Tonight is our last meeting with our social worker. Aaron and I are meeting her in B'Ham. We will go over the rough draft of our home study, make sure everything looks ok, and then she will go and finish the final draft.
It will probably be at next week before we get everything to her. We still have a few things we are waiting for, such as my lab results and medical form, Aaron's employee letter, ..
We have to finish the online adoption training, which we should finish today and then we have to wait for them to send us out completion certificates, which takes a couple of days.
I am getting my labs drawn tomorrow at my doctor's and they probably won't be back until early next week, so I will pick up our finished medical forms then. Good thing is, we went ahead and got the medical forms done for China while we were there.
Yesterday, all 7 of us went to the doctor's office and had TB Skin Tests, so I will be taking all of the kids in the morning when I get my blood drawn to have the TB Skin Tests read.
I will be excited to have the home study done because...
#1 We can start applying for grants, which we are in desperate need of. Our adoption is predicted to cost around $30,000 and we are up to around $3800 in donations. THANKS!!!
#2 We can apply for USCIS. This takes about 6 - 10 weeks to come back. This is basically the US Immigration giving us permission to bring a child into the US. So, while this is being processed, I will work like crazy to get all of our dossier paperwork done. It all has to be notarized, then has to be county certified, then state certified. Once our USCIS comes back and our dossier is compiled, this will be sent to China to be translated. Once this is sent to China, our agency says that families normally travel to pick up their child between 3-6 months from sending paperwork to China.
So we are getting closer!!!
If you are in our area, we are having a fundraiser at Beltline Church of Christ May 16th 7-10am. Pancake breakfast... tickets are $6 person. Come out and support our adoption.
Next stop China
Next Stop China!
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Friday, April 17, 2015
3/4 Home Study Done
Tuesday we had our 3rd home study meeting. Our last one is April 28th. We will be meeting in Birmingham, going over the rough draft of the home study, turning in the rest of our paperwork and then our social worker will make the polished draft and we will hopefully have it in hand the first week in May.
Let the fun begin once we get our home study in hand. Once we have the completed home study, we will start applying for grants. Will we get any? I sure hope so. We are still thinking of other fundraising ideas and will hopefully have another fund raiser soon.
In between now and our last social worker visit, we all need to get to the doctor to have our medical paperwork filled out for both the home study and our China dossier.
Our Tuesday home study included the interview with the kids. Some funny answers from the kids...
Social worker "tell me what your daddy is like" Seth "he is scary in the hallways" So I had to explain the new game Aaron has taught the boys of hiding behind corners and jumping out and scaring the person coming down the hall.
Social worker "what is one thing you would change about your family?"
"our van, I hate our van" Said by an anonymous teenager. Who knew our van wasn't cool?
"not getting in trouble" said by Ethan
Social worker "what are you going to do with your new sister?"
Ethan "read with her"
Ordered our birth certificates and marriage certificates this week $62. For some reason, they have to be issued within the last few months. I had copies I had ordered a few years ago, of course they weren't current enough.
I am also going to work on our adoption education this next few weeks. Including a trip to the International Adoption Clinic in August for their next seminar that we are required to attend. another $150. So things are adding up. Some times it gets a little overwhelming and my chest gets a little tight, but then I know that God sent us on this journey and He is walking with us.
Let the fun begin once we get our home study in hand. Once we have the completed home study, we will start applying for grants. Will we get any? I sure hope so. We are still thinking of other fundraising ideas and will hopefully have another fund raiser soon.
In between now and our last social worker visit, we all need to get to the doctor to have our medical paperwork filled out for both the home study and our China dossier.
Our Tuesday home study included the interview with the kids. Some funny answers from the kids...
Social worker "tell me what your daddy is like" Seth "he is scary in the hallways" So I had to explain the new game Aaron has taught the boys of hiding behind corners and jumping out and scaring the person coming down the hall.
Social worker "what is one thing you would change about your family?"
"our van, I hate our van" Said by an anonymous teenager. Who knew our van wasn't cool?
"not getting in trouble" said by Ethan
Social worker "what are you going to do with your new sister?"
