Whoever came up with the phrase "the waiting game," wasn't a very smart person. There is nothing fun or game-like about waiting. I guess if you are one of those people who hates games then maybe it makes a little sense, but not really.
Yes we are still waiting and my little experiment didn't work. I sort of got tired of having no "real news" to report about our adoption process besides the fact that we were "...still waiting." So I went on a bit of an adoption blog strike. It wasn't totally on purpose. I guess we just have been living life...in a good way. We had a great summer. We all celebrated birthdays, went camping, and got tans. The boys are now ages 5 and 3 with a Power Ranger birthday party in September to make it official.
Jhett Conley, aka Jaden, the Red Power Ranger - age 3
Ayin Travis (usually dressed as Jack, the Black Power Ranger) - age 5
Here's what's "new" with our adoption process. We submitted our initial international adoption application 2 years ago this November. Two years! We submitted our dossier to Uganda in July of 2013, almost 15 months ago. In November, we will be refiling for our USCIS I-600A, which is the petition to our government to bring an orphan in to the US. It only lasts 18 months, so we get to do it again before it expires. We updated our home study back in June since it was also over a year old. Our home study has to be current within 6 months when we refile for our I-600A, which we can do 90 days before it expires. So that gives us about a 2-3 week window to get our application in. If we would wait any longer, we would have to pay the fee to do yet another home study update....bleh! So, Lord willing, there won't be any delays with any of that paperwork.
One small (or HUGE) thing we did change in our paperwork was our openness to adopting 1-2 children instead of just 1. That doesn't mean we would definitely get a referral for 2 children (siblings), but it is a possibility! I think it's so exciting and Travis is more on the terrified end of that spectrum...haha. Going from 2 to 4 kids all under the age of 6 would be pretty loco. :) But fun, right?!
Wouldn't it be fun to add another kid or two to this pile? :) Thanks Amie Hansen Photography for the fun photo shoot yesterday!
A good lesson I have learned in all this waiting. Don't put life on hold. It's not fair to the children that are here with us now. Even though I think about and pray for our adoptive child/children daily, life keeps going. It doesn't mean I have forgotten, or that I care any less. It just means that I love my family, I love life, and I have to keep walking forward. I will say I look forward to the day where I can look back at the waiting and see it as a blessing. I already do at some small points here and there. But mostly I am just tired of waiting and don't see the need or the reason God has for it...yet. But just because I don't see the reason, doesn't mean there isn't one.
