!  We met up with them when they were still on their way home.

December 23, 2010

Today we got to meet up with them again!  It was so much fun to see the girls together again!

They've both gotten so big!!

pretty girls

the dads trying to get them to hold hands and slide down

reading together

drink break

 hugging goodbye until next time

Home Study ✔

Our Home Study is done!  They're mailing it out to us!!!!!

{soon}

Today we got an e-mail from His Hands.  It was a "get your home study done because you will get your referral soon" e-mail!  WhooHoo!  Each day brings our closer to our baby!!

November

Today I took the kids to {try to} get some good pictures of them.  After bribes of candy if they cooperated and did well, I got several good ones.  :)

 {one of my favorites}

Adoption Workshop

Today we completed an all day workshop for our Home Study.  Whew!  This was our second time to sit through this same workshop.  We thought we'd be bored to tears, but we found that going through it a second time AFTER we have already adopted a child was beneficial.  We picked up on a lot of things that we missed the first time.  My sister watched the kids for us {THANK YOU, Melissa}.  Today was not as boring as we expected, but we were glad to have it behind us too.  :)