Thursday, March 28, 2013

REFERRAL!!

OFFICIALLY presenting Samuel Alejandro Sibley, currently 18 months old and waiting for us at FANA!






He doesn't look the happiest here, but we know he has a beautiful smile so we will look forward to seeing that face soon!

Ted and I spent yesterday afternoon reading through all of his entire translated file and double checking our I800, I864W, and DS230 documents. Our I800 will be on its way today for a delivery to the lockbox in TX on Monday. At that point, we will wait for a few more weeks for our provisional approval. At that time, we will finalize our travel plans while his information is sent to the US Embassy in Colombia.

We are planning our trip to Chicago for our visa interviews on April 24-26 for the 2 days Ted is off from work.

6 weeks may seem like a long time to wait, but since this little guy is still a bit of an adoption "surprise" to us, we still have a lot of work to do around here for his arrival! I know that it is going to fly by. Eek.

Please pray for us and Lucas and Ben as we move into this time of transition. Now that he is officially officially intended to be ours and all of that dossier work I did has the green light, we can now truly get excited!!! To have 3 BOYS. AGES. 5. AND. UNDER.

It's about to get really real up in here.


I leave you with a snapshots of my daily life, because Ben decided to potty train himself this past month and we dance around in our new underpants to celebrate our new "big boy" lifestyle.



Be blessed everyone!!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Baby Sam's Progress: Waiting for Referral...

So our papers were received on Wednesday, February 28th at Fana. I haven't updated because we had expected to see a referral by now and were just waiting. It has been 3 weeks and some days, and as of now we are still waiting to hear news of our "official" referral from Fana.

So what does this mean, exactly?

Sam's "official" referral is all of his documents translated into English. This involves the original relinquishment documents and his report from Fana, as well as his medical file (which I basically already have). At that time Ted and I will officially write our acceptance of his referral, and use those documents to submit the I800 immigration application, along with a few other things. Once that I800 application is filed, we are able to book plane tickets once we receive the provisional approval. That usually happens about 3-5 weeks after you file it.

As I am sure you could guess, we are anxiously awaiting this next hoop to jump through. This will give us some indicator, give or take a few weeks in either direction, of when we will be flying to meet sweet Sam. Until then, we wait. We have fulfilled everything we are able to do on this end for him.

Please pray in the week to come, that we will receive his referral, or at least some news as to when they plan to formally review our documents and hopefully issue it. We know the folks at Fana work very hard for the kids and that they love Sam very much, so we will trust them that the right timing will come.