What a year! 2024 has been full of personal and professional accomplishments. Highlights include: Jedd was recognized at an ophthalmology fundraising conference and I finished grad school. We welcomed multiple new baby pals into our lives (our friends' kids are seriously our absolute favorite people). And, we spent the summer wrapping up paperwork and training classes, making some significant progress on the adoption front...
{Pretend that second one is a Jedd in a suit for his conference presentation.... I don't have a photo, but Jedd's boss, Matt, if you're reading this, send me a copy lol #proudwife 😍}
We finally received word that our year-long Home Study was approved!! You my remember, this included interviews with our social worker, multiple social worker visits to scope out our house, psychological evaluations, medical testing and reports, so many training courses, and gobs of paperwork documenting our finances, household budget, and more. We were *VERY* happy to receive that big fat envelope with a notarized copy of our Home Study Report in the mail last week.
We completed our adoption agency's, Holt International, Parents in Process Training. Over the course of 8 weeks, alongside 4 other families adopting from Colombia, we learned all about:
Developmental milestones for kiddos, and how they may be the same or different for kids who've been adopted
Preparing for various trauma responses that are often unique or pronounced in kiddos post-adoption
How to handle questions about our kids or their adoption from friends, teachers, family, and even strangers
What our timeline is moving forward and what travelling to Colombia will look like (by far the most exciting class session!! 😁)
AND we submitted our I800-A application to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which is the government agency that oversees immigration to the United States.
USCIS uses this form to determine the eligibility and suitability of the applicant(s) who want to adopt a child from a Hague Adoption Convention country.
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Convention) is an international agreement amongst 100+ countries to regulate and safeguard international adoptions. The goal is to prevent child trafficking and ensure international adoption is in the best interest of the child.
We have also been continuing our intentionality with learning more about Colombian culture so that we can incorporate it into our families' lives 💛💛💙❤️
We're studying Spanish
We bought a Colombian cookbook. Both intimidating and exciting...
Reading books about Colombia! I highly recommend:*
To recap previous posts about what we've accomplished so far and what's next for us in the process….
Chose an agency ☑️
Determined which program is best for our family ☑️
Applied ☑️
Completed Home Study ☑️
Parent education courses completed ☑️
Prepare our dossier -- we're here!! 🎉
A dossier [pronounced “dah-see-ay” I learned… Jedd got a kick out of me unknowingly saying “dah-see-air”] is simply a collection of documents. Our dossier includes (not so simply) our approved Home Study, Apostilled copies of our birth and marriage certificates (don't even get me started on this process. Prime example of governmental inefficiencies….), letters from us, our medical providers, and employers; FBI Clearances, training certificates, photos, videos, and more. So if we seem a bit more unavailable than usual, this is where you can find us 😅
Begin the immigration process -- we're working on pre-approval via the I800-A application mentioned above! We need to get this approval before submitting our dossier. Average wait-time for this approval process is 2-3 months ⏳
Submit the dossier to Colombia for review
Receive “the call” letting us know we have a match
Review the kiddos' case file including their history or background (if known)
Upon a successful match, we proceed with immigration process
Travel to Colombia to meet our kids and spend ~5 weeks in country!!
Travel home and finalize the adoption <3
Post-placement adoption reports and visits with our social worker
While we wait, we continue to work on building our adoption fund through saving, side-hustles, and fundraising. We cannot thank you, our whole community, enough for supporting us throughout this process -- emotionally and financially! We're so grateful to have so many people in our corner.
If you are interested in supporting our adoption fund, we are gearing up for our next fundraiser starting November 29: a silent auction & raffle ⤵️
If you made it this far, God bless you. Thank you for following along, thank you for caring for us, thank you for sharing our Instagram and Facebook posts, thank you for participating in our fundraisers, thank you for asking how we're doing, and thank you for your prayers ❤️
*Full disclosure, if you purchase any of the books I recommended via the links above, we receive a portion of sales.
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