USCIS

I know that I am probably losing most people, but just in case...

Today we went to our local USCIS office to put in our I600-A, and I won't bore you with all of the details on why something that should have been quick and easy took two hours, but.. We didn't luck out and have them say something along the lines of, "Come right over here and get your fingerprints done while you're here.." like I'd hoped, but the nice man at the window did push the application back to me and say, "They don't ask for it, but if they have your ss#'s, they do find your information faster". Well let me right those down for you.

Now we have to wait for the letter giving us our fingerprinting appointment. He said that they are out to around the second week of February right now. Someone pointed out the possibility of our appointment being the days that we are out of town next month. I had never even thought of that!!! Wouldn't that just be my luck.

Here It Goes

So I got one of these tagged things....

8 Things I’m Passionate About...


1. Food
2. Traveling
3. My kids - in the right hand column!
4. My friends.
5. Going after what I want.
6. Being fair and treating others how you want to be treated.
7. Cupcakes!!!
8. This is a tough one...


8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die...

1. See the Seychelles
2. Play with the pandas in China
3. Live in another country, preferably Italy.
4. Own horses.
5. Visit India
6. Visit Bali
7. Visit Australia
8. Do we notice a trend here?

8 Things I Say Often...

1. Who peed here???!!!!!!
2. And how does this effect me?
3. Sake No!!!!
4. I have a bruise?
5. Where?
6. I don't know (In reply to Cory's question of where my bruise came from)
7. Honey, you wouldn't want to help me out and do __________ would you?
8. Why?


8 TV Shows I’ve Recently Watched...

1. Cashmere Mafia
2. Notes From the Underbelly
3. Iron Chef
4. Bobby Flay's Throwdown
5. Rachel Ray's Travels
6. Boston Legal
7. 30 Rock
8. Some random Secrets of... on the History Channel

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over...

1. Personal Jesus - Marilyn Manson
2. Into the Night
3. I am so bad with the names of songs, but the one that they always play outside of the Bellagio, and in movies, and I heard it quite a few times in Italy too.
4. The Way That You Use It
5. Little Red Corvette - Most any Prince
6. Once again, I am just BAD with names.
7.
8.


8 Things That Attract Me To My Best Friends...


1. Trust
2. Loyalty
3. Sense of Humor
4. Shopping ;)
5. History
6. Adventurous
7. Love to eat as much as me!! Even if they're a little picky!!
8. Supportive


8 Things I’ve Learned (or been reminded of) This Past Year...

1. That I really am VERY lucky
2. I love my life, but change is good
3. I don't do well working for a large corporation
4. Heated handles or not, snowblowing sucks
5. A perfectly clean house is overrated
6. Life is short, have fun.
7. Try not to sweat the small stuff
8. Let it go

Quick Update

So, Saturday I sent off our dossier. Now I am a little concerned, and am hoping that someone else who has gone through WHFC can tell me if I should be.

Our packet from WHFC said that "documents must be submitted to them within 3 months of being completed, ie, if it is dated November 7, it has to be to them prior to February 7..." however, the I171 could be sent in at a later date. I take that to mean that everything else just has to be in before it is three months old regardless of the date on the 171. I'm trying to explain this but realize that it is sounding very confusing. As you might be able to guess, some of our documents, namely our medical exams, will be 3 months old on February 7, so I wanted to get everything submitted before we had to bother Tom (our internist) again, and hunt down the notary at the hospital... But, our 171 is not done yet. If that makes any sense to anyone other than me let me know.,

This is so typical of me, instead of being happy that I got all that info Fedex'd off yesterday, I wake up at 5 in the morning today and come downstairs to read through all the info again. Wake Cory up and start buggin him about what it all means... Where he promptly yells at me and tells me to knock it off because I am going to drive myself nuts and him in the process. Go back to sleep!!! It's Sunday!! Hey Christie, does that sound familiar??? ;)

So, I thought that I would share the outside pictures of the house I took to send in with the dossier.. What do you think people in Ethiopia will think of these??? I can't help it, it is winter!!!!




