Dossier en route to Vietnam!

Yup, I just got the email that our dossier is back from the Embassy and on its way to Vietnam! I have no idea how long it takes to get there, but I am guessing only a couple of days by DHL. Wow, can you believe that it was less than a month from the time we decided to go ahead with this adoption to having all of our paperwork completed and on its way to Vietnam. The planets are aligning for us!

It's Picture Time!

I wasn't going to, but now I have to! We received new pictures of Anh today and I am just getting giddy! One of these pictures shows Anh with the PLAN coordinator in Vietnam. I sure wish he was home already with us, but these will have to do for now. Still no word on where our dossier is - it should come back to the agency this week sometime and get sent off to Vietnam next week. But, sometimes there are delays as we well know from our experience getting ready for Vietnam. Keep your fingers crossed!

We're off to the races...

I feel like we are really moving so quickly with this new adoption. It certainly has helped that we had a relationship with our agency, our fingerprints were clean, and we wanted a boy. We are now getting closer and closer to picking up Anh.
Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day driving around picking up documents, having them certified, and then delivering them back to our agency. It was nearly 6 hours of driving, but it saved more than a week's worth of mailing back and forth! And, it meant that sometime yesterday afternoon our documents were mailed out to the Vietnam Embassy in San Francisco to be authenticated. Once they are back from SF, they will move on to Vietnam for translation and logging in. They could be in Vietnam by the end of June, but more likely it will be in the first week in July. Darn 4th, mucking everything up ;-).
We were told by our agency that travel could happen as soon as 4 weeks after log in, but I am guessing it will likely be longer. I'm still hoping that we will go before the end of the year, maybe in October or November. Every time I sit at my desk I look at my picture of Anh and I just want to go get him NOW!
Shula

A Bullet Was Dodged.....

We are blessed to have such great family! Not only has everyone been completely supportive in our decision to adopt, but the whole family seems truely excited to meet our new son. Top that off with the following story of an incredible helping hand from across the country...
As soon as we decided to pursue this second adoption, we knew we needed to put our paperwork together quickly. The only document which we could not pick up in person was our certified marriage certificate. Going through our old paperwork from China, I found a second certificate that we had not used and sent that off right away for re-certification by the state of Rhode Island. I was expecting the finished document to come in the mail sometime during the week of June 12-16 and sure enough we had an envelope in our box on Friday afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I opened the envelope to find my original certificate and the uncashed check! Unfortunately, RI could not certify a marriage license issued from a town, only a state issued copy would do. By some chance, I was home during the day and was able to catch the department in charge in RI, even with the time difference before the close of business for the week. The result? There are only two ways to obtain the proper document: (1) mail a request with the proper checks, a signed letter, and a postage paid return envelope or (2) have a blood relative appear in person to pick one up. The first method would take about 4 weeks, the second could be done in one day! Unfortunately, my mother had just left for Europe and would not be back for 3 weeks. Quickly, I called my aunt Karen in Rhode Island and asked if she might have the time to help. She too was about to leave out of town on Tuesday, but might be able to go to the city on Monday! Now mind you, the city is on the other side of the state - a small state, but the other side none-the-less. I don't like to ask people for favors, but I really felt like I had to in this instance - the time until we could pick up our child depended on it! She was cautious about promising it could happen, but I had plenty of hope.
Of course, I didn't just sit back and wait to see what happened. Immediately, I put all the required documents and fees in the mail with an overnight envelope for the return. I would rather pay a little extra and have two, than not have any.

On Monday morning I got the call. Aunt Karen was able to get the necessary documents and seals and had sent it on its way to our agency. We also found out that my cousin would have helped us out, had Karen been unsuccessful. We have a wonderful family and I am so proud to say that I am a part of it. I can't wait for our son to meet these wonderful people who helped to bring him home.

THANK YOU SO MUCH AUNT KAREN!!

