Home Study finally completed!!!!

Geez, can't believe it has been over a week since I last posted; I've been meaning too, but you know how it goes. Before I share our news, I just want to say CONGRATULATIONS to Melanie and to Amber who had baby girls this month. Both Ashleigh and Veronica are so cute, as only newborns can be.

Today, I got home from work and found the following e-mail waiting for me:

Good news, I received your FBI cards and also your last ISP and CANTS clearances. Your study is being sent to CIS trackable mail from CHI. 2 copies are also in route to you.
If you haven't already fingerprinted with CIS, they will invite you to fingerprint on receipt of the study. You would then get an invitation to fingerprint within the next 2 weeks. If you already were invited to print by CIS, then you are all set. In about 8 weeks you should receive your immigration approval, I 171 Contact me then so I can add you to the wait list. Congratulations. Have a great weekend.

Well, I certainly will now; for those who aren't familiar with the adoption world this is great news, because it means we are finally getting close to being put on the waiting list by our agency. We just need USCIS (Immigration) to approve our petition to adopt a foreign orphan (the I-6ooA). Once they approve this we get the highly sought after 171-H, which gives us this approval and then our agency can place us on their waiting list. Once we are on the waiting list our agency is predicting a 12-15 month wait until we receive a referral for a baby. (We are open to either a boy or a girl, but the wait for a girl is much longer, 18-24 months, so we are expecting to be referred a boy!) They will then let us know a few months before they think we may get a referral to start compiling our dossier. (I will talk about the dossier in a future post.) Things are getting so much more real now. We are actually going to be parents!!!

Tomorrow, we will be getting our taxes done at 9, so hope and pray for us that we get a decent refund, since we will be having to pay our largest fee so far, once we get our 171-H. Hopefully in 8 weeks or less. It would be wonderful to be on the waiting list by June 1st, but we'll see! There has been a speed up at the Chicago office of the CIS; at their worse, there was a 12 week wait, but they have gotten much better. After our taxes are done, we will be heading up to Waukegan to get the fingerprints that our social worker mentions taken. (Yes another set of fingerprints.) I believe these are electronic fingerprints, so no ink is involved. I better get going I need to make sure all our tax information is in order and do a couple other things before heading to bed.