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.