A mix of emotions

These last few weeks have been super busy. Two weekends ago, Caleb was one of the flower boys for a friend of ours' wedding. We have gotten to know Lily because she was the au pair for some friends of ours, Lisa & Shail. In fact, the entire wedding party consisted of all 4 of their children, Caleb, and another little girl. They all looked totally adorable in their dresses and bow ties & cumberbunds. When I get around to uploading my photos, I will be SURE to put one here of Caleb. He was so handsome, oh my goodness!

I have been finishing up the painting left to be done in Madeline's room. At this point, I'm almost done- just need to paint the trim around the closet. Hooray. I don't mind painting. But there are just other things I'd rather be doing...like playing with my son or sewing. I was able to do some sewing this past weekend, so naturally that just made me giddy. I finished an adorable double layer twirl skirt. This skirt is so stinkin' cute with lots of girlie twirl power. Last week, I also picked up some more fabric from my fabric store and had Deb pick some up from hers. So I have lots more to sew before we travel to Ch*in@. In actuality, I think I have a lot more I want to sew than I think I will have time for. So I will just have to prioritize. *sigh*

On a paperwork note, our I-800A expires next week on Thursday, 4.29. We need to file a Supplement 3 to get this approval extended. We had our social worker come out at the end of March to do our visit to update our home study. I called yesterday to find out what was going on and was told it was approved but needed a signature. She will overnight it to us today, so we can send it on to immigration on Thursday. It has to be received by April 29th, or our expiration will expire, and we will have to start OVER. Not a happy prospect.

The other situation we are currently dealing with is waiting to get our I-800 provisional approval. Our agency overnighted it to immigration on April 6th. On Monday, we got a notice in the mail, stating that it was received on April 7th with a notice date of April 14th. Well, yesterday when I called our immigration officer to ask a question about our Supplement 3, she explained to me that our I-800 wasn't logged into their system yet. And if it's not logged in, she can't approve it. She said she HAS to approve it before our I-800A expires on April 29th, or she will have to wait for our Supplement 3 to be approved. If you're not familiar with the paperwork process, suffice it to say this would delay our travel big time! If our I-800 is not approved by our deadline, then we have to wait to receive our fingerprint appointment for our Supplement 3, which won't be until some time at the end of MAY! Only after our fingerprints have cleared, can our officer approve both our Supplement 3 and our I-800. So instead of heading to Ch*in@ at the end of June or early July, we'd be looking at travel in August.

Another big travel problem we face is that fact that Patrick has a colleague who is planning to travel out of the country twice this summer...once in early June and then again in July. And somehow we're supposed to squeeze an adoption trip to Ch*in@ in between them. It's really like asking for the impossible. If we can't go to Ch*in@ when we think we'll go, we will have to wait til his colleague is done with both his trips. And that would really stink. I was just sick to my stomach about all this yesterday. Haven't we waited long enough? I am so thankful to have a husband who is constantly reminding me that God is holding us in His hands right now. I do believe it. But this adoption journey has tested me in so many ways. I just don't know how much more I can handle. Only 9 more days (including today) to get our I-800 approved and move forward as planned.....otherwise..... *sigh*