Medical on its way

In complete contrast with the adoption process in China, not only do we already have a tentative referral from Vietnam, but all of the paperwork on this little boy is on its way to us. We will need to have the medical information looked at by a pediatrician familiar with these things and then if everything looks good..... well, we will have a little boy!
Our HS will be completed by early next week, and then I will drive up to Portland and Salem to have all of the paperwork certified. Wow, I just can't believe how quickly everything is moving!

Picking berries

One of the most relaxing things that I do these days is to pick rasberries off of the bush outside our house when I get home from work. Even though I always come away with scratches all over my arms, it is very meditative. Today, I was picking berries and thinking about how much fun it will be when I can do this with my children. Yes, I said children, as in the plural of child.
Now you may think that I am thinking about sometime in the future after we come back from China etc etc, but actually I mean much much sooner. No, I am not pregnant!
As you may or may not know, the wait time for adoption from China has quite quickly increased from the 7 months it was when we started our process to close to 12 months now. Most agencies are telling their clients that the wait is between 12 and 18 months from log in date (LID). You can see from our time-line at the top of the page, we still have quite a long time to wait. However, the program for adoptions from Vietnam has recently re-opened and the wait times are quite low so far. In an unusual move, our adoption agency has allowed us to begin another adoption so that we will have two concurrent processes!
So, what does this all mean? Last Monday we gave the idea some thought and by Tuesday our paperchase had begun! In this short week we have completed all of our paperwork except for the homestudy and our social worker says that she can complete the 4-page study quickly! Keep your fingers crossed that these things go as quickly as we hope. In fact, our agency has already assigned us a boy and we have a picture, although we are not going to look at it until we are sure that the paperwork is in good order. Once our HS is ready, it will take a week to be authenticated by the Vietnam Embassy in SF and then off to Vietnam it will go to be translated and logged in. This process is taking about 3 weeks, and then there seems to be about a 3 month wait to travel. It is very possible that we could be coming home by the end of 2006 with a son!
All that said, the adoption process is an ever changing landscape, so who knows how quickly, or slowly, this could go. There is also the possibility that this will take a bit longer and the China adoption a bit less time and we could be coming home with two children back to back. A little scary, but OK, I think.
All in all, it has been an exciting week!

Unplanned Adoption

I'm sure this is on every adoption blog by now, but I just had to add it to mine. I thought it was funny and it has some special meaning to us now - to be explained at some later date!

Unplanned Adoption
Have you ever noticed that you hear all the time about "accidental" pregnancies, but never about couples who experience "accidental" adoptions? Can you imagine:

Honey, sit down. I have some news for you.

What is it?

Well, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out with it. I went out to the mailbox today and ... well, we got an I-171H.

A what?!? An I-171H? As in, we're going to have a(nother) baby?!?

It looks that way.

But how? We've been so careful! I put away all the blank I-600A forms. Didn't you hide our homestudy update?

Of course I did. But don't forget, there was that one night...

What night? (pauses) Ohhh, that night. But it was only once. We were just messing around. I didn't print clearly. I didn't even use ink! (pauses again) But it was kind of fun.

(giggles)

It was, wasn't it? I'll never forget how cute you looked getting your fingerprints.

So now we've got our I-171H, eh? But that doesn't always mean you'll adopt, does it? I mean, shouldn't you see the agency or something, make sure everything's okay?

I already did.

And?

I'm five documents along.

Five documents! And they're all notarized, certified and authenticated okay?

Just great. There was one small scare when the agency couldn't see the Notary's middle initial, but it showed up just fine under the magnifying glass.

Thank God. And you, honey? Are you feeling okay?

I'm feeling fine. As long as I know you're happy about this.

Happy? I'm thrilled! It's always a shock at first when something like this happens, but of course I'm happy.

--Anonymous

WE'RE OFFICIAL!!

We got our log in date -- APRIL 29th!! Can you believe that it was only a week from the date our documents were sent to China! Even our agency was surprised. Usually, it takes 4-6 weeks to log in. Finally, we are ahead of the game. It is almost like we sent in our documents in March.
The wait is still at 9 1/2 - 10 months, but could get longer (or, less likely, shorter). We are going to need all this time to get the house ready for another human being. We still have big plans to remodel the kitchen and bath before the little one arrives. Hope everything can get done!

