Something to get excited about!

These last several weeks have been difficult and frustrating for us. In March we received a call from our agency on a little boy that was considered special needs due to malnutrition. We had seen his picture and brief bio information on the waiting child list a few months prior to that. We had put an email of interest into our agency, only to find out another family was ahead of us. Again, as in the past, we were slightly discouraged, but encouraged to know that we were moving up the list. So, when we received the call in March, we were pretty excited. Initially, we have been approved for upto a sibling set of two; 0-5yrs. However, we were primarily wanting to get a boy, but were told to consider a sibling set, as the wait time was considerably less.
The initial reports showed this little boy as underweight, height, but proportionate. He initially could not sit up or hold his position, or "station" as the Colombian reports would state. He had an upcoming appointment with the pediatric neurologist who had ordered some standard tests for children with malnutrition. Several weeks had gone by, the test did not get completed, but the reports on this little boy were great. He has continued to gain in weight and height and motor skills are increasing. He is now standing alone holding himself up and progressing with no obvious deficits. My wife and family have prayed about him and given a lot of thought, as we wait for these tests to be completed. We have decided to move forward and asked to be matched with him without these other test results. Now the ball can get rolling and hopefully we can travel by end of July. The girls are very excited to have a little brother and we look forward to bringing him home. Stay tuned as I'm sure the roller coaster ride will continue...

UPDATES... CLEAR AS MUD...

Tracey and I updated our medical letters and received our FBI update letters this week as well. Surprisingly, it only took a month from the time we sent our paperwork off to W. Virginia until we recieved our letters back stating " no criminal record". We sent both our medical letters and fbi updates off to Helena for apostille. These documents are both only good for 6 months, so we hope that we will be travelling before then. If not, then we get to go through the process again.
We did hear from Nichole at our adoption agency this week. It wasn't the update we were thinking, but we did officially get put on the 0-6yr sibling wait list and they did not change our approval date. So now we are on a shorter wait list, and get to keep our July 2010 approval date. Currently the 0-6yr wait list are taking approvals from January 2009, where as the 0-5yr list is November of 2007. yikes...

Inching closer

It has been a very long winter here in Montana. It has also been a long couple of years waiting to hear encouraging news on our adoption. As the weather is starting to turn, so is our adoption process. Tracey and I are reviewing a little boy's information. We are trying not to get too attached and say anything specific until we know if this little boy will be the next addition to the Miller clan, or if this is another bump in our adoption journey. We will keep you all posted.

Change of Heart

We haven't updated our blog in a couple of months. A few things have happened. In December our USCIS (immigration) paperwork came due for renewel. This requires an updated homestudy and new fingerprints. I always thought that fingerprints didn't change. However, immigration feels different and only keeps records on file for 15 months. The homestudy was easy. Our social worker visited us at our house and wrote up our homestudy, but changed our approval from siblings 0-5 to 0-6yrs old. We didn't ask for this, but it has been a year now since the original homestudy, and our youngest girl "Bree" is now 6 instead of 5yrs old. Most international countries require you to keep the birth order when adopting, so now we could get a child a year older. We sent our update and got re-fingerprinted and sent all into USCIS. A month later we got our USCIS approval for another 15 months. This time the paperwork stated approved for 0-6yrs old. Again we didn't ask for this, and usually this costs an additional fee. We talked about this together and with our agency social worker and decided to change our request to Colombia to consider us for one to two children upto age of 6yrs instead of 5. The current wait time for 0-5 is 36 months from approval, whereas, 0-6 is about 22 months. We are currently waiting for Colombia to approve this and start our new official wait. Also, we have moved up the list for any "waiting child" that falls in our approved category. If this were to happen, we could be traveling much sooner then the 22 months. I know this is all as clear as mud, but i'm sure it will happen as intended.

Merry Christmas

Hard to believe it's that time of year again. I don't know how the girls made it to the nice list. Oh to see the smiles on their faces, as they open their gifts and empty their stockings. We enjoyed some nice get togethers with family and friends this holiday season. Alex was with us at Thanksgiving and enjoyed the "family" atmosphere that we shared. Alex is thinking about coming and living with us and going to school here in Montana next year. She is currently in 8th grade in Boise, Idaho.
As far as the adoption status. We are still waiting. We recently updated our homestudy and barely made the 15 month deadline, three days before it was due to expire. Off tomorrow to Helena, Mt. (225 miles away) for our fingerprinting updates. It seems very silly to Tracey and I that we should have to drive that far and do this again. Does your fingerprints ever change? Also, Tracey and I work for the federal government and can get them done electronically and have them sent to USCIS. I made several phone calls, but to deaf ears. So, we will take a long trip with the kids and stay in a motel overnight and then redo the fingerprints. I only wonder if we will need to make another trip in 15 months again. We know deep down in our hearts, that when the time is right, we will get the call telling us our kiddos are waiting in Colombia. Until then, we will keep sharing our journey with you all.

Hunting Season

Dad was definitely blessed this hunting season. I was able to be apart of three different successful bull elk hunts and get the "trifecta" (antelope, deer, elk) myself. Several days and hours of hunting with friends and family in various conditions. If I wasn't in shape prior to hunting, I definitely was after the season. I almost forgot how difficult getting these large animals out of the mountains and into the freezer is. Thanks to my father in law and mentor Dale, I have learned some of the arts of butchering and providing meat for my family, without paying a large fee in the process. The freezer is now full and to the kids disbelief, the large half filled ice cream containers had to go to make room for all the new meat. Tenley and Bree are learning this is a way of life in Montana and helped dad with wrapping and labeling the game. Hopefully, I can still stay in shape and pass on these skills to our future adopted kiddos.
No new news to report on the adoption front. We have officially been waiting 4 months now with probably two more hunting seasons until a referral. Tracey and I just keep plugging along and raising our existing kids and hope that we have made the right decision to add on to the Miller gang. We pray that this is the right decision, and believe that God would not have steered us in this direction unless he wanted us to do this.

Fall Fun

Well, fall is finally here and we are actually getting to enjoy a few nice weeks of fall weather this year. The last two October's, we had big snowstorms and fall changed to winter overnight. Tenley and Bree were able to finally harvest our pumpkins from the garden. This was our best year as far as growing pumpkins. A couple of them were close to 3o lbs. As far as any news in the adoption world, we received notice in the monthly noticero that a sibling set of four children were being split up in two's, and that the oldest (a girl between 8-9yrs and the youngest, a boy 4yrs) were available. The girl is a little older then what we are approved for, but we thought that the same age as Tenley might work out. We emailed our interest to our social worker. We found out that a family that has been waiting longer, and is approved closer to the ages of these kids were interested and ahead of us on the wait list. So again, we wait and continue to finish projects at the house and go back to our routine.