Fall Break

We just returned from a week’s vacation back home in Illinois. We normally don’t travel anywhere at this time of year, but after hoarding all our vacation days last year, thinking we’d need them all for Nepal, we don’t want to stockpile again. China won’t be as long of a trip as Nepal would have been, so there’s no need to hoard vacation days anyway.

While we were home, we took some family photos for our dossier, thus completing almost everything that we can of our China file. My birth certificates arrived and were waiting for us when we came home. My doctors office has sent my lab results and completed my physical forms but those need to be redone because of abbreviations and inaccuracies – those are the trickiest forms to get right because they have to be written legibly with no abbreviations, cross-outs or white outs. Jay has yet to complete his physical. I’ll be sending off the first packet of documents to our agency this week.

What we’re really waiting for is the home study. We still don’t have any of the 4 necessary meetings scheduled with our social worker yet. Until the home study is done, we won’t be able to process our I-800A form for China because we can’t get that without the completed, notarized home study. I’m not sure we’ll be able to finish before Christmas, but that’s still my hope.  We'll see if it jives with God's Outlook Calendar.

Sounds like the college student living in our basement will still be here in January. He has an internship identified but is working through the details of when that will start. Probably not in January though – it’s tough to do landscape design in January unless you go to a warm climate. He still might find something else along the way too. He has all his background checks done and in the mail. He has been finger printed up at the state patrol. Now he just needs to have a physical so we can get his medical form done.

On a personal note, Jay has decided to hold off on back surgery. All the PA’s and even the surgeon aren’t recommending it because the 2nd steroid shot is still working, yet starting to wear off slightly. The 40 pound weight loss is helping too! We’re planning on taking it one day at a time for now. Oddly enough, Jay’s back always goes out over Thanksgiving, I kid you not. So, for surgery to happen this year the shot needs to completely wear off and the back needs to go out before early-December. We really don’t want to have to face surgery next year when we’ve met our deductible this year with all his pain and troubles! We’d have to start all over again at the same time as completing a special needs adoption! Besides that, can you imagine flying all the way to China on a bad back? What if it went out while we were over there? Ugh!

Checklists

I love lists!  I’m one of those people who would have lists to organize all my lists!  Seriously.  I have grocery lists.  Clean out my purse and you’ll probably find many old crumpled grocery lists from past trips to Walmart and Super Target.  Actually, I just cleaned out my purse and it’s now empty, but there were at least 6 old, scribbled lists, trust me!  I have library book lists for all the books I want to check out for the kids, including a list of children’s books on adoption for my boys to read now and my future daughter to read as she grows up (blog post on this in the near future).  I have lists of all the things we’d like for the house like kitchen floor refinishing, snow blower, water softener, down payment for a minivan.  I have started on lists of things we’ll need for a little girl because let’s face it; the last 7 years have been all about boys and I have nothing pink or girly in my house.  I have Christmas card lists and adoption fundraising lists.  The list of lists is endless.  And I just received 2 more this week.

We have been in contact with our home study social worker she emailed me the checklist for updating our home study:

o   Get fingerprinted for our FBI criminal background checks (this report takes 6-8 weeks)

o   Order all of our background checks from states we have lived in since turning 18 (not costly but time consuming)

o   Update our medical reports for both Jay and I and the boys as well

We have also received our checklist from our adoption agency.  Our agency reviewed our Nepal dossier, contrasted it with what is needed for China and found out that almost every single piece of paperwork needs to be re-done because our Nepal dossier is over 12 months old.  So, we have the following to complete for the dossier:

o   Change our country immigration from Nepal to China via the USCIS (could be a lengthy wait)

o   Purchase new birth certificates and marriage certificates. 

o   Rewrite our employment letters, power of attorney documents, financial worksheet, education and employment history documents

o   Update our Match Form regarding which special needs we’re open to. 

One other thing.  We'll also have a small stack of paperwork to complete for the college kid who lives in our basement.  He's a great guy who works for my husband at church and he needed a quieter place to stay while he finished school.  Because he'll still most likely live here after our home study is complete for China, we need to include him.  So, background checks, fingerprints, et cetera are due for him as well.  Hopefully it won't be a big deal.

Where are we now?  I’ve created a new timeline to the right.  I’ve kept our Nepal timeline way at the bottom just as a reminder of where we’ve been on this loopy journey.  It’s all a part of our story!  But China has its own new timeline in the right column. 

I’ll start tackling the list as quickly as I can but the governmental paperwork is totally out of my hands.  We’d appreciate prayers for a timely paperwork process.  My goal would be to finish everything by Christmas.