The waiting game

Now that we have begun the "Long Wait", I thought I might share with you a little something. This picture shows the room where all our painstakingly collected, notarized, authenticated, stamped, sealed, and translated documents are now sitting. In this room, all of the dossiers from all over the world are stored until matching day. I'm assuming that each cubby represents the LID (log in date) for the stack of dossiers within it. I have been told that each colored folder holds the dossiers for an individual agency. Does this show the enormity of the job ahead, or what? Hopefully they are better organized than I am and nothing gets lost in the shuffle!

photos from last night

The cabinets are in! The counter is drying and we are priming the cabinets for painting. Here are some pictures to peak your interest. Notice what a beautiful arch Patrick made!

It is so close, we can taste it.....

Yes, folks, the remodeling of the back room is almost done! The plasterer did a fantastic job and we painted as soon as we could. I chose a color called "Navaho White", which went on a bit more yellow than I expected, but looks great now! The cabinets are in place and will be bolted to the wall tonight. The last little bit will be installing the floor heat and then the tile floor on top. It all sounds so doable now.
I am posting a few pictures which now seem a bit out of date. They show Patrick's beautiful arch in the "raw" state and how the room looked with only the blue board up. Oh, and there is a nice shot of Patrick's window sill all painted to match the house. I'll try to get some photos of the painted plaster tonight, so keep your eyes tuned!
Shula

We have a Group Number!!

We are now almost completely officially a waiting family. Read on for the letter we received this morning!

PLAN Loving Adoptions Now Inc.

1975-2005 Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence

---

Dear Patrick & Shula,

Your dossier was sent to China 4/21/06! Your group number is 127B and it looks like you will be traveling with about 10 other families. Three of them are direct PLAN families. The wait is still about 9 1/2 months from your official log in date. Your dossier should log in with the CCAA in 2-4 weeks, but we won't know what the exact official date is for several months.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Congratulations!

Susan

Adoption update

Our dossier was received by the translator yesterday. This is the last North American stop before heading to China. I guess everything went smoothly at the state and national levels because all our approvals, signatures, stamps, and seals are in!
The latest is that we should expect our paperwork to be sent to China on or around the 25th of April - just another couple of weeks. Our agency said it will probably take 2-3 months once it is sent before we are "logged in" and are given an LID (log-in date). This is an ever so precious time because it is the start of our *real* wait and we are then considered a "waiting family" by the International adoption community. Kind of silly, since we feel like we have been waiting since we started this whole process, last September. The current "wait" to referral from China once a family has a LID is 10-12 months, followed by a 2 month wait until approval for travel. This time frame could change at any time, but we hope it gets shorter and not longer. So, folks, we are now looking at bringing home our daughter sometime mid to late 2007, if we are lucky. It's like the gestation period of an elephant.

We return from the White Rim and are approved by the INS!

Can you believe that the US government has completed part of our paperwork FASTER than they were suppose to? Yes, folks, we received our I-171H approval to adopt a foreign orphan last Friday. And somehow, we managed to get it signed, notarized, and Express mailed to our agency today! One more hurdle is jumped, now all that is left is for all the documents to be authenticated by the State of Oregon, the US State Department, and the Chinese Embassy. We are so close to having our paperwork sent to China I can almost feel it. And then the REAL wait will begin. At this time, the wait is about 10 months........

Our trip on the White Rim last week was an unqualified success. The weather was surprisingly beautiful, even though everyone kept claiming it would snow on us. We did see a short snow storm one night after we were tucked away in our sleeping bags. Big gusts of wind scattered our camp around, but the only remainder in the morning was a little crust of snow on the bikes.
I am hoping to write up a series of posts detailing our trip, but for now you can chew on the following data that was collected by Bob on his GPS during the trip. One graph shows our altitude and relative speed, the other shows humidity and temperature. Since his GPS was sitting in his camelback next to the water bladder the entire time, the temperature data is probably a little off. But you get the general idea.

Our new cabinets are here!!

