Exciting Week!!

We had a lot going on last week!  First was Valentine’s day, so we all exchanged little gifts and what not on the big day.  Then we all went out as a family to our favorite place to eat wings:  Calder’s Buffalo Pub.  Let me tell you, that was obviously not the first choice for dinner for several people!  There was our family, and another couple, plus a few people at the bar.  Another couple came in later on, but we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  Of course that was fine with us as we had Kathryn (it’s still slightly challenging eating out with a 2 ½ year old—it’s starting to get easier though).

Friday came, and as usual, I ran out to the mail to see if our i800a approval had arrived.  It was not in the mail.  I honestly was getting frustrated as I’ve seen several people make comments on our agency’s fb adoption page (specific to the country we’re adopting from) that they had received approval in anywhere from less than seven to nine days from the date they had their biometric fingerprints taken.  I knew ours was going to be longer as we received a letter from uscis a few days after being fingerprinted stating they did not have a copy of our home study.  I had received a letter from SC DSS 2 days prior to hearing from uscis stating our home study was approved—unfortunately this letter was dated 2 ½ weeks prior to my receiving it.  I’m not sure what caused the delay with SC DSS there, but it’s just one of those things that happens during adoption which adds a little level of frustration.  Anyway, our agency overnighted a copy of our home study along with the SC DSS approval to uscis when we received that letter.  With all that said, we were still waiting to hear on our i800a approval.  Well, late Friday afternoon I received an email from our adoption agency that they had received our approval, and everything is ready for our dossier to be shipped out today (Monday, 2/18) for it to be authenticated!  What a great way to end the week!

Friday night we went to small group, and then we headed to Hartsville to see David’s parents.  They had snow in the forecast for Hartsville, and we were hopeful that it was going to snow.  Kathryn hasn’t seen snow since she was about 7 months old, and we knew she’s have just as much fun as we would playing in the snow.  Sure enough, on Saturday morning it started to rain, but quickly turned to snow.  We weren’t sure it was going to stick, but then it got heavy enough to start sticking.  It was more like a dusting.  Anyway, we jumped in the car in an attempt to drive northwest to see more snow.  Well, what we didn’t know is that we were pretty much in the heaviest part (or the area that had the most stick).  As we drove around town and what not, there was less snow (most of it actually was turning to rain).  When we got back to their house it was almost gone.  However, when we looked at the radar there was another large system developing in the western part of the state which was starting to move our way!

Saturday night we drove to Chesterfield to have dinner at Shiloh’s.  It’s a great seafood restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  It’s about 45 minutes from Hartsville, but well worth the drive!!  It started to sleet/snow again on the way there (the system was starting to move into the area at that time).  When we left, though, it was coming down.  Driving in falling snow for these southern folks is…different and difficult (we never do it here as it never snows here).    Anyway, it was coming down insanely hard during the drive home.  Sure enough when we got back to Hartsville, they had about 2” of snow on the ground.  So, we went out and walked around the block before heading to bed.

When we woke up Sunday, the snow was still there!  We headed out first thing and did some sledding in the yard, and had a blast playing and throwing snowballs (really ice balls as it was pretty wet snow) at each other.  Later on in the morning we went out again and built a snowman.  Unfortunately it started warming up around 11am, and it melted very quickly after that.  Anyway, we really enjoyed it as we rarely (every 10 years or so) get any snow here in Charleston.

We headed back home Sunday afternoon, and waiting in the mailbox was our copy of our i800a approval.  As I mentioned earlier, our dossier is now off to be authenticated.  This will take about 3 weeks.  After it gets authenticated it will be sent off to the country we’re adopting from.  Ultimately the DTC (dossier to Ch…) and then the LID (log in date) are huge steps (those are the next 2 steps after authentication).  Once we get the LID then we’ll be able to start receiving referrals for a child J  We’re getting there!!