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!