Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Express mail to Chicago!

It's Wednesday now and all of my paperwork should be on a desk somewhere inside the Chinese Consulate in Chicago! Hopefully they will have it back to me
by Tuesday of next week. I think I have everything ready to send to CHI
(adoption agency) who will send our dossier to China for us. They send them
every Friday, so I'd like to get it there before May 2nd. If not ,after all of this
waiting what's one more week!!! We are getting really excited now and it is
starting to sink in! We have another child out there! We just want her home.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Hallelujah Birthday

I never thought I would say this again, but this was the best birthday ever!!!!! I won't say how old I turned today, but I recieved the best present EVER!!! I came home to find our I-171H in the mail box! FINALLY! Our homestudy has been done since mid October and we finally have all the paperwork we need!!! Tomorrow I will be going to the Sec. of State to have it certified, then immediately to the post office to mail it to the Chicago Chinese Consulate. Hopefully we will have it back and sent off to China the first full week of May!!! Everyone join me in the song; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

SPRING CLEANING!

Spring is finally here and we decided to start working on our bedroom situation, in preparation for the arrival of little miss Ellie. I think if she had come here and seen the complete chaos in Riley's bedroom she may have said "take me back to the orphanage!" Getting some of the cleaning, setting up, and bedroom rearranging done is helping to take our minds off the waiting. I might get the nerve to show a picture of Riley's room before we started! It was that bad! We love him, but he is undeniably the worst pack-rat EVER!!!!! (besides my father) We took two 30 gallon trashbags of garbage out of his bedroom! Not Goodwill items or things to be handed down to Rorey, but pure trash!! I found things and clothes that I forgot he even had, stuffed under the bed, in the closet, behind the bed, you name it , he had it! He is now moved to the smaller bedroom next door and is on a tight cleaning schedule!!! Our next order of business is to re-do the closets (our walk-in included) with more efficient use of space. Since this house is 110+ years old, we are not blessed with great closet space! We have to get things in order because even though we are still waiting, Ellie has enough clothes to fill one up already! Oh, but don't tell Rick that! Anyway, we made a great start on getting the bedrooms ready for our new family member and will be getting some furniture and "stuff" soon.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

NO NEWS IS NOT GOOD NEWS!!!

Well it's Thursday April 17th and we still have no news from immigration on our I-171H. Our social worker made a few adjustments to our homestudy and resubmitted it to USICS on Tuesday April 8th. I have been waiting anxiously to say the least, getting palpitations every time I approach the mailbox. Once this form arrives we are ready to get it certified, and then mail all of our papers to the Chinese consulate in Chicago for authentification. (which means I pay them $20 a sheet to stick a big sticker on the back with Chinese written all over it) Then when it comes back to us (7-10 business days) we will send our entire dossier to our agency who will check it over and then send it all to China!!! Then the waiting begins again for China to give us our official referral and TA(travel approval) If there is one thing you need when adopting it is patience, and coping skills!!! augh!!! We are so excited to get her home!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Paperwork Fake-out

As I have said on this blog repeatedly, we are still waiting on our I-171H from immigration. We have been waiting since February. Thursday April 3rd, Rick took the day off of work and was at home. I was out with my mom, aunt Lorrie and Rorey for lunch. I called home and asked Rick to check the mail to see if "the form" had arrived and to call me if it was there. Well two minutes later my phone rings and it was Rick saying there was only one piece of mail and it was from the Department of Homeland Security!!!! I yelled ya-hoo in the middle of a restaurant!! BUT... He opened it and all it said was "please submit the documentation in regards to your I-600A." Of course this pushed me over the edge again!!! And to top it off we don't even know what this "documentation" is that they are wanting! At the bottom it said that a checklist had been mailed to our agency. Rick immediately contacted our social worker who knew nothing about this! I'm hoping it is something that can quickly be sent to them and we can get this paperwork chaos behind us! It's Sunday night and I have been trying to stay calm over the weekend (although I'm not good at that). Hopefully tomorrow we will find out what is going on.