TB tests, tears, and Taiwan!

In one week our home study documents will have been mailed to our agency downtown! The deadline is looming and we're soooo close we can taste it!

We both passed our TB tests, but while at my physical appointment the nurse turned to me after typing in some information and told me how excited and proud she was of me and my husband for doing this not just one time but two and she started tearing up....so of course I immediately start tearing up, so there we were happy crying while sharing our love of these children that so desperately want a family. We were about to continue our discussion about the families separated at the border, but she got called out of the room.

Our biggest concern in this whole process is how we are going to leave Brayden for 2.5 weeks to go meet Baby J and bring him/her home. For some medical reasons, it's just not possible to bring him with us, but we know we can only worry about so many things and although huge, that one was farther down the list since it seems so far away. And then two weeks ago I opened an email from our adoption agency in Colorado and it was all about how they have opened up adoptions in Taiwan. The kiddos might be a little bit older (4 and up), but the families get to see their files and if they choose to go ahead with the adoption, the foster home will start teaching them English and we get to Skype with them a few times. The BEST part (and an obvious answer to prayer!!) is that travel is only 5 days!!!! However, we might have to go twice, and leaving Baby J would be THE hardest thing we would ever do, but we love having this option since we can continue pursuing a China adoption while simultaneously looking at the Waiting Children files for Taiwan (one of the more heartbreaking sentences I've had to type...that name is just devastating!).

In the meantime, we're all fully adjusted to being back at school, Benson is in the midst of coaching 8th grade girls basketball, and I'm being booked pretty consistently for 5:30 and 6:00 am classes during the week with VIPKids. I absolutely adore teaching these hard-working, super sweet students half way around the world as it makes me feel a bit closer to Baby J :) Brayden will hopefully be starting gymnastics in late October and is loving every second of first grade!!

Next update will hopefully be when we get our completed home study back!! When this happens, Benson and I will apply for a time to get fingerprinted (I believe this is through the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) as we send all our documents, now called a Dossier, to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago through a courier (hoping the one we used for Brayden is still around because this lady was amazing!) to get Certified and Authenticated!

Here's to an update super soon!