Adoption - One Step Closer & Isabelle's One Year Gotcha Day

Although our adoption process feels like it's moving at a snail's pace, we're finally one step closer. Despite paying for a 2 week expedite, our homestudy extended to a full 5 weeks...sigh. Then due to the Christmas/New Year holidays, the initial processing of our INS paperwork was postponed.

Finally, on Thursday, we made progress when we received our fingerprinting appointment in the mail. Our appointment was scheduled for February 10th. However, in my normal patient fashion (read with sarcasm), Phil and I walked into the USCIS fingerprinting center on Friday a.m. and our fingerprints were taken...one step closer!!

The word on the Yahoo adoption groups, which is surprisingly accurate, is it's taking 60 days to receive an I-800a. The I-800a must be sent to China before they can process our dossier. Once it is sent to China, the average wait to travel is about 5 months. My best estimate is we will travel sometime in late summer. SO SLOW....

One word of praise in this process goes out to our caseworker...Xiaoqing with BAAS. I don't think the woman ever sleeps. No matter when I call or e-mail, she always gets right back to me. She is amazing. We are so blessed and encouraged by her!!

We also just found this picture of Lily on an advocacy page. We have no idea how old the photo is? We estimate it was taken last July or August when Lily was 2 1/2.

This week we also celebrated Isabelle's one year Gotcha Day. It's our tradition to go to our local Mexican restaurant to celebrate their Gotcha Days. It makes sense right?? Don't ask. Nothing in our family ever makes sense. It's just our favorite restaurant.

Isabelle's favorite part was the ice cream dessert...of course!

One more thing...we chose Lily's name because our agency, BAAS, advocated for our daughter under the name "Lily". After praying for her by the name "Lily" for 3 months (before realizing she was our daughter), she was Lily to us.

The Lord also reminded me of His care for her when I was reading Luke 12:27a..."Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin..." He used this passage in another significant way...but that story will have to wait for another blog post.

Torie and Michaela have never helped name one of our daughters, but this time they've implored us to name Lily, Lily Rose in keeping with our last 3 daughters' southern flair in names. So after much discussion, and concern on my part that I'll never be able to remember another two-name name...LOL, we decided that our Miss Lily will be

Lily Rose Jinli Horton