One Giant Leap for Mankind ;)

Okay, it's not that significant, but it feels very big that we FINALLY got to start our dossier yesterday and after lots of running around today to fix a couple of our documents, we mailed off all but one of the papers!!  What we learned the last two days is that every single detail on this paperwork must be just right.  Nothing omitted, nothing scratched out, no wrong dates, etc.  We had multiple issues with these little matters and are currently waiting for Matt's doctor to fix his form for the second time, but by and large, we've got almost everything done.  What's next is that our agency will start to send the papers to government agencies to be "authenticated" and then when everything is done, it goes to China to be logged into their system and translated.  I am not having a huge sigh of relief yet.  Still feel like there could be bumps in the road.  But it is great to end this past two months of waiting and doing nothing and to be officially on the dossier step!

Now what I was kind of nervous about getting done first thing this morning was walking into the office in Raleigh where we get our fingerprints done for Homeland Security.  They send you an appointment time but friends said you can go any time, so I wanted to get it done ASAP, as the form they are tied to tends to take awhile to get approved.  I had to wake the kids up early so we could get there first thing and it's a little bit of a drive with morning traffic, so the whole time I'm just praying and hoping it's not all for nothing.  There was a line when we got there and the check in clerk was pretty non nonsense, so I was prepared for her to say we needed to come back next week, but it ended up being a total breeze and took mere minutes!

I'm learning this is definitely a process of hurry up and wait!  Now that we have rushed to get everything fedex'd away, there won't be anything to do for the next month or two.  I've still been sending of grant applications, but we've not gotten an acceptances and some we need to wait till we are matched anyway.  I'm really not sure we'll get any grants, which is a bummer, but I decided recently to go another route and have a craft fair at my house to raise money.

I have been crocheting scarves and painting signs like crazy the last couple weeks and plan to keep it up the rest of the summer, having the sale once we are matched--hopefully September or October?!

It's fun to paint again, though it makes me not want to do anything else and keeps a huge mess out on our table.  Hoping it's going to be worth it!!  Now I'm off to paint again...

Finally in Our Hands!

Well our social worker finished up our homestudy May 1st.  I thought (or someone told me?) it would take a few weeks to finalize the document.  I knew a few people at both our agencies needed to review it and I would need to make edits as needed.  It took two months!  Most of the time I didn't hear any updates so it's been a bit of a boring time in the process.  But I do feel like we've used the time to continue to get to know China.  We got to have dinner cooked by a family who moved here from China a few years ago.  It was very fun to get to know them better and try some authentic food! Gray especially said he loved all of it and he and two of the girls there enjoyed comparing their dumplings eaten totals:)

I've also read more books on China that have helped me get a better grasp of the country's recent history, particularly the Cultural Revolution.  Very interesting to see such a different world from what our country has experienced.

So finally our homestudy arrived in the mail yesterday and I was able to send of our 1-800a form to immigration today.  We have also applied for one grant and almost have one more to submit, plus some others in the works.

Very soon we'll start sending off our dossier papers to be authenticated and then sent to China, at which point we'll be logged in their system and able to be matched!  Some families from our agency recently visited some of the partnership orphanages in China and it was exciting to see their pictures and begin to hear stories.  Looking forward to moving along and figuring out who our girl is!

Still Here!

I don't know if anyone bothers to check in, but there has been very little to report on the homefront these days!  We have been waiting for over 3 weeks now for our homestudy agency to review the document that Allie did for us.  Hopefully not too much longer.  There was a mix-up this week about some of our clearances coming in, but turns out they just weren't properly recorded, so after some run-around we found out all went through just fine. So now we wait on the review and our FBI prints to come back.  Then we can finally turn in our dossier to China!!

Getting to know our new community!

Years ago I had this thought--what if one day we were neighbors with my friend Robyn, whom I also knew wanted to adopt, and we ended up adopting together?  The picture was always Chinese kids because of Lisa, though then I was far from sure that's the way we would go if we ever did really go through with adoption...and at that point it wasn't looking like we would.  And then, all of sudden, here we are.  We are neighbors with Robyn AND both of our families are adopting from China AND two other families in our neighborhood are adopting AND our friends from the Army are adopting AND several more families in Durham, one of which includes a little girl that will be in my preschool class next year.  Sometimes I just can't believe the way all these things have fallen into place.  More than I could have asked for or imagined, for sure!

