THE MATCH

Many of you saw our big announcement on Friday that things are finally happening on the adoption front for the Waltner household! We couldn't be more thrilled to share this news with family and friends as this November will mark FIVE YEARS since we decided to start the adoption process. If you read my last blog post from a year ago, you can get a quick update on our timeline over the last five years. 

Here's the picture I shared on facebook on Friday with our big announcement. 

I'll give you a quick update on what our adoption process has looked like over the past 9 months. We officially went "off hold" in January 2017 and were able to complete our home study update on January 24th. We then got busy working on our dossier (mountain of paperwork) for China. Our dossier was mailed on April 20th. It became offically logged in to China about a month later on May 23rd. 

We had a conference call with our international adoption specialist at this point talking about what special needs we were open to and which ones we weren't. (This was not a fun call by the way) Although necessary, it was so hard to check yes and no boxes for certain needs, because you want to be as open as possible while still considering how those needs could affect your whole family. On that call our social worker said the wait for a referral could be up to 15-18 months. Uhhh....that was a little disheartening to say the least. Hadn't we already waited long enough? Still, this is news we had to take in stride and trust God's timing for our family and for our adopted child. 

Thirty seven days after our dossier was LID (logged in dossier), China CHANGED their eligibility requirements for international adoption. The one change that could potentially have affected us was that children currently in the home must be at least three years old. With Paxx being about 10 months old at that time, we weren't sure if the new changes would affect us or if we would be grandfathered in since our dossier was in China and already LID. Our dossier still hadn't been through the review room, so that was the one thing that could hold us back at that point. I was trying not to freak out....would we have to wait 2 more years until Paxx was three and redo paperwork once again? Well within a few weeks we found out that our dossier had made it through the review room on July 27th. We were SO relieved that our process could continue and were so thankful that we just squeaked in under the old rules by THIRTY-SEVEN days.

Ok, we were good....now we just have to wait another year or so for a match. I can do this, I am the queen of waiting. On July 28th, ONE DAY after or dossier had been through the review room, we got a call from our social worker. Of course, I DIDN'T ANSWER MY PHONE. It was an out-of-state number, and I just assumed it was spam. Plus, I wasn't expecting THE CALL for another year and a half!  They tried calling me a few times, but I was busy getting a pedicure (something I never do). Finally an hour later, Travis calls me and asks, "Why aren't you answering your phone?! Our social worker has a file of a little girl she would like us to look at." WHAT?!  

We looked at her file and a few pictures they sent us. We were then able to ask her orphanage some questions to help get a few more pieces of the puzzle. It look three long weeks to hear back from the orphanage. They also sent a short 60 second video. At that point, we had an international adoption doctor review her medical file, pictures and video for us. She got back to us within a few days and gave us the ins and outs of what her special needs would potentially be. Like I said, there were only pieces to a puzzle, with a lot of missing ones. With so much we didn't know, could we still say yes? After many prayers, discussions, research and more prayers...we accepted the referral of JiaNi on August 30, 2017. We received our official LOA (letter of acceptance) on September 1st. 

Her Chinese name is Jia Ni. She is almost 4 years old. She seems to be so very sweet and is already dearly loved by her mom and dad. We are beyond excited to meet her and bring her home to her three brothers and loads of other family and friends. 

The next steps include paperwork, grant applications, a second set of questions for the orphanage, a care package sent to her (FUN!) and more paperwork. We were told it's likely that we will travel to get our girl in December or January. 

We have been overwhelmed these past few days and through the years with the support from all of you. It's almost surreal to finally be at this stage in the process. So many firsts to look forward to! Please continue to pray for us and for our sweet girl over these next few months especially.  

It likely won't be another year until my next blog post (yay for this), so stay tuned...more to come!

Oh, you probably want to see a picture, right?! :)