Back of the house.. I was standing in a snow drift up past my butt for this one. I was pretty much laying back in the snow to take it.





Obviously front of house. I would like to point out that I did the snowblowing on this day!!!! Pat came over because I apparently looked so funny, my hair was plastered with snow, and took pictures. So I am sure that they will be circulating. Seriously though, when I came in I had to sit in front of the fireplace to let my hair unthaw enough to get my little ear muff/head band thing off.

Feeling so much better about myself..

So in my cruising of blogs, I found this one, http://journey2babybaker.blogspot.com/ They are of course adopting from Ethiopia as well, but the thing that really caught me was that they have 3 dogs..... Not only that, their house is complete anarchy, she was talking about the destruction, not to mention pee stains around the house, and I don't know, its just nice to know that I'm not the only one. At this point in time, the dogs have basically destroyed the carpet. Even though we have the lovely little automatic doggy door, ever since Sake showed up, regularly going outside has ended. Its so frustrating to see all of the stains on the carpet and at this point in time, there really isn't much that Stanley Steemer can do to help. It is nice to know that I am not the only one though!!!!!!

It really is my own fault though. Chivas had some issues with peeing in the house long before we built this house, and I should have known better than to put carpet in here. Stupid, stupid me. I can still see myself, sitting there in the flooring store, deceiving myself into believing that it would be okay and that this lovely new pad that they spoke of was actually going to somehow repel the stains. SUCKERS!!!!!! Hopefully we can get some more of this carpet replaced before we have a little one crawling around!!!

I Understand I Probably Asked For It...

Recently, I added my blog to a list of adoption blogs for Ethiopia. I did this for the benefit of anyone else who is adopting, assuming that anyone can actually find something useful in my senseless chatter. So it's out there and somewhat public. For this reason I have also removed a few items that had previously been in posts, some of you might notice.

Now I fully expect that anyone can read our blog now. I don't have it password protected or anything, and I don't mind. I put it out there after all!!! And I do want comments from anyone who stops by. Its interesting to hear from people I know and new people.

However, I would respectfully ask that you not use my comments section as a classifieds page. Today someone had posted information about a book he had written. Apparently he has discovered the meaning of life and can't wait to share it with everyone. Now I won't go into all of the details on why I would not read a book like this, such as, your meaning to life is not necessarily my meaning of life so I don't care... But I would ask that You not peddle it on my blog. And the same for anyone else who has some great discovery or message that they would like to get out to the masses. Call Oprah, the Today show, or Howard Stern. I don't care, but don't post it in my comments section.


I'm so mean aren't I?? ;)

Something Fun

I know, I still need to finish the dog story, but in the meantime, this is kind of fun.

I don't know if it sounds like me though. What do you think?

Your Brain is Orange

Of all the brain types, yours is the quickest.You are usually thinking a mile a minute, and you could be thinking about anything at all.Your thoughts are often scattered and random - but they're also a lot of fun! You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about esoteric subjects, the meaning of life, and pop culture.

What'>http://www.blogthings.com/whatcolorisyourbrainquiz/">What Color Is Your Brain?

It's Official

So, finally. The social worker emailed me today and said that our home study was approved by their committee as well as our placement agency. So now she will be getting it notarized Tuesday and in the mail to me!! Yay. So I made an appointment at USCIS to file our I-600A form on the 29th. But we don't need that approval to send in our dossier, so once I take pictures of the front of the house, and inside, I just have to put together our photo pages (we went and got the passport sized ones at Walgreen's today) and send it off.

When I told Cory that is all we had left to do he was a little shocked. "Isn't that the one that everyone says takes forever to put together?" Why yes it is honey, you're wife is on top of her shit.

Why aren't the photos of the house already done? Such a small thing??? Well, when I went outside to take a photo of the front of our house yesterday I went through the front doors. No doggies got by me. Front door closed securely, check. Walk out to street, get house positioned in frame, about to snap picture and two small white dogs, that look amazingly similar to Shelby and Sake go running through the frame and up the street. I stand there confused. I'm the only one home, what could have happened?

