16 of 252 puzzle pieces in place!

Because this blog is a continuation of our second adoption journey, I have to give a shout out to our son Tegan!  Today his fourth year with us - we are so very blessed to be his parents.  Happy 4th Gotcha day, Tegan - can't wait to see you get to be a big brother to Xavier!!!  I know you are excited to finally have that title and not be the youngest Downey!

While the fundraising is slowly trudging forward (you can see our fundraising thermometer to the right), we are getting ready to begin the exciting paper trail ride of adoption!!!  I expect to have our completed home study in hand sometime tomorrow, which means I can then mail off our application to U.S. Immigration.  Then we wait on an invitation for my husband and I to go get our fingerprints taken.  I still don't understand why we have to do this again, we've done this multiple times before - do fingerprints change?

Things will keep moving on down the paper trial from here till the day we receive Travel Approval (TA) - roughly 5-6 months from now!!!!  While that seems like we have time to fund raise, we've already incurred about a third of the adoption expenses.

If you would like to help us with fundraising, please let us know.  Perhaps you have some things you could sell or would like to involve your kids in fundraising for a good reason!  We are blessed by every dollar contributed.  Thank you!