Ok, so 2 months have passed without so much as a peep. We've been crazy busy, but I guess that is no excuse, considering the lives of other bloggers out there. I'm going to keep it short and simple...
Adoption update: We finally went for our INS fingerprinting last week. It took our agency almost a month and a half to approve our homestudy. There was nothing wrong with it, people just kept taking vacations. The fingerprinting is the last part that we have to take care of. Now, we wait for the INS to approve our application. Once that happens, in a month or two, then our paperwork goes to the state for authentication. After that, a courier takes it to DC, first to the state department for their seal, then to the Chinese Embassy for their seal. It is then sent by FedEx to our translator who does the translation and then sends it directly to China. If we are very lucky, the whole process will take only 2 months until it is sent to China. But that is only if we are VERY lucky. More waiting.....

The house: We managed to open up an outside wall in our house and close it again, none too quickly. Patrick fabricated new siding to match the original stuff and a window sill that is beautiful! I'm posting pictures, but without seeing what the window looked like originally, I'm not sure you can have any idea the magic he worked. Another big accomplishment was installing most of the sheet rock. I say most, because as we were installing we realized that there are some fairly important issues we need to resolve before finishing the walls. For example, we had ethernet cable coming out of one wall, but it was not integrated into a box. I quickly learned how to wire a phone and DSL line, and we now have a real outlet for both. But, these little things take time.
Ooooh, our cabinets came and they are beautiful! I am so impressed with the job that the Cabinet Factory did. The fit the space perfectly! The designer even surprised me by including a cap for the half wall that I wasn't expecting. I hope you can get an idea from the pictures, but I just invite you all to visit and see for yourself. Well, maybe wait a couple more months until we are really finished with the project. We've decided to take on plastering ourselves. Will be heading up to Portland for a class in early April, so will give more details then.

Tomorrow we are heading off for a week of biking in Moab. A little respite from working on the house constantly! Hope you all are well

Shula

Pouring the new slab

Another small hurdle

We finished our Home Study!! Ok, so it's been almost 2 weeks, but I was hoping to include that our fingerprints had come back too. No such luck.
For our home study, our social worker came over and interviewed each of us individually and then together. She asked us to recite our life stories from birth until today and then asked us a bunch of personal questions. Although these interviews can last for more than 8 hours (usually split up over 2 or more days), ours was a quick 4 hour appointment. Phew, I think we got through it unscathed. Our social worker is great and we all really seemed to get along. She even loved Frisbee!
The next step is to get approval from the INS, but we can't even send them our paperwork until our state background check comes back. We were assured that it would be any day now, but this is the government we are talking about.
I also found out today that we have to redo a bunch of the paperwork for our dossier. It isn't holding us up yet, since we are still waiting for the state to get their gears moving. However, it is a bit depressing to have to go back to all these people and ask them to redo work that they spent so much time putting together in the first place. The main person is our doctor, who has been so patient and understanding. He has had to redo a form twice and write us each personal letters. Now they have to be redone just because a date was incorrect. I feel awful calling and asking, but it has to be done.
Once our dossier is in order we send it to the INS for approval, which also may take a while. Then all the paperwork is taken by courier to DC to be authenticated by the US government, then translated, then sent off to China where it sits for a month before being logged in. It isn't until that point that they actually consider us a "waiting parent", and we will be "waiting parents" for at least 7 months. The length and complexity of this process is all very discouraging.

In other news, we are well into the remodel of our mud/utility/pantry room. Maybe someone out there can think of a good all-encompassing name for it....
Yesterday we were framing in a new wall and tearing up the old vinyl on one floor. Unfortunately, as the vinyl was removed, we realized that half of the floor was rotten. The problem is two-fold:
1. The side of the house was originally left open to the elements and water was allowed to come in. This meant that with all our wonderful Oregon rain, the boards on that side of the room always remained damp.
2. The floor boards were attached to flooring joists which were laid directly on top of the dirt. Yes, we did find some pests, although no termites, thankfully!