Mother's Day, our new community of families who have started adopting via Lisa in the last couple of months all gathered for dinner and it was really cool.  I didn't know a couple of the families, so it was fun to meet new people.  Loved catching up with those I do know.  Great to talk through our experiences and hilarious to see us all halt our conversations and lean in a little closer every time Lisa started talking with her answers to our questions and words of wisdom.  She is our common link and was the lady of the hour, so to speak.  So neat to see all of our 26 kids running around and playing together.  Looking forward to getting to know everyone more as we continue the process, some of us travel together, and as we gather again when our new children are home, giving them time to hang out with families just like theirs.  By then we may have upwards of 36 kids to wrangle!  Just very thankful to have this group.

Ready for Sister!

Hooray for bunk beds!  We got these from a family in our neighborhood who was moving.  It took a little rearranging, getting a smaller fan, finding more bolts, but we got them together and Julia is officially sleeping on the top bunk.  It took one or two nights for her to feel completely comfortable up there, but now she's excited and planning to pass notes to her sister through the slots in her bed:)  Her little room looks a lot neater and bigger too after rearranging.  One more step closer to being ready for her mei mei!

Homestudy DOWN

We had our last homestudy visit tonight!  So we are finished with all of that paperwork and just have to wait for all the appropriate parties to finish putting it together and reviewing it.  The finished product will be kind of like a story of us, with the details of why we're adopting, who we are, what we've done to prepare, etc.  It should be about a 12-15 page document and we'll get to review it as well before it's final.

Then we'll begin putting some other documents with the finished homestudy for our dossier to China.  Once that's taken care of and sent in, we will be "logged in" to China and begin reviewing files of children that could be our girl!

This is our social worker Allie that's been doing our visits.  Today she went over lots of things we'll need to know from the time we are given our daughter until she settles into our home.  Some things I found interesting were her ideas for helping our daughter identify with the culture.  Beside the things we've thought of or read about already, she said some parents buy a small gift in China for each of their new child's subsequent birthdays so each year, she gets a little something from her birth country.  Also, in addition to the nice baby book we have that will be a great keepsake, we can make a book for her that she can play with at any time.  Kind of reminds me of the book I made of Joshua and Matt for him to read while Matt was deployed.

We also talked about things such as the need for me and Matt to be the ONLY ones to do any care-taking of our girl until she begins to adjust and attach to us, which could be months.  And we'll need to relax our rules around the house for her at first, especially about food, giving her time to become secure with the idea that there will always be plenty to eat.  We might want to have a box of healthy snack food she can carry around so she doesn't feel like she needs to hide food for herself just in case.  Matt would also like one of these snack baskets.  :)

Allie has been great and the kids have liked talking to her too, particularly Julia.  She talked to them individually today and Joshua was a man of few words.  Gray expressed that he feels excited and nervous but couldn't much identify why.  Julia liked talking about being a big sister.  We still have a lot we will need to discuss with the kids since they haven't had as much education as we have (though Gray has enjoyed sitting in on several of our online courses) and still feel unsure about what to expect.

Happy about getting this step done and it definitely feels just a little more real talking about having our girl home, rather than talking about our own childhoods and filling out financial forms!

Another One Down

We had our second (of three) home visits last night that went just as smoothly as the first.  This time, Matt and I were interviewed individually about all kinds of things--our childhood, our family, strengths and weaknesses, story of how we got together and traits of our marriage, etc.  I teased Matt because I went first and took about an hour, but he took more like 1 1/2 hours...and he's supposedly not a talker;)

Kids were a little more "normal" this time.  Had to speak to them a couple times, like when the boys decided to wrestle on the couch instead of do homework:), but for the most part they were calm and all went well.  They particularly enjoyed getting individual time with me while Matt was talking Allie's ear off! :)

Next up, we have our final visit in two weeks and then the agency will put everything together and send the homestudy to Small World's office and to us to review and make sure it all looks accurate.  Then we are on to dossier!!

Today we got to go get the bunk bed for the girls' room.  Julia was thrilled and wanted me and her to put them together immediately...well, after she cleaned her room.  I told her we'd probably wait for Matt, as some of the pieces needed fixing first, but she went ahead and cleaned and showed me her room.  She had displayed a few books on the floor so that when her sister comes home "she can come in and choose one" and put out some more babyish toys for her too.  I gently explained that we've still got many months to go and we could get things just right when it's closer to time to get her!  She is so ready.

Quick update on the fundraiser...amazingly to me, we have raised $7,020 so far!!  We are so thankful.