More movement!

This morning I woke up to a great email from the US Embassy in New Delhi! 

We have Article 5! 

That was our last US approval...now we wait for NOC. This will likely take several months (anywhere from 3-9 months), but we are believing in God for a miracle to occur so we can get NOC quickly. 

Please keep us in your prayers! 

Everything is AWESOME.

We've been planning a fun family vacation for a while now. Since we have two Lego loving little guys, we decided that Legoland would be perfect for them! Boy, were we right!

We went on this trip for a few special reasons. First to make some fun family memories, but also it was to celebrate Maxden's 4th birthday (which is not until the 24th) / Christmas present for the boys / "Maya-moon"(Our last planned vacation as a family of four before we bring home a sweet SISTER! Pregnant people get babymoons, so we had a Maya-moon!). 

We left on Thursday morning and went to visit with family. Thankfully, my grandparents and Mark's Lola and Aunt and Uncle, live about 15 minutes away from each other so we got to see everyone!

Here are the boys with my grandparents and Mateo!

Another exciting moment of our trip was visiting with a Facebook friend that I've met through the Ind*a adoption groups. I've mentioned it before, but the people I am meeting on our journey to Maya are just amazing. I'm so thankful for all of them! So, when I found out that Michelle who is also adopting a daughter from the SAME region as our SweetP only lives 10 minutes away from my grandparents house, we made a plan to meet up. It was so awesome to meet her sweet family and just share our hearts for our girls and adoption.

The next morning we woke up bright and early and drove through rain on our way to the hotel.

The boys were so excited about the hotel. This place is like every kid's dream! Seriously. Legoland Hotel wins the prize. The giggles and excitement of our boys was enough to just make my heart melt! I wondered if staying at the hotel would be worth it and it totally was. Isn't our pirate room the cutest? So many amazing details!

After we were done checking in, we got to enter Legoland before the general public (another hotel perk!)

All the gluten and dairy free options both at the hotel and the park made for one VERY happy boy! Those apple fries were amazing!

Can you tell who the goofball of the family is?!

The Holiday Snow days were so much fun! This part of the park was all decorated for Christmas and had so many fun things for the boys to do. They loved playing in the snow, throwing snowballs and sledding!

My kids hate taking pictures. Trying to get them to look at the camera and smile is like pulling teeth. This is generally the face I get from Maxden when I ask him to smile...

Mason loved the endless supply of Legos all over the hotel!

Both boys were exhausted by the end of the day. Nighty night little pirates!

We had no idea that Mason would turn out to be our little rollercoaster junkie! He went on every coaster that he could multiple times.

On Saturday, we made the boys take a nap so they could stay awake for the Christmas festivities later on in the night.

 The boys were SO thrilled to head back into the park to meet the "real" Emmett!

We had such a great time making memories with these two little dudes.

I-800!

Well, there was a reason for all the peace I was feeling! If you can remember, we've been a little nervous about getting a RFE (request for evidence) before getting our next approval for multiple reasons. First of all, we were told by our agency that it was likely due to the current trends they were seeing with other cases. Second, part of me thought it would be silly to believe that this one part of the process would go smoothly when we've had a little hiccup in literally every step of the process thus far.

However, when I mailed that piece of paper into USCIS, I had a crazy amount of peace but I still struggled daily between feeling like, "Nothing is impossible with God! I am believing we won't get a RFE and we'll be approved quickly." to "God, please help me to get through this next setback, because it would be silly for me to think we wouldn't have one."

Welcome to the crazy thought process of an adoptive mama!

Well, on Tuesday, December 8th as I was walking to the mailbox I had a feeling there would be something from USCIS in there and sure enough, there it was. Except I didn't know what was inside. RFE or good news of our approval. I tore into it right at the mailbox and realized it was good news!!

We were I-800 approved!! 

I quickly got home and emailed our family coordinator to get the information to complete the next step of the process which is filling out the DS-260 form. The next morning, I woke up early to call USCIS and get the information I needed to complete the form and had everything done before 8am! 

Now we are waiting for Article 5 approval. We should have this very soon!

So, I know many of you are wondering what's next?!

The exciting thing is once we get article 5, we're completely done with all of the US approvals! Now we move on to waiting on Ind*a. 

We still need:

NOC (No Objection Certificate)

Court affidavit (this is a specific document required for the region SweetP is in)

Travel for court

Return home and wait for written orders

Travel for pick up!!

Although this sounds like we will be traveling soon, each of these steps has the potential of taking a few months. With that being said, we have some specific prayer requests:

1. Please be praying that her file would be sent from the region she is in, to C*RA IMMEDIATELY so they can begin to process NOC. There have been issues with files actually being sent which obviously causes a huge delay. 

2. Pray that NOC would be issued quickly and we would receive our court affidavit in a timely manner so we can finally have a date to meet our girl and take her to court!

3. Please be praying for our family and for Maya as we begin to get closer to actually bringing her home. That God would be preparing her heart to be a part of our family .

God is so good. He has continued to move mountains for us and we have faith that He will bring our girl home to us soon! We can't wait to love on you SweetP!  

Hope.

The past couple of weeks have been wonderful. Maybe I was distracted with putting together our homeschool group Thanksgiving party, cleaning my house for Thanksgiving brunch with family, or decorating for Christmas. Either way, I've just felt a huge peace about the adoption. I am confident that this peace comes from the Lord, so those of you who are praying for me and my sanity, I can't begin to thank you enough. 

As we were decorating our Christmas tree, I pulled out an ornament that we bought last year from another Ind*a mama. 

It brought back so many memories. This time last year, we were still trying to finish our home study. I was completely frustrated because things were NOT going according to my timeline. Time. Was. Dragging. So. Slowly. BUT, we had hope. Hope in Jesus that all the delays we were experiencing were for a purpose. Hope for the future, knowing that soon we would see the face of our daughter.

This year, I can look back and rejoice. Ummm, where did last year go?!?! Those delays WERE for a purpose. We were approved and matched in His timing. Not a moment too late, or too soon. This year, we have hope that Sweet P will get to hang this ornament on our tree next year. But for now, her big brothers will hang it for her. 

This Christmas season, I feel a little torn..part of my heart is in Ind*a. I think about and pray for our girl so many times throughout the day. I wish she could be here with us. But, I am also reminded that I have two little boys and a husband right here in my home who need me.  We are doing our best to make memories as a family of four while we are patiently waiting for our beautiful girl to come home. 

We can't wait to see what December has in store for us! Keep praying for our I-800 and Article 5 approval. They would make excellent Christmas presents. 

The long awaited documents.

What a roller-coaster ride we've been on since May.

The waiting has been unbelievably hard. I've pretty much experienced every emotion possible. Excitement. Worry. Fear. Doubt. Joy. Frustration. Happiness. Love. Peace. Anxiety....you name it, I've probably felt it.

At one point we were told the documents were on their way. A month later...no documents. We came to find out it was a mistake and they were never actually sent. The morning I found out that news, I had a good cry.

I can't even begin to tell you the excitement and relief I felt when I saw the FedEx truck drive up..and STOP at my house on Monday, November 2nd. Finally. The documents were here.

I promise Max was super happy too, he just wasn't into taking photos! 

My plans were to get everything signed, notarized, apostilled, copied, and mailed back to our agency that same day. Lofty goal? Yes. But I was determined. I wasn't going to let there be ANY delays on our end of the process.

As I started going through the documents, I became both excited and overwhelmed. My thoughts bounced back and forth between, "Wow! I can't believe I actually have original documents that someone from her orphanage really filled out!" and, "Wow! I have SO much to do and the day is already half way over!".

I met Mark and our moms (who dropped everything at the last minute to be witnesses for us) at the bank so we could start getting everything notarized. We were moving along through everything and it was so exciting! Going though her medical and child study reports and having to write "We accept P____ as our daughter." across the bottom of every page was surreal. And then, we hit a little roadblock. Our bank couldn't notarize some of the forms that we needed. The problem with that was that we were hoping to take all our notarized documents to the Secretary of State's office to be apostilled, but we needed them notarized first. So, after a good cry outside the bank (I do that a lot these days...adoption hormones are real people!) we headed to the UPS store to try to get these documents notarized...and had no luck. Seriously. The day that was supposed to be full of joy and excitement, was overshadowed by roadblocks, tears, and a HUGE stress headache.

