Approval with a twist

It’s been a little over a month since I last posted and so much has happened. Shortly after we learned that our wait time was potentially cut from 12 months to 4 months (once the government approved out dossier), we knew we needed to find a bigger house. Immediately, we contacted my former hairdresser, Lisa, who took us around to some houses nearby. We found that we were interested in pretty quickly. However, since our house wasn’t up for sale, we had to offer the owners a 45-day contingency offer. Fortunately, they accepted the contingency. Immediately, we spent a long, grueling 14 days of cleaning, discarding and prepping our house for sale. We rented a storage unit, got out most of the clutter and had it on the market the Friday before Halloween. Within a week, we had two offers. We were incredibly blessed! Kudos to Lisa and her incredible work ethic. I can’t imagine ever selling another house without her help. Everything just worked out perfectly and we will be closing on both houses on Dec. 6. We absolutely love our new house—see the picture posted. It has four bedrooms, a beautiful kitchen/hearth room, a finished basement and a 3-car garage. Luke is most thrilled about the fact that we have a huge driveway where he will finally be able to play basketball! You can imagine that the house goings on have kept us quite busy but now it’s down to packing. Hopefully the weather will continue to cooperate through December!

Now for the news on the adoption front. Last week, we received word that the Colombian government approved our dossier. YEA!! We were pleasantly surprised to hear so soon. There is a twist, however. As you probably remember, we have asked for two siblings from 0-7 years of age and younger than Luke. Well, since we were approved so quickly, this meant that we could potentially get our children as early as April. This presented one problem . . . since a 7 year old could be 7 years and 11 months old when assigned to us, there was a chance that he/she would be older than Luke. For this reason, the ICBF (Colombian govt.) approved us for ages 0-6 instead. The wait time for that age range is much longer at 18-24 months. The good news is we have options. Since we definitely want to keep Luke the oldest, sometime after the first of the year, we will write the ICBF and ask to be switched to 0-7 years. This change will take 1-2 months. So now, it looks like we may get our children as early as August or as late as November if the wait time remains steady at 4-6 months. Honestly, I really feel like this has happened for a reason. It will give us more time to get financially adjusted to our new house and to prepare it for the kids. The extra time is actually a welcome relief. Be assured that we continue to enjoy the adoption ride and there are no heavy hearts or frustrations at this point!

Finally, we want to congratulate our friends, Shawn and Cindy, who just brought back their fourth child from Colombia. We are so happy for them. Just as we are so happy and thankful to have such a wonderfully supportive family and a fabulous group of friends who are constantly asking how things are going. God has truly blessed us with all of you and what a better time to give thanks than right now. Please continue to say your prayers for our children. Hopefully your words and thoughts will reach and comfort them on difficult days.

Happy Thanksgiving!