Visas...CHECK!!

Our visas arrived yesterday...Yay!!

It was nerve wracking because we had to mail our passports to the Ghana Embassy so they could put the visa stamp in it...we overnighted everything on Friday, so it arrived Monday at 2:30 at the Ghana Embassy in Washington, DC.

The Ghana Embassy is MUCH more efficient then the US Embassy. They received our application, processed, approved it and mailed it back to us..all after 2:30PM on Monday...so it was on our doorstep Tuesday! WOW! I WISH the US Embassy would work so quickly on Zoey's visa to come here...crazy...the US is supposed to be so much more advanced, however, this third world country blows their socks off at Visa applications..interesting...very interesting!!

So all that is left now is to pack our bags and go.

My mom is arriving on Friday to stay with the pups while we are gone...sure am going to miss those guys.

Count down...3 more days!!

Ghoing, Ghoing, Ghone to Ghana!!!!!!!!

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We will be leaving May 2nd to head to the West Coast of Africa and meet our daughter!

On April 8th a judge in Ghana officially declared Michael Scott and Kasie Horrell Mahan the legal parents of a beautiful little girl who from here forward shall be called Zoey Elizabeth Mahan.


This trip will be the first of two. We will only be gone a few days...returning on May 6th. However, we will get to visit Zoey and I will get to spend my birthday with her!!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That would be an accurate description of my feelings about this adoption right now.

The week before last we received and email that said we would likely have our court date in Ghana last week...guess that didn't happen because we never heard anything else.

Then our adoption agent sent us this email that said, "Congratulations! You went to court and now are the proud mommy and daddy of a little girl!"...Yay, right? NO! She didn't read the attachment correctly. It was just the declaration that the biomom agreed to give her to the Social Welfare Department for adoption.

We've had no futher updates since then.

So here we are in the land of neverending waiting. I'm trying so hard to be patient, but this is the worst feeling ever!!! I want to know every little detail about what is happening in our little girl's day to day. Even more than that I want to hold her and smell her and love her.

Oh well, here we are another day with no news.

There are three other families over there now and I've been reading their blogs and updates fervently. I memorize every little detail and I'm sure I've driven them crazy with my questions!

Evidently, there have been some bumps in the visa process and they have had to stay over there much longer than expected. Our adoption agency is working on smoothing things over. We are hoping that we will not have to be in Ghana as long as they have been (one family has been there for almost 6 weeks!) We knew this process was new and the kinks are still being worked out...we are just trying to be patient.

Please everyone- send us positive energy, thoughts and prayers....I am needing them right now to keep me from going nuts with all this waiting...

The Waiting Game

Ahhhhhh! It is so frustrating...we have a beautiful little girl in Ghana waiting to be our baby and we are just waiting on the US Government right now..

Currently, our I600A is at the US Dept. of Homeland Security office division USCIS in Charlotte. Once that application is approved then we can apply for a court date in Ghana.....we just need one more little piece of paper to apply for a date to become parents!! The name of that paper is called the I171H. All these numbers and letters of forms to keep up with..why can't they just call it the "We approve of you to bring a baby into the U.S" form..that would be so much easier.

For those of you wondering...after our I171H reaches Ghana, then we can apply for a court date. Once we have a court date, we'll have more of an idea of when we travel. Most families have traveled 2-3 weeks after their court date. I'm feeling like we are probably going to travel in mid-April and we will most likely be in Ghana for my birthday..(May 5)..what a great birthday present...to be a mommy!!

Scott and I went to Babies R Us and Target this weekend. I think it was an eye opening experience for us. While we were at Babies R Us Scott said, "I can't believe we are looking at all this right now!" I hope it all goes as planned and we get to bring home our little girl soon.