On Tuesday I must have called every. single. mobile notary in the Phoenix area and got the same answer. "No, those forms cannot be notarized." So, after speaking with our family coordinator, we decided to just send the documents at a later date when we return our court affidavit back to Ind*a. The boys and I made a trip downtown to get the rest of the documents apostilled and as she got started, there were two documents that she wasn't able to issue the apostille. I literally laughed when she told me (better than crying right?!). So, back to the bank we went to get it RE-notarized.

Wednesday, we went back downtown with the papers and were finally able to get what we needed! Praise the Lord!

On Thursday morning, we sat as a family with the documents in our kitchen, all ready to be sent back to our agency and prayed over those precious papers. (You guessed it...I cried. Surprise, surprise!)

Friday, we learned that we needed to update some documents in order for our full dossier to be sent to Ind*a. They were easy updates, but still frustrating. We also found out that we needed to wait to apply for our I-800 until we heard back from our family coordinator who was waiting to hear back from USCIS. Another roadblock. Eventually, we were able to send in our application and everything arrived last week. Hopefully we'll have I-800 approval by early December!

If you're still reading, you're a trooper.I promise to start updating the blog more regularly so I don't pour months worth of events and emotion into one long post!

You would think that I would know this by now, and that I would have this life lesson down perfectly at this point, but I know God is still trying to teach me that I am NOT in control. He is.

You see, we make all these marvelous plans for our day and our for our lives, but in reality, we need to learn to not hold on so tightly to these plans or expectations. We need to realized that God has already written HIS plans for OUR life long before we even thought about those plans. And His plan, is always better. We may not see it on this side of Heaven, but I am confident that one day those "roadblocks" will be revealed to us and we will understand exactly why they needed to happen.

We're fighting for you, Sweet P. You are so loved and we absolutely DO accept you as our precious daughter.

Unpublished drafts and a bit of movement.

I cannot tell you how many times I have come to write a blog and either leave a post as a draft and never hit publish for whatever reason, or just can't even find the words to say.

Today, I'm  publishing a couple of those drafts, They are part of the story and I don't want to leave them out. This particular post was a great reminder to myself since I'm pretty much feeling the same exact way today...one month later.

Thursday, August 20th 

Last time I posted, Ind*a was in the process of making some major changes. Those changes have supposedly been implemented, but things are slow going. Big changes like this will take time to get everything running smoothly. When these changes are in place, they will be wonderful for the adoption process. It is extremely encouraging to know that Ind*a is working to put their precious children in forever families.

However, we have been waiting in silence since May 4th. Our sweet P's medical documents were not available on the database when we were matched with her. Usually, when you are matched with a child, you at least get to see electronic versions of these documents. We have nothing.

I am starting to struggle in this wait. People around me are making progress. They're moving forward with various approvals or steps in the process and I can't help but wonder, "Why not us?" Don't get me wrong, I am so happy for their movement, because no matter what, movement is movement and that is SO good for all of us, but it's still hard. Doubt, worry, fear, and impatience, are all trying to creep in. But then I remember those are not from the Lord. He brings me peace, patience, joy and hope (among other things).

This morning my alarm woke me up read my devotional entitled, "This is Not the End". I am convinced that it was written for me. Don't you love when that happens?!

"Are you living in the silent in-between?"

"Silence doesn't necessarily mean a setback. Maybe, just maybe we're being set up to witness a miracle."

"In the silence, wait well. Pray. Trust. Mourn. There's no shame in that. But keep hoping. Sunday, your Sunday is coming."

"Can you think of an instance in you life when waiting on God's perfect timing proved his plans were better than yours?"

