Upcycled Purpose: A Much Needed Update (And Camping Pictures)

It's been several months since I blogged or even logged into my blog. But it's time to update our adoption status! Our homestudy was in our hands in record time, paperwork was sent in to USCIS (immigration) to approve us, a (literal) pink slip was sent back from USCIS requesting that we have three sentences changed in our homestudy, our homestudy agency had an addendum out the door the same day I requested it, and we had USCIS approval on June 3.

We quickly sent all our remaining documents to the Secretary of the Commonwealth for apostille, and had them mailed to our caseworker, who then sent them to Bulgaria. I first received an message that our dossier was being submitted, then another message that we had verbal referral. It's been a quiet two weeks, so I'm praying that the message I receive this week is that we have written referral! We should be traveling to Bulgaria very soon to meet our daughter!

In other fun adventures, our family spent the weekend camping with around 20 other families from our church, and I wish we were doing it every weekend! If you asked me one thing I loved more than anything else from my childhood, it would be camping. I love everything from seeing kids running around with friends, the smell of a campfire, even cleaning up and drying the tent for packing, remembering that being my chore as a child.

We more than survived the weekend, we came home filled up with love for our church family, a greater understanding of community, and worn out kids who didn't complain about bedtime! Even our dog is happily exhausted. My kids spent so much time running, it was hard to take pictures of everything they did. Here are a few: