So sorry...

Hi everyone. I'm so sorry for not posting in a while. One thing after another but we are getting so close!

After a mix up with Michael's passport delayed everything, we finally received his passport last Wednesday afternoon and were able to overnight everything to the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in Atlanta on Thursday. We have confirmation that it was received Friday morning so now we are just waiting to receive it back so we can overnight everything to Taiwan! Woo hooo!!! (and I have to say that the man who called back from the passport office was extremely helpful. He verified everything and, knowing we were working on an adoption, he processed it immediately. We had Michael's passport two days later. Thanking him and thanking God for that.) I sent an overnight return envelope with our papers to TECO so as soon as they put it back on the way to us, we'll know.

I'm working on a pictorial to send and we will have the nursery painted this week. Pictures of that coming soon! For those who care, we went with the Peek a Boo Friends set by CoCaLo (Google it and you'll see how cute.) Fun colors, lots of texture and adorable animals. I think she'll enjoy it (I know it makes us smile. :-) We've also received this new picture of our adorable little one. We're so pitiful...we actually just stand and look at the collage on our refrigerator each day. Kaley's picture is not only around our house and wallpaper on all our computers, it's on the big screen at church each week because our Crossmark family is almost as excited as we are! Honestly, I think we could go out every night for a month and have a different babysitter each time if we wanted! Promise...I'll post pics of the nursery this week and let you all know as soon as everything's on it's way to Taiwan. Lord willing, this will be a great and productive week!

Our little beauty

First, here's the picture we received this week. Cutie pie, isn't she?

We are another day closer to bringing her home and that is SO exciting!

This week we chose the nursery bedding and today we received the long-anticipated I-171H! YEA, God! Now we can get the notarized home study copies and as soon as the passports arrive, everything goes to the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) for authentication. TECO authorization is the final step before everything goes to Taiwan for court dates. Friends have said their TECO authorization only took a matter of days, so we're praying that our passports arrive this week and that our TECO office moves as quickly as theirs did. If so, everything could be going to Taiwan in the next couple of weeks!

Thanks for all your prayers.

Get fingerprinting done...check!

The Citizenship & Immigration Services process requires that we be fingerprinted. No biggie, right? Well you'd think that since we live in the capital city, we could just run downtown and do that, but that's not how it works. The state's USCIS office is in Charleston, a two-hour drive away and you have to come at the appointment time they set. Not a huge deal, but it does take a bit more planning.

Our appointment was at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday. Not wanting to get up at an unearthly hour and have to fight highway and Charleston traffic at morning rush hour (and also really needing to have some time away together), we decided to turn it into a 24-hour vacation. Yea!

After work Monday evening we packed, turned our dogs and home over to a friend for the night (thanks, Tom!) and drove to North Charleston. We stayed in a beautiful Residence Inn, had a great breakfast there in the morning and then set off for fingerprinting.

They use a cool machine, not the old ink-style; it was neat and very efficient. Michael's fingerprints went smoothly but mine (of course) took forever! Basically, I have no fingerprints. OK, so you can see them...but barely. They were bad when I was younger but so many years of typing, etc. has worn off the rest. I've known this for a long time and we both warned the poor man that it would be challenging but he still had to do what he had to do, and I am so thankful he was patient and pleasant. (Sorry no pictures of this part of the journey but they don't allow cameras or even cell phones in their office; you have to turn them in and pick them up when you leave.)

We had planned to finish with CIS by 10:00, then explore Charleston for the day. It's a beautiful city with so much history everywhere you look. Unfortunately, it was chilly, gray and rainy, so we found a mall and walked around exploring stores, sales and good coffee for several hours. Still VERY relaxing; no talk of anything work or church-related. A nice drive home and a yummy late lunch at Chili's, then we went home and took a nap! (I know...we are so old and boring, but this was a beautiful, relaxing time for us, especially since we had just jumped another hurdle towards bringing Kaley home!) Lord willing, I'll soon be able to post that our paperwork is in the hands of the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office!

Kaley at Christmas

It would have been amazing to have Kaley home with us for her first Christmas, but we'll just look forward to next year. In the meantime, we received these two pictures from Taiwan.

Adorable, isn't she? :-)

Now, I fully recognize that I'm a bit biased in this matter, but I think that's just about the most precious smile I've ever seen!

More good news (or Merry Christmas to us!!!)

So we were already having a great belated Christmas with most of my (Kim's) family; Mom, Dad, Karen (sister), Jeff (brother-in-law) and Elijah (my unnaturally adorable 19-month old nephew), when the doorbell rang Monday morning. It was FedEx...with a package from Taiwan! WOOHOO!

We received the translated paperwork and list of next instructions! To see everything translated into Chinese made this whole journey even more surreal...and real...at the same time. There's a translated copy of the home study, adoption contract, power of attorney, and even a passport application for Kaley. Wow.

It was so neat to have family here to share in the excitement; we were bouncing around for joy. Elijah heard it was about his "cousin Kaley" and Taiwan, and he started running around the house saying "Kaley" and "ni hao" over and over again! ("Ni hao" is "hello" in Chinese.) He was all over the place, like he was looking for her and just wanted to say "ni hao" to her. I soooo wish I'd been able to get to the video camera!!!

Karen, Jeff & Elijah had to leave soon afterward to drive back to Indiana but Mom & Dad didn't have to leave until the next morning, so we strolled around a small historic town all afternoon. When we got home, Michael picked up our mail and there was another great surprise waiting for us! That same day, we received our letter from CIS (Citizenship & Immigration Services) telling us when to come for our fingerprinting! Yee haw! January 13th we'll be in Charleston for that next step! Go, God!

Merry belated Christmas & Happy New Year!

A lot has happened in the Cottle household in the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, between a very busy schedule and a serious internet connection problem (which Michael just fixed...thanks, babe!), I haven't been able to update the blog in a while. Sorry 'bout that.

We'll start off with the first round of unexpected photos. Our friend Megan found these pictures of Kaley on someone's facebook page! Seems Amanda had been taking photos of some of the Home of God's Love babies when they went to pick up their new daughter. She took some of our Kaley, without knowing anything about her soon-to-be family. Megan saw these pics, copied and sent them to us and we promptly got in touch with Amanda, who was kind enough to share better copies. Thanks, Megan and Amanda!

A few more pictures & some good news...

We've had a lot of people ask for more pictures of Kaley so here are the rest of the photos I have of her so far. These were also taken by Dan and Megan when they were in Taiwan last month.

With one of the wonderful caregivers. (Thank you!)

Avery H. and our Kaley.
Avery is two months older than Kaley. It will be fun to reunite them "stateside".

Our little peanut.

The good news to share is that we were able to send a copy of the home study to Taiwan so that they could begin the translation! Another copy has been sent to DSS for approval of our I-171H and then we should get our I-600A approval from CIS. This means that not only will we be able to bring Kaley into the U.S. but she will be a citizen as soon as she arrives. We are sooo excited that something can actually start happening in Taiwan now! That's a HUGE "yea, God"!