_________________________________________________________________________________

I never finished that post, but man, I needed to be reminded of the words that I wrote a month ago. I know God's timing is perfect. I know in my heart that He already has everything planned and that our little sweet P will come home when God has planned, but I struggle. Honestly, I wanted her home yesterday! :)

September 1st we received some good news from our coordinator. One of the documents that we have been waiting for was uploaded to the database! We were able to view a very limited medical file electronically which allowed us to officially accept the match! A few days later we were told that the original documents were actually on their way from Ind*a. 

I was ecstatic. Finally after all these months of waiting we would have her original documents and be able to move forward in this process...

The following post never got published either...because I am just terrible at blogging! This one I wrote in honor of our girl's third birthday:

September 17th, 2012

I don't know what I was doing on this particular day in 2012, but on the other side of the world, another woman gave birth to a precious little girl. The little girl that will call me mommy.

This past week my mind and emotions have been on quite the little rollercoaster ride. I've been thinking about P's birthmother a lot. I don't know who she is, but she is most certainly being lifted up in prayer. I wonder if she too, is thinking about the same little girl. Maybe we share the same thoughts. "What is her personality like, what does her voice sound like, does she smile, is she happy, healthy, what is she doing right now, etc..."

I'm sure September 17th was an emotional day for her birthmom (birthparents?). P was born with a medical condition that required surgery as a newborn (right now we are not able to give too many details about her, or her medical condition).

However, here's the truth that I do know about that day. 

I know that God knit her together in her mother's womb. Every. Single. Part.

The scary parts.

The beautiful parts. 

The hard parts.

I know that little sweet P is fearfully and wonderfully made.

I know that God was and still is holding her in the palm of his hand. 

I know that God has a purpose for her life.

I know that God has set her apart.

Today our little princess turns THREE years old. That in itself is a celebration. 

So, Happy Birthday to our little Maya sweet P.

We love you already!

This weekend we will celebrate her birthday with our family and have Indian food from our favorite restaurant! 

_________________________________________________________________________________

Our celebration this past weekend was great. Someday, we will show her pictures from the 3rd birthday party that we had for her before she came home. We hope she will eventually understand just how loved she is.

Now that you're all caught up, today, we are still waiting for her original paperwork and I am still struggling with being impatient, but that's nothing new! ;) We have been told that they are on the way, so I will just have to trust and wait...

I am praying that BIG things happen this week.

August 1st

Right now as I type this blog post it is August 1st in Ind*a.

I haven't posted too much on our adoption because there's not really too much to say! We're still waiting for out little Sweet P's original documents to be mailed to us so we can officially accept the match.

But, there is other exciting Ind*a news...

About two weeks ago, I posted this on IG

It's about 5:30am Tuesday morning in Ind*a. I'm praying for the hearts of those waiting...the sweet babies waiting for their mommies and daddies, and the mommies and daddies who are pushing through the paperwork or enduring the silence. I'm believing that Jesus will move mountains this week even though I may not see progress. I am trusting that while I am waiting HE is working all things together for good. #internationaladoption #salongafamilyadoption

A photo posted by Meg Salonga (@megsalonga) on Jul 20, 2015 at 5:04pm PDT

Although there were no specific mountains moved in our case, He was definitely moving mountains. In fact, the mountains being moved were completely new adoption guidelines that take effect TODAY in Ind*a. 

The Central Authority has made some big changes. Going forward, families will be matched not by their agency caseworker, but by C*RA (the Ind*an Central Authority). Obviously, since we are already matched, this will not effect us. They also eliminated an often lengthy step in the process which is the state level approval (ARC). The guidelines state that C*RA will issue NOC (federal level approval) in a MUCH quicker time frame than the previous adoption guidelines. The court process is also supposed to be reduced to 2 months (it had averaged 2-5 previously).

Here is an overview of the new process:

Match Acceptance (we are still here)

I-800

Article 5

NOC

Court

Passport

Travel

The new adoption guidelines are very promising, but the fact is, implementing new guidelines is a lot of work and it does have the potential to cause a bit of  a delay. Please be in prayer for C*RA as they work to put these new time frames and guidelines into effect. Pray that time frames would be taken seriously and delays will be avoided while the new guidelines are put into place.

