Homestudy Progress

We had our 3rd homestudy meeting on Wednesday(3/29). We drove to Madison for this meeting. Once again - not at all what I have been expecting - in a good way. This meeting was basically just preparing us for what to expect when we pick up our child. I am still trying to get my mind around the idea that, yes we have been accepted to adopt a child, so talking about it as a for sure thing is a little overwhelming. Once again things seem to be moving swiftly out of my control, swiftly being the key word.
I am guestimating our time line right now as: Finish homestudy by the end of April, complete dossier and immigration paperwork by mid May including submission to China, then all we have to do is wait.
The dossier is the large collection of personal information that Mike and I are currently putting together, birth, marriage certificated, police reports ect. We send this to CCAI, our agency, they translate everything into Chinese and send it to China. From there it takes 8 to 10 months for the Chinese government to "match" us with a specific child. Once we are matched with a child we will be traveling to China within 5 to 8 weeks. So optimistically we are looking at anytime from January to March to bring home our little girl. I say optimistically because there are all kinds of things that could cause delays, politics, natural disasters, bird flu - who knows what.
Finance wise we are doing pretty good. So far we have paid out $3376.00 for our 1st agency fee and the first half of our homestudy. We have $4945.00 left to pay before everything can be submitted to China, this will be due once our homestudy is complete and as we finish our immigration paperwork/fingerprinting. Of the $4945.00 we have $1400.00 that we have already raised and set aside, so we need to raise $3545 by the middle of May. Right now our grand total looks like it will be about $18,500.00 plus or minus depending on what type of rates we get for airfare and things like that. If you want to see our exact fees and what they go for scroll down to my earlier posting on the monetary breakdown. I am going to try to keep it updated with exact amounts that we have paid or that are due. The nice thing is that once we make these next few payments in May to get the dossier sent out, we will have 8-10 months before anything else is due. That will give us a nice window of time to work our butts off - hopefully do a few more mystery dinners and who knows what else.
Most of all I cannot say a big enough thank you to everyone who has helped us out, just knowing that you are all praying for us and supporting us in this process is an amazing blessing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jennifer