But there were only two, a chance to catch the third. As I try to run back through the snow and ice, Chivas comes running out. I say Chivas! He looks at me, pauses for split second, he doesn't like the cold and I could see that he would rather stay in the house. Obviously he was a good 20 seconds behind the other two, so running away was not his first choice for a Saturday afternoon. Then I see it, the fear of peer pressure. If he stays the girls will never let him live it down, so he runs off.

I go into the house, put away the few cold items that I had from grocery shopping really quick, leave the others on the floor, and get three leashes and start walking up the street. Make it all the way up, and part way down the next street. At this time I realize that it is freaking cold!!!! Bitter cold!!! And I of course did not grab my gloves. No sign of dogs and the little kids out sledding have not seen them either, but promise to look for them as do neighbors from up the street who I have met twice but do not recognize me with new haircut/color. No offense taken. People I see on a day to day basis have trouble keeping track of what I look like. They also promise to look for said dogs.

Now it is time to get in the car and look for the kids... (I'm starting to really think about what Jessica said about me being a single parent at this point)

Off in the car for what I think will be a quick search and retrieve mission, after all their little paws will be getting cold.... Not so much. Think Gilligan's Island. They expected to go out for a three hour tour, and x number of years later, there they are on that stupid island. Well, I thought mine would be a 15 minute jaunt, turned into 3.5 hours of gas sucking, back aching, haven't eaten since my cereal this morning and I worked out with Sheri HELL!!!!

Now, it is time for me to make my avatar (sp?) on the Wii, so I will continue this tomorrow for anyone who is interested...

#20

So I've only been doing this blog since late October, and I've already pretty much run out of titles..... How sad!!!

Well, I went through all of the paperwork for our dossier tonight and we have only a few things left to get. I still need Cory's employment letter, which I have threatened to come down and get on my own if he doesn't take care of it himself. He has until Monday. Then we have to have our cheesy statement of reason for adopting, notarized, and our photo pages need to be put together. We each need two passport photos, and photos of the outside and inside of our house. The outside is easy, but I'm not sure what exactly they want to see of the inside.... I guess maybe the living room and a picture of the upstairs, I'm not sure what up there though. Oh well. Not a big deal. And I'm cautiously optimistic that we will have the final copy of the home study in the next week, so other than immigration, we will be all set on that part. And we can send everything in minus the USCIS approval, so that will be a relief to get such a large chunk of it done.

I'm starting to relax to the point of looking at baby stuff, somewhat seriously. Cribs, bedding, room colors. Get ready to paint Jenny!! Not too soon though. Realistically we should probably wait until we've officially been on the referral list for a few months. ;)

Getting Closer

The social worker sent me the rough draft of our home study today and in there it says that we are approved for one male, 0-12 months, in good health, from Africa.

Yay!! Now they have to do a bit more tweaking, and wait to hear back from our placement agency, who also got a copy and then that part is done. We might actually have most of our dossier, sans the USCIS, in by the end of the month. Then a few fingerprints, and we are officially on the wait list for a referral. It was kind of weird to see us referred to as mother and father in a document.

And, in the spirit of pointing out good things, remember how I was complaining about the state certification for a notarized document. Well I was shocked to have gotten that back in the mail less than a week after I sent it. They said 5 business days in their hot little hands, followed by mail time both ways, so they came in way under the mark. How often does that happen with a government facility.

Home Study Update

So, we had our home study today. The woman who came couldn't have been nicer or more normal. Cory thinks that it went really well but I'm not going to hold my breath. We will hopefully have the rough draft from her in a few days, and if we're lucky she won't surprise us and say that we should not be allowed to adopt. I don't think that she will, but I'm always ready for the worst.

Scheduled

I talked to the social worker from our local agency tonight and she is coming up Sunday morning. She said that it was only a couple of hours and then she writes up the home study. I thought that they needed to come a couple of times. She was going to verify that, and get back to me, but it doesn't sound like she is interested in dragging this out any longer than she has to either. She sounds pretty normal too, so I'm feeling pretty good about this.