We are so thankful that Ind*a is realizing that these children need to be in forever families. The fact that they are pushing to process adoptions in a much more timely manner shows they understand that the process is taking far too long. 

We really appreciate your prayers for our adoption and ask that you please continue to pray we receive those original documents so we can be one step closer to bringing home our little Sweet P! 

Project Life {week 27}

I'm still going strong with Digital Project Life! Seriously, I don't know why I didn't switch sooner! For me, eliminating the step of having photos printed was HUGE. 

Week 27 was a fun one! Mason read his first story on his own. He's becoming such a great little reader. The boys are loving our school time and are really enjoying all the great Sonlight stories that we've been reading together. We also headed up north to my parent's cabin in Happy Jack! The boys had an excellent time playing and exploring outside in the cooler weather.

Anyway, here's the left side of the spread...

and the right!

We had such a great time escaping the Phoenix heat and heading up north. So many memories were made that I just couldn't fit them all in a page, so I made an extra spread! 

We can't wait to go back!

Project Life {week 26}

I still can't get over how amazingly easy this Digital Project Life stuff is!

Last week was a good one. Lots of memories being made and documented. We were able to see some more pictures of our little one last week and they just MELTED our hearts.Unfortunately, we can't share her photos on social media, so you'll have to imagine her sweet little face under the big LOVE sticker! ;)

I think the amazing part about our photo album is that when our little Sweet P comes home, she'll be able to see that she was part of our life even before she got here. That we loved her, thought about her, prayed for her, and already considered her family.

With that being said, I am trying my best to remember that I have two little lives right here before my very eyes (three, if you count my handsome hubby) to be pouring my time, energy, and love into. I don't want to be so consumed in the adoption process that I miss out on these special moments as a family of four. It's a tough balance to maintain though when a piece of your heart is about 9,000 miles away.

Well, I've rambled enough. Here it is, week 26 of our Project Life album:

Project Life {Week 25}

Some of you may know how much I adore project life. I started documenting last year and it felt SO good to finally be printing my own photos and actually putting them in an album.

This year I've noticed that I've been slacking when it comes to printing photos which causes me to be behind in my album. I'm also not that great when it comes to planning out my layouts, so I end up printing waaay too many photos than I actually need which isn't a terrible thing, but not super cost effective. I'm also really terrible at filling out  the journaling cards. I always write stuff down in my planner, but since I'm bad at planning out my layouts, I just always think "I'll journal later." Ya, not really working out for me. 

I needed a solution to continue Project Life without wasting money and getting super behind. Luckily, there is such a thing as DIGITAL Project Life. I think I have found a new love. Last night I actually completed last week's spread...complete with journaling! I love that I can visually see everything laid out and can make changes topictures...without even printing them.

My plan is to print each page on 12x12 paper every couple of months and add them in my existing PL album. At first I was annoyed that my album would be half physical and half digital, but then I realized at least it will get finished. The memories will be documented. That's all that matters! 

The fun part is I can easily share my spreads with everyone! 

So, here it is...week 25:

Oh hey, dossier.

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist a cheesy title. 

For those of you not familiar with adoption, I'd like to introduce to you the dossier (dos-ee-ey).

Dossier is a fancy French word for pain in the booty...not really, I kid! Basically, a dossier is a compilation of a bunch of authenticated and translated legal documents which are used to process an adoption. We had to gather birth certificates, medical exams, bank letters, financial information, tax forms, employment verification, police clearance, family photos, and a bunch of other stuff that I won't totally bore you with. Gathering and creating all the documents needed is definitely a lot of work. These papers literally took some serious blood (lab tests), sweat, tears, and major prayers.

It was SUCH a relief to finally be done collecting everything and begin making all the necessary copies to send it off to our agency (who then sends it to the orphanage)! In order to send the dossier to our agency, we needed to make 5 additional copies of our original. That's A LOT of paper!

Well, the good news is that a copy of our dossier arrived at our little Sweet P's orphanage late last week! (Sidenote: I figured out the cutest little nickname for our girl that incorporates her beautiful Indian name! She will still be Maya, but I also want her current name to be a part of her when she comes home. That's a whole separate blog post!) 

