Christmas

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Things have gotten busy with all our Christmas preparations. We are in Alliance, Nebraska right now at my in-laws. We drove through the night Christmas Eve and surprised Tyler's mom at 3 o'clock Christmas morning. We will be heading home on Wednesday and start our preparation for my family who are coming on Friday.

I was excited this year, I actually got Christmas letters out. It was our families first Christmas letter. Anyway, if you are visiting my sight because of the letter, then welcome, I hope you enjoy it!

The home study is going well. I finally have all my paper work done and I just need some information from Denise before I send it all in. Yea! So, it won't be long now before we can set up an appointment with the CIS in Kansas City and apply for our 171-H. It sounds like the waiting list for a referal is geting longer so we are very anxious to get on it!

Well, I shall sign off for now. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

A sigh of relief

Well, I'm feeling much better today. I guess all of my stress was for nothing...as usual. We had the home study Wednesday and it actually was a lot of fun. As it turns out Denise is willing to write the home study for us before our passports come in. Also some of the other paper work that I was concerned about isn't needed. I am very relieved...thank you God! We should have all the paper work done in a couple of weeks and then Denise will write the home study for us. After that we will be able to apply at INS for our 171-H (approval to bring an orphan into the country). That will take about 4-6 weeks and then we can be put on a waiting list for a referral! Vietnam is backwards from most countries and we won't need to do the dossier (all the paper work that needs to be sent to the country) until later. I’ve been doing so much research that all of this makes sense to me. Sorry if I’m confusing everyone else! I guess all I’m trying to say is that everything is moving right along and is easier then I was anticipating for a while there. I’m also quite excited because I got the house spotless for the home study and it feels so good!! Okay, it FELT good, what can I say, I have kids…   

Feeling a bit overwhelmed!

Compared to the list of what is needed for the Dossier, the papers for our homestudy are nothing. All the documents needed for the homestudy just need to be photo copies, unlike the dossier where the documents, not only have to be original copies which are only a few months old, but also must be notarized, state certified, and authenticated be the Vietnamese Embassy. However, I looked through the list of what I needed for the homestudy and thought “oh, this will be easy”…then I started. I'm feeling so overwhelmed because I am now realizing there is much more then I thought. For example, I don't even have an official marriage certificate, so I have to order one from Wyoming before I can make a copy of it! Also, Tyler and I both have passports that are no longer good. I was hoping to not have to worry about that until we were on the waiting list for a child and had some time to relax. However, it looks like we might need to have copies of the passports before she'll complete the homestudy review. If that is true it means it will delay the whole process by about six weeks while we wait for the passports that we won't even use for another year or more! What makes the whole thing worse is that I'm getting information from the CHI adoption guide, Nikki (the Vietnam coordinator) and Denise (the CHI social worker doing the homestudy) and they don't seem to always agree. I'm so confused! But I think the main thing I'm realizing is that I need to relax and not worry if everything takes much longer then I had expected. I know God is in control and through the delays will be leading us to the perfect child.

Well, I think I have rambled and confused you enough for one night.

Homestudy Next Week!

Well we finally heard from Denise, the social worker who is going to do our homestudy.  Because we live so far from Kansas City (that's where CHI is located) she is going to do our homestudy all at one time instead of four separate interviews. She will be coming to our home on the 13th which is a week from today. I was expecting to have the homestudy done by now so I'm a bit disappoined. But on the plus side we have already gotten our letters from the Doctor written and we will hopefully be able to get all of the other paperwork done before she comes so the rest of the process will go quickly.

We keep telling Ellie that her new little brother is going to be from Vietnam. We have talked about the adoption and "picking up" or "getting" a little brother for Ellie so much that we're beginning to think that she believes that is how all babies come. Now she has even started asking where she came from. It took me a while to convince her that she came from my tummy!