After careful consideration we decided that the only course of action was to tear up the remaining floor and replace it with a concrete slab. This sets us back at least a couple of weeks, which is only really an issue considering we have scheduled the new electrical to go in next week. Since we don’t want to have to reschedule the electrician again, you all can guess what we will be up to this weekend…… Get in that floor and let it dry a couple of days so that people can at least walk on it!
We had also hired a guy to install our new doors and windows. He had planned to start work today however it seems that he has bailed on us. Not too surprising, since our job is really small potatoes. Perhaps we are going to have to learn the art of framing and installing the new openings.
I guess when all is said and done it is a good thing that the adoption is taking so long. Maybe we will be finished with this stage of the remodel by the time our daughter arrives!

The Home Study!

We pushed and we pushed and we finally finished our autobiographies last Monday! What a trial that was trying to get it all completed and out to Plan, but we did it. Now we wait for our fingerprints to come back, which should be any day now.
In the mean time, Plan has assigned us to a social worker and we are expecting our home study to begin within the next 2 weeks! This is a huge step for us! When we finish the home study, we will again have to get fingerprinted and have all our paperwork authenticated and translated. Then it is off to China! Keep your fingers crossed that we can get everything in by the end of February........

We are also pushing ahead with our remodel. It is a good thing too, because it is keeping our minds off of the wait for our daughter. We have started with the little back room off the kitchen, which was quite a mess! Patrick and Steve have found some interesting "modifications", but nothing that can't be dealt with by those two! Patrick also found a decorated wooden block that said "Merry Christmas" on it! What timing!
We have now enlarged the doorway between the kitchen and the new mudroom/utility room, purchased a exterior door and window, hired an electrician, and are deciding on floor tile. Oh, and we are trying to figure out what to do about cabinets. The stock cabinets that you can buy at the big chain hardware stores don't really go with the house. We might need to have something custom built, or just purchase a nice piece of furniture for the space. Any ideas??

I'll try to post some before and current pictures when I have a chance.

The Certificates Are Here!

This may not seem like big news to all of you, but our Birth and Marriage Certificates have arrived and are on their ways to being authenticated! This is great news to us because sometimes these states take their sweet time to get official documents mailed out. One small hurdle is behind us! I was actually pretty nervous about my birth certificate from Michigan because it was the last one to come and it was taking quite a while. The other two states at least responded quickly so we knew that they were processing the requests. Michigan, however, was completely silent. In fact, I was nervous enough that they hadn't recieved my request that I sent a new request through the internet. So, I'll end up with 3 new birth certificates to add to my pile of 5 others with older dates.
Our advocate at the agency thinks that things will start to speed up now, but I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. I keep thinking to future dates of when things might start to happen, but I know this is a dangerous game. We have already been delayed by almost 2 months, and more delays wouldn't be unheard of. I just keep hoping that by Christmas 2006 we will have our daughter home with us.

We are still pressing on with our autobiographies and they are taking much longer than I had hoped. It's not easy summing up 34 years in a short essay. I keep finding interesting (at least I think so) parts of my life that I want to write about. Will anybody really want to read all this? I wonder how bored the social worker gets reading about everyone's *exciting* lives?

Time moves like molasses

Time keeps ticking by and we are no closer to adopting then we were a month ago. We are still waiting for our fingerprints to return from the state, which is as slow as you would expect. The prints were sent to the state on October 17th, so I really don't expect any word before December 17th. Then with the holidays and all, I can't imagine we will start our homestudy until the beginning of the new year. Our timing just seems to be so off.
I'm also still waiting on my birth certificate from the fine state of Michigan. They had no problem cashing my check over a month ago, but still no word. Our other certificates are already back, which makes me wonder if I sent my request to the wrong office. You would hope that they would at least let you know if there was a problem. I even went so far as to reorder the certificate over the internet today. It should only take about 2 weeks, according to their website.
Patrick is continuing to attend the pre-adopt classes without me. I'm a bit jealous that he gets to meet and talk with other people who are adopting. I hope that he is getting lots of good information. When I get home I'll grill him. :-)
I guess this is going to be another short entry, but everything is moving so slowly that there is nothing much to tell.....