USCIS I-600A form sent in for approval

Today I just sent in our I-600A Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition to US Customs and Immigartion Services (USCIS) in Yakima. I believe I wrote about this a little in a previous post titled "update". In that post I stated that I needed to send in a completed copy of our home study document. Which is true that document is needed in order to approve us for international adoption however I do not have that quite yet. Apparently in Washington State you can send in your I-600A form prior to home study completion and submit the home study when it is completed. We will actually travel to Yakima when we have our completed home study and get a walk-in fingerprinting appointment. We choose this way to get our USCIS approval (rather than waiting the week or two and sending our home study along with the form) because we just found out that the I-600A form fees are increasing July 30th!

So I hurried up and sent in our stuff before July runs out so we can still fall in the old (cheaper!) fee schedule!

Home Study Complete!

We've completed all our home study visits with our social worker, Diane. It's been really great working with her. We've learned so much and feel really prepared for our new baby. Or two! Through out the last month or so we've decided that we will be open to wherever God is leading our family and are having our paperwork approve us for a sibling pair. Not that we definitely will get a sibling pair but we want to be open and our paperwork needs to reflect that.

We just got to look over the 1st draft of the home study document. It's 15 pages long! And the whole thing talks about us! I felt like it was a great compliment to our parents in how they raised us in faith, had consistent and appropriate discipline and encouraged us in our talents. And now we can build off that foundation for our family!