I actually started a small registry at Target last night. We found a bedding set that we really liked and went ahead and bought it so we could pick out paint colors to match it. I started the registry at Target because I want all the cute little knick knacks that match our nursery bedding..ie- nightlight, switchplate, wall hangings, etc... We picked out a pretty pale pink for the walls, and I'm going to attempt to do a garden mural..yes, brave I know, but I'm pretty sure my days at "The Oaks" as Arts and Crafts Master (ie Activity Therapist) have well prepared me for mural painting!!!

I wish I was in Ghana

Well, the adoption is proceeding.

So far we've gotten two pictures and a social welfare report. It is frustrating because with every little bit of information we receive, it just gives us more questions!

For instance, the social welfare report said that our little one has Kwashiorkor, a form of severe protein malnutrition. We later recieved a report from our contact in Ghana who said he had taken our little girl and her biomom to the hospital on Sat. and "they were fine" but baby needs formula. Ok, we can believe that if baby has kwashiorkor, then she needs formula, however, from everything I've read if a baby is diagnosed with kwashiorkor, then they probably need to be hospitalized?? Kwashiorkor is a medical term that has Ghanian roots, so I'm wondering if they use the term kwashiorkor interchangably with malnutrition?? The only thing we can do is email our contact again and again with questions....

Anyways, a family who is also with our agency is traveling to Ghana this week so we are sending money with them to take to our contact so he can buy formula for our baby and hopefully get her back on tracky nutrition wise.

We sent our I600A to be approved on Monday. The funny thing is that we got our I800A approval on Friday!! So I copied the I800A approval and wrote a little letter about our transferring programs..hopefully that will speed our I600A approval.

My understanding is that as soon as Ghana receives our dossier elements and our I600A approval we should proceed fairly quickly. Our adoption agent, Robin, said it could even be as early as March!! How fast!!! I am soooo not ready..so much to do. I'm hoping that Valentine's weekend will be spent painting the nursery and getting it ready.

Love!

Everything changes.....

Matthew Sweet so eloquently sang, "Everything changes, but change itself..."

It is so true.

Here's our most recent change.....

We are adopting a baby from Ghana, Africa!!! She is a beutiful little one not quite two months old.

If everything goes as planned we will be officially Mommy and Daddy by early May!

But Kasie, you say, we thought you were adopting from Armenia...what happened?

Well, our adoption agency recently started a program in Ghana. They sent out an email about a week and a half ago stating the had a referral for a little baby girl in Ghana. Scott and I were immediately interested. Of course, we had to wrestle with the thoughts and issues of transracial adoption, but we came to the conclusion that this is what we were meant to do.

I have to admit, as soon as I saw her little picture I was in love.

We officially accepted the referral on Saturday and ever since I've been doing nothing but thinking of our little girl.

I'll post more soon....but...YAYAY!! I'm going to be a Mommy!!!!

Fingerprints....check!

Well, we made our journey to the US Dept. of Homeland Security office in Durham to complete our fingerprints. Let me tell you, I was nervous and excited all at the same time.

So nervous in fact that I threw my appointment slip away with my coffee as soon as we entered the building into a very LARGE trashcan!

Here's the recap:

I happily pranced my way to the security guard and he says grimly, "ID and appointment slip.." I held out my hand and smiled. He looked at me then looked down at my hand. I then looked down and realized I was holding out only my license! So I slumped back to the very LARGE garbage can and dove headfirst in and luckily found my slip. I walked back over to the security guard, and handed it to him. He rolled his eyes, took my slip and sniffed it! Then he looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, "Coffee?" I shrugged and nodded, thankfully he then let us through.

Of course anyone who knows my husband, knows that he was standing there watching all of this just shaking his head. He is used to my excited nervous slipups by now I guess!

The rest of the appointment went smoothly. We made it safely through the metal detector, and then were finished with the whole thing in about 30 minutes! I was surprised at how quick and efficient the were.

So, now we just wait to hear from them. We are hoping by the end of January. Then we will send everything to Armenia. But we do have quite a bit of work to do on our dossier before then...sigh. It WILL happen, I know it will.