Praise God!! Our authenticated dossier is on its way to Celebrate Children International!!! Something we've worked so hard for over the last six months...

We received word this morning that our dossier was scheduled to make its way to the State Department this morning for authentication and then on to the Embassy of Ethiopia for another round of authentication. It should be ready to be picked up tomorrow from the Embassy and be on its way to Celebrate Children International. We are oh so very close to making it on the referral waiting list!!

Nick has been asking for awhile to take the family to Itasca State Park. We decided that today was the perfect day, so away we went! We had a BLAST! We rode our bikes on the bike trails, dipped our toes in the mouth of the Mississippi (well, Kaleb fell in...), rented a paddleboat (and turned around and went right back after realizing it wasn't going to work trying to paddle with Kaleb on our laps), rented a pontoon, and climbed to the top of the lookout tower. Kaleb's ride on the pontoon was his very first boat ride. He was enamored by the waves the boat made. We saw several loons, and he wondered if he could pet them. He asked if there were fish in the lake, celebrated when he heard there were, and then wanted to pet the fish. He wore his new Cars tennis shoes, so he wanted to run any chance he got. In case you were wondering, they are the fastest shoes ever made and they make him go very fast...All in all, it was a great day of exploring and bonding.

Our last form arrived and our dossier is finally on its way to the Assistant Stork! The Assistant Stork will hand deliver our dossier to the State Department for authentication and then to the Ethiopian Embassy for authentication in Washington, DC next week. We will let you know when it lands at Celebrate Children International finally securing us a spot on the waiting list.

We are still waiting on the last piece of paperwork from Lutheran Social Services before we can FedEx our dossier to the Assistant Stork in Washington DC. We had anticipated this final piece of paperwork to be here on Thursday when taking into consideration the said mailing date. The good Lord is testing our patience once again.

We were disheartened to find out yesterday that this major delay we encountered with our home study shifted us from possibly being #6 on the referral list to #17 or greater.

We know that our God is a big God and that he has big plans for us. It's so hard to see us slipping further down the list; however, we are hopeful in our faith and know that it will be all worth it in the end.

Praying for patience...

Our state sealed Cover Letter and Power of Attorney have arrived from the office of the Secretary of State. We are waiting on one more piece of documentation which is scheduled to arrive tomorrow and then our dossier will be on its way to Washington DC!

Also, I received my ASC Appointment Notice today. Wahoo, I'm in the clear!!

We both successfully received our Passports. The poor man at the post office who took our passport photographs wasn't the best photographer...you should see our photos! Actually, NO you shouldn't!

Ann received her ASC Appointment Notice today. The ASC Appointment Notice is for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to capture individual biometrics (FBI fingerprinting). I haven't received my notice yet. Have I done something wrong that I am unaware of? Are they investigating me? Did they talk to my mom and she told them all the bad things I did growing up? If so, luckily she only knows about half of what I've done! Or perhaps, is it just because the government doesn't work in unison? Let's hope it's the latter...

We are still waiting for our Dossier Cover Sheet and Power of Attorney to be returned from the Minnesota Secretary of State Office with the state seal added to the documents. As soon as those documents return, our dossier will make swift expedition to Washington DC for authentication.

Check out our timeline by clicking on "Our Timeline" to the left under Links.

So... we are a little excited at the Tunheim residence. We cannot believe that this is actually happening!! We are going to be adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia!!! So, I did a little shopping today which made me even more excited. Here is your first sneak peak at Baby T's nursery and some fun things we purchased for her today. We are counting down the days until our name is on that coveted infant girl waiting list!!!

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in His sanctuary;
praise Him in His mighty heavens!
Praise Him for His mighty deeds;
praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
Praise Him with trumpet sound;
praise Him with lute and harp!
Praise Him with tambourine and dance;
praise Him with strings and pipe!
Praise Him with sounding cymbals;
praise Him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

Psalm 150: 1-6

After a much dreaded delay, six weeks to be exact, our home study has been completed. We are pleased to announce that it is finally on its way to St. Paul for the final signatures from the Lutheran Social Services supervisors. We have Minnesota's Department of Human Services to thank for much of the delay in their lack of timeliness in supplying and approving an appropriate home study template that is to be used by all agencies in Minnesota.

Once the appropriate signatures are compiled, one copy of our home study will travel to our international agency, Celebrate Children International in Florida for their Tunheim Family file. Another copy will travel to the United States Citizen and Immigration Services office in Texas along with our I-600A application to be approved to adopt an orphan. Another copy will travel to Washington DC as a part of our dossier for authentication, which will then travel to CCI in Florida and eventually to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The other two copies are for our records in-case something goes missing as our home study copies travel across this great nation we call America.

Praise God, we are seeing some movement again. We are one step closer to growing our family!

It seems like we keep having good intentions to blog, but we can never seem to make it happen! To update you on our adoption...our home study has been completed and approved. It is currently being signed by all the necessary people, and we are PRAYING we have it in our hands sometime this week. We will keep you updated as it makes its journey to Washington D.C. to be authenticated. We wanted to share some old pictures (from Mother's Day). We, along with 4 or 5 others from our church, shared our adoption story with our entire church family. It was such a moving service, and there weren't very many dry eyes in the place. The most memorable part for me was when little Ana (adopted from Ethiopia in 2009) sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

Summer started for Kaleb and me (Ann) a week ago, and we are loving every minute! We have been fishing (in the swimming pool), having water fights (Kaleb with the hose and Ann/Nick with a miniature squirt gun), swimming, watering the flowers, practicing handwriting (I have to get some schooling in there!), and playing outside whenever it is possible.

We spent this past weekend in Wisconsin visiting Nick's family and attending the wedding of Nick's cousin Amy. I know that Nick feels like his cousins Amy, Bailey and Bethany are sisters to him, and he is always so blessed to spend time with them. The wedding and reception were a blast.

It was also so much fun to see Kaleb playing with and loving his Papa Wayne. They played outside for hours - riding in a play car, putting "gas" in the play car, driving up Grandpa's feet in the motorized car, hauling/dumping rocks, and completely soaking Grandpa in a water fight. He even pulled the, "Grandpa, something is wrong with my hose..." and doused him when he got up close to him. Oh, and did I mention that Kaleb got a new hat! It has been permanently attached to his head.

Prior to arriving in Wisconsin, we stayed the night in Albertville with my cousin Erika and her husband Brian. We got to hold and love little baby Kendall. She is such a doll, and is absolutely perfect. Friday morning we took Kaleb to the Mall of America for his first visit to Nickelodeon Universe and Under Water World.

This week we are traveling the High Seas at Vacation Bible School at Calvary UMC. Photos to come later...