We're Moving!

It has been a crazy week! Jason has been offered a job with a company in Lubbock, Texas and we've decided to accept the offer. The company is Smooth Fusion, a high-end web development firm that is one of only a few companies authorized to do web development work directly for Microsoft. Jason will be working as a Web Developer and will start the beginning of January. Jason is from the Lubbock area and still has parents, grandparents, and siblings in the area. We spent Thanksgiving there with his family and went house shopping over the weekend. We found a house we really like and are in the process of making an offer. Our house in Abilene goes on the market tomorrow. We are excited about the new opportunities but sad to be leaving Abilene. We've been here for almost 8 years. We also think we'll be going to Guatemala soon for our second adoption. The next 6 weeks are going to be crazy!

Shopping Online Benefits Our Adoption

The estimated cost of our 2 adoptions is $70,000. We've been very blessed to be able to pay about $24,000 of this already from our bank accounts, selling Jason's car, and contributions. We have a little left to cover our next Guatemala trip and we're trying to be fierce about saving. We will still have a great deal left to pay so we've setup links in the right hand column of our blog for online shopping. When you use the links on our site to shop with these websites, they will give a percentage of your purchase towards our adoption costs. Everything else about shopping with them will be the same. Same websites, same prices. They're just giving us a percentage for sending you there (typically 1-4%). So, we would appreciate anyone that's going to make a purchase through these online stores to do it by starting at our site (refer your friends too!). Just click the links! Thanks!

Dossier #2 - On Standby

We did receive confirmation that dossier #2 is good to go, but our adoption agency is holding it here in the US until they find out if they will have a baby for us. If they do, then they will send it down to Guatemala as we get our second referral.

Adoption Timeline

We've added our adoption timeline to the right hand column of our blog (down the page a bit). We thought you all might like to see the timeline of how things have progressed so far and what's coming next.

Waiting...

Well, we're waiting to find out if dossier #2 is ok and if it's been sent down to Guatemala. Our agency has it right now but we haven't received confirmation from them yet. We're also waiting to hear if Hannah's case has entered Family Court (FC) in Guatemala. A previous email told us it would be submitted to FC around November 12th but we haven't had that confirmed either. Anxiously checking email very often...

DNA 99.99% Match

We received the results of Hannah and her birth mother's DNA test in the mail today and they're a 99.99% match!

Hannah's Doctor Check-up

Hannah had her regular doctor check-up this week and she got a great report. She's very healthy and doing well. She weighs 8lbs 12oz now and she is 5 weeks old! Here's a few pics from the doctor check-up. She looks beautiful! We sure do miss her!

Dossier #2 Complete

We received dossier #2 back from Austin on Monday, Fedex-ed it down to Houston to the Guatemalan consulate that same day and received it back on Thursday. We Fedex-ed it Thursday afternoon to our agency's dossier coordinator to be compiled and sent to Guatemala. She received it today (Friday). So, we're offically done with our second paperchase! We hope to find out more details soon about the wait time.

Trick-or-Treat

We took Joel trick-or-treating last night with our friends. He had a lot of fun and is enjoying his candy!