China update

Our daughter in china seems so far away now. Reality of it is sinking in that we have to wait on a lot of other things to get done. I have done all I can and did it fast, but now it is waiting for other areas to to their job. The homestudy is what has us waiting now, and has been the case since before Christmas. All our homestudy visits were done on the 21st of December, but I still have no finished write up. This is due to the social worker being thrown into this position. The usual international adoption social worker had a conflict of interest, having worked with Bart some years back at Wal-mart. What are the odds??? And that time period??? He was incredible good at being bad. So anyway, we recieved a social worker who is learning as she goes, and still trying to take care of a full load. This agency also works with all areas of adoption and I know there are more important issues to be dealing with at Christmas, such as the expectant mothers and impovershed families. So I was understanding at that time. Well it is now 3 weeks past Christmas and still nothing.
Once we do get this then we have to send request forms to immigration. The homestudy must be included in this set of documents. We then wait for an appointment to get fingerprinted, most likely in St. Louis. And then we wait some more for another form called the I-171H. This is like gold to adoption families. This can take up to 8 weeks I have heard, but usually about 4-5. But the wait is then not over.....
I send this to our agency where the other 3 months of collected paperwork is waiting. This complete set of documents is called our DOSSIER. A very big deal. And our ticket to our daughter from China.
So anyway, the Dossier has to be sent to Jeff. City and returned to the agency to be verified. Did I mention the agency is in Texas? And then to the Chinese Consulate in St. Louis to be authenticated and returned to the agency. Only then is it "ready" to be sent! These steps take up to a month.
I really wanted to get our Dossier to China in February to ensure a 2006 trip, but I am now simply going to assume we will celebrate Christmas as a family of 5 and travel in 2007. If this keeps up we might be able to catch some of the Olympics. (Just one of the things we wanted to avoid.)
The waiting once the Dossier has recently increased. I have read several reasons why, I am not really quite sure. When we first started it was 5-7 months but is now closer to 8-10 and I have even heard some rumors of up to 12 months! Talk about a long pregnancy!
That is what is to come. I will update each step as it happens. God has really been so good to us and I have full trust that this wait is what is best. I take a deep breath and focus on the end result. Until then I have 3 children screaming for me to get off this computer and play games, do puzzles, and build paper airplanes, not to mention a husband he wants help with drywall.
Thanks for all your prayers. Please pray hard for us and all that waiting, for all the hands that cross over the stack of documents, and for our daugher, who just might be breathing her first breath someday, sometime soon, if not already half way across the world in China.