Pinch me.

Really. I must be dreaming!

Today started out like any other day. There are some days where the adoption process weighs more heavily on my heart than others, but today I was just going about my day as usual. We happened to be right in the middle of a reading lesson when my phone rang. I knew that area code. It was our family coordinator.

Friends, we have NOC (No Objection Certificate)!!!!!!

What a flood of emotions!! Honestly, I think I'm still in shock about it! I was really expecting to wait quite a while for this approval. We were told to prepare to wait AT LEAST 3-9 months. But you know what?! God crushed those time lines and moved some serious mountains!

I am amazed at God's faithfulness. I am at a loss for words to describe just how good He is to us. Even in the times when I felt weak, hopeless, or upset, I knew God was walking this journey right alongside us.

So, now that we have NOC, we finally get to make and send a photo book to the orphanage for our girl to see. Once she gets this book she will finally know that she has a family: a mommy, a daddy, and two brothers who have prayed for her daily and love her deeply!

Here's how you can continue to pray for our family:

1. Photo book: I know it seems silly to ask for prayer for a photo book, but our prayer is that her caregivers will share this book with her. That they will help prepare her for what is coming. That she would feel joy and peace and excitement when she sees our faces!

2. Court: Now our case is all up to the court. Right now we are praying that God would continue to move in mighty ways and we would receive our affidavit very quickly. We are praying for all the people that will be involved in our case: lawyers, advocates, judges, whoever. That they would be sympathetic toward adoption and they would move cases quickly.

3. Maya: As usual, pray that she is being well taken care of and loved on until we can wrap our arms around her. (Can. Not. Wait. For. That. Day!!! Eeeeeeek!)

Waiting (yes, again).

This Christmas, I experienced feelings I never imagined I could feel. You see, I LOVE Christmas time and would love to seriously slow time down during that season. However, this year felt so strange to me. Part of me still did want to freeze time. I loved doing Truth in the Tinsel with the boys during our homeschool time, the Jesse tree at night, and all the fun Christmas traditions that we have to fill our month full of great memories. But, the other part of me knew something was missing: our daughter. Last year, she was just a thought. Sure, we loved her and were excited to day dream about her,  but we didn't know her yet. This year, she is so real. She has a face, a name, and a place even deeper in our hearts. I found myself  torn between focusing on the present, and wanting to fast forward to traveling to Ind*a to get our girl so we can all be together. With that being said, I don't think I've ever been so excited to take down Christmas decorations in our house before. Normally I dread it, but this year it gave me so much excitement! Taking down those decorations meant time was moving forward. Each day brings us closer to our SweetP and that is exciting! 

When we started this journey in the summer of 2014, (wow, where does the time go?!) we thought that maaaaybe we'd have a little girl in our arms by now. 

So far, 2016 has already been quite the rush of emotions. I began the year really thinking we'd see some major movement in our case because a few other families in similar stages in the process saw movement. That first week of the new year was hard. Each day I was feeling less and less hopeful that we'd be lucky enough to move forward in the process so quickly. 

This past Sunday at church (because God has a way of reminding us at the most perfect times), during our prayer meeting and the sermon I was reminded of SO many great truths and promises. 

God knows. 

My God sees me. He sees my longing for Maya. He sees her too. I wanted her home yesterday, but He has something far better planned than I can ever imagine.

He has a plan. 

He is using this whole process from miscarriages to adoption to form me into the woman that I could never be on my own terms if things were going smoothly and "easy". 

He made provision. 

He will make a way (He always has), and in the meantime, I will cling to His word because it gives me life.

So, you may be wondering where we're at in the whole process and when we'll get to bring Maya home. Welcome to the club, we're wondering the same exact thing! ;) But, here's what's left in the process:

• NOC - This is Ind*a's federal level approval that we are currently waiting for. This approval could come tomorrow, or nine months from now. We really don't have any idea. We're hoping sooner, rather than later!
• Court affidavit - This is unique to to P's region in Ind*a. Once we get NOC, we wait for the advocate and lawyers to draw up these documents. This could take months. Once we get them we'll sign them and send them back to Ind*a. Once those are back, we will find out a court date.
• Court - We will finally get to go and travel to meet our precious daughter and take to her court (again, unique to P's region) and get verbal approval from the judge. 
• Return to USA - I am dreading this part of the trip the most. The part where we will have to hug and kiss our girl and return home without her until we get the written orders from the judge.
• Pickup-Fly back to Ind*a, get our girl and finish the remainder of the adoption process in Delhi.

Here is how you can be joining us in prayer:

1. For approvals: The next step in the process is such a huge one. Please be praying for the committee that meets weekly to grant these approvals. We know that these approvals are being issued fairly consistently lately, but we also know there are cases that have been waiting for too long.  
2. For our SweetP: As we inch closer to the day that we bring our girl home, I know the grief and loss that she will face will be so hard. Please be praying that her heart is being prepared to receive so much love from a mommy, daddy, and big brothers. We also ask that you keep her health in your prayers, as well as the women who are taking care of her. 
3. For the whole court process: Though we are not in the stage of the process yet, we want to begin praying for whoever will be involved in our case. That everything will go smoothly and without delays.

"...And do not be grieved, for the JOY of the Lord is your strength." Nehemiah 8:10

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.