Home Study

We're waiting impatiently to see some movement on the home study front. I called the woman at Families for Children that I have been in contact with for the last, 3 months?? Holy crap!! Anyway, I had emailed her Wednesday, she's the one that said we could get going in the new year, and heard nothing. So I called her Friday morning and she told me that we had been assigned a social worker.. Huh? I thought YOU were our social worker. Okay, so fine, we are assigned someone else who is in our area. Great. She implied that she had emailed me to tell me this, but I did not get an email from her. That's fine, I've had some issues with my email at work. So when we get off the phone, she tells me that she will email me the info again and include this woman on the email.... Fast forward to 4:30 yesterday when I take it upon myself to email her from my msn account, just in case hers is still having trouble coming through to me because of course she must have done it, like she said she would, right?? Well, still, nothing.

I'm getting antsy because the notarization on our medical forms expires on February 7. This is not the end of the world necessarily, but a big pain in the ass to have to go back to his office and have the form updated. And honestly, I don't know if we can just go back to the notary in the hospital and have her update it or if he needs to fill out all new forms. I will have to check into this.

Now we have not paid this agency yet, and my common sense says, "screw it, find someone else" but, this is the only agency in Utah that is already approved by WHFC, and although I could go out and find another agency and WHFC would most likely not have an issue with it, so long as they are licensed, I have no idea how much time that would add on. On top of that, with all of the blogs I'm reading, this issue with home study case workers appears to be a common thread. Not everyone has had trouble with their social workers, but this lack of urgency seems to be pretty common. So at this point, whatever I would have to do to fix things on the doctor's side, will probably be easier than dealing with another one of these people.

The crappy part is that next week is pretty much out for me as far as doing any of this too. We have sales training/meetings all week and the only night during the week that Cory and I would normally have together - Wednesday - is out since I will be team bonding at Boondocks. I can't get too upset about that though, because who am I kidding thinking that this woman would even get back to me by then. Seriously, maybe I should have been a social worker. Drag your feet on everything, ignore clients, blow things off and eventually still get paid.

Paperwork, paperwork.....

And more paperwork. So when I first started reading the blogs of other people who had adopted from Ethiopia I noticed a trend. Everyone was complaining about all of the paperwork that was involved in getting registered with the agencies and getting their dossiers in. (Once the dossier is completed that is when you are officially on the wait list for a referral.)

Well when the information packet actually came from WHFC my initial thought was that this didn't look so bad. Nothing I couldn't handle. Well then the delay with the background check happened and since it was the holidays, we just backed off for the moment. Now that the background check is finally back and I'm back on paper duty, I feel like every time I look at the list of required documents, there is something new. Seriously, it is like some sort of special paper out of a Harry Potter book. New items just magically appear. And every new thing that pops up of course requires notarization. My favorite though is the document that had to be notarized, then sent to the state, to be authenticated. Basically a special notarizing of the original notary.

And of course our medicals will be out of date as of February 7th, so if we don't get the homestudy done by then, we have to go back to the doctor again. I actually don't know if this would involve a whole new doctor's appointment or if we could just go back to the notary and have her update her notarizing...

I will be so happy when the paperwork is all done and I can just sit back, have a drink and wait. That middle part there, that is what makes this still better than having one on my own. I can have a martini when I am ready to pull my hair out!!!!!!! People tend to frown on that if you're pregnant.

Hey, by the way, if you happen to be reading this and have any comments, please feel free to leave them. It's always good to hear what everyone has to say.

Dolls for Darfur

I saw this story on MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22462829#22218919 and thought that it was so sweet of these women. In case anyone reads this, and is going over to Ethiopia, I thought that it might not hurt to contact them and see if they would be interested in donating the dolls to orphanages there. I know that a lot of people are getting donations together to take with them and thought that this might be a good fit. I wouldn't think that it should matter which country they are going to.