Please pray with us that the people at the orphanage who will essentially be "meeting" us on paper, will see just how perfectly Sweet P will fit into our family. We are also praying that they will send us electronic versions of her medical reports AND the originals so we can really get the process going. My mama heart is also dying to know her height and weight! It's so hard to try and guess how big she is just from pictures! Right now, we are stuck waiting for these documents. So when you think of us, please lift us up in prayer. We would really appreciate it!

We are MATCHED!!!

The day has come! I have been waiting to finally share this amazing news with you!

We have been matched AND we have match approval!

The Lord is so faithful. We now get the joy of looking staring at the sweetest face that we have been praying for daily for almost a year now. We loved this girl before we even saw her face, but now our love for her is even deeper. 

She is real.

She is beautiful.

She is chosen.

She is loved.
She is Maya.

On May 1st, about 24 HOURS after we were approved on the database to be matched with a child, we got THE CALL! I was completely shocked that it happened so soon! We took the weekend to pray about sweet little "P" (her beautiful Indian name remains a secret, but this will be her middle name) because there were a few unknowns about her "special need". We had a teeny tiny bit of information and a few pictures. That's it. But, after a lot of praying and conversation, we felt such peace about moving forward. We really felt so strongly that she was our daughter that we emailed our caseworker on Saturday and told her to we wanted to be matched with her. She matched us first thing Monday, May 4th. There are so many amazing stories and evidences of God's fingerprints that are all over this (again, I'll eventually be able to share, but we aren't able to right now). In the meantime, we have been waiting for match approval before we shared the big news on our blog and social media! I have been DYING to actually publish this post...it's been a draft for quite a while!

So now, I am finally able to hit that "publish" button!! Yesterday we got the approval needed to really begin the process of bringing our daughter home!

Unfortunately, we aren't able to share her sweet face with you or any information abut our precious girl on social media at this point in the process, so you'll have to trust us when we tell you that she is the SWEETEST little 2.5 year old South Ind*an princess. :)

I'm sure there will be a lot of questions after this blog post. And don't worry, I'll go back and share the referral story here in the next few weeks!

But, I'll clear up some common questions right now:

When will you get to bring her home?
Well, we aren't sure. Not anytime soon though. Adoption in Ind*a is a long process. Maya is also in a state that requires two trips. Both Mark and I need to be present for court, then return for pick up. We're thinking that court and pickup will be toward the end of 2016.

What's next?
Right now we are waiting for her orphanage to send us the official referral documents. Once we get those, we'll sign them and send them back. That will get the process rolling on the Ind*a side! The basic overview is:

ARC (state level approval)
NOC (federal approval)
Travel for Court date
Verbal court orders
Written court orders
Orphanage applies for daughter's passport
Return for pickup
Home Sweet Home!

Yes, we have a long way to go.

As always we have a few specific prayer requests:

• Obviously, continue to be in prayer for little Maya "P"
• Pray that we would receive the referral documents quickly.
• Pray that those reviewing our dossier would see how perfectly this little girl will fit into our family and just how much she is loved.
• That we would keep our eyes fixed on Jesus throughout this process. 

He's FIVE!

I can't believe my baby boy is 5 years old already! What a blessing he is to our family!

Mason LOVES swimming so naturally, we thought we'd have a pool party for our little guy! Well, the day before his party the temperature was in the low 70s and raining...for us Phoenicians, that's like winter, and not really conducive to swimming! Luckily, I found a great deal on a bouncy house on Craigslist to save the party!

I loved all the bright colors Mason picked out for his party. 

Even though it was too cold for swimming, the kids had a BLAST jumping...

and playing with water marbles...

and blowing bubbles!

Mason with his buddy Travis. Such sweet friends. 

 Max thought these were for him...luckily he has the sweetest brother who said he could have them! 

We had so much fun celebrating our big boy!

Here's a fun little survey so you can learn more about Mason! Some of his answers were a little odd, and yes...this kid is ALL about The Avengers!