Ethan "read with her"
Ordered our birth certificates and marriage certificates this week $62. For some reason, they have to be issued within the last few months. I had copies I had ordered a few years ago, of course they weren't current enough.
I am also going to work on our adoption education this next few weeks. Including a trip to the International Adoption Clinic in August for their next seminar that we are required to attend. another $150. So things are adding up. Some times it gets a little overwhelming and my chest gets a little tight, but then I know that God sent us on this journey and He is walking with us.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Home Study Update, Fingerprints, & Answered Prayer
We have gotten a few things done this week.
Our 2nd of 4 home study visits got done this week. Our social worker came to the house and we had spent all afternoon cleaning. I realize that it doesn't have to be spotless, which our house never is, but it is a good excuse to clean up a little. So she got here around 6:30pm and stayed until around 8pm. This was the interview with Aaron and I together. There wasn't enough time to interview the kids, or do the house walkthrough (all that cleaning for nothing!) She will be back in about 1 1/2 weeks to do visit number 3, the kids' interviews, and the house inspection. After that, we will have one more visit, which we are planning on doing in B'ham where will we go over the rough draft of the home study and make sure everything looks good. Turn in the rest of our paperwork if we haven't done it, and then she will finish it and make any changes that need to be made and mail it to us!
Once our home study is done, we will apply to USCIS, who will give us permission to bring a child into the US. Once our permission comes back (normally 6-10 weeks) then we will send our completed dossier(stack of paperwork) to China to be translated. Once that is send off, our agency states that we should travel 3-6 months from that time..
So here is our predicted timeline...
1. get home study back by first week in May and immediately apply for USCIS
2. get USCIS approval back anywhere between the middle of June to the end of July.
3. have dossier ready to send as soon as USCIS approval is received.
4. get dossier authenticated with the state as soon as done
5. send off dossier to China the first week of August
6. wait for the go ahead to head to China to pick up our girl, sometime between Nov. and Feb.
Of course, nothing is certain with international adoption. Just trying to get it in my mind how things will go down.
Aaron and I also got our fingerprints done. Up until this adoption, we would have to go to a local jail to get them done, but now that has changed. You apply online, through a specific website that the home study agency uses. You pay online, print out your receipt, then you take that to one of the fingerprint sites in the state. Unfortunately, there were none in our county, so we had about a 40 min. drive. Mom watched the kids, so Aaron and I got a little "date" in. Of course, we just went and got our fingerprints and headed straight home, but uninterrupted talking is wonderful. And I like it much better than going to the jail. This fingerprint site was in a non US postal service post office.
Answered prayers:
In addition to normal adoption expenses, there will be other things come up... such as needing another bed for another child. I have been thinking for a couple of months at least that we will need another bed for our new girl, unless we wanted to throw her in the same bed with Hannah who sleeps in a double. Which we really didn't want to do, but that was months in the future. I have really wanted bunk beds, which will save us some space. I think I have even prayed about it a few times, but I am not 100% sure. Anyway, had a couple at church ask us the other night if we wanted some bunk beds they were getting rid of. So, I am excited to get those and thankful that God saw our need and provided before I started begging Him for it.
Our 2nd of 4 home study visits got done this week. Our social worker came to the house and we had spent all afternoon cleaning. I realize that it doesn't have to be spotless, which our house never is, but it is a good excuse to clean up a little. So she got here around 6:30pm and stayed until around 8pm. This was the interview with Aaron and I together. There wasn't enough time to interview the kids, or do the house walkthrough (all that cleaning for nothing!) She will be back in about 1 1/2 weeks to do visit number 3, the kids' interviews, and the house inspection. After that, we will have one more visit, which we are planning on doing in B'ham where will we go over the rough draft of the home study and make sure everything looks good. Turn in the rest of our paperwork if we haven't done it, and then she will finish it and make any changes that need to be made and mail it to us!
Once our home study is done, we will apply to USCIS, who will give us permission to bring a child into the US. Once our permission comes back (normally 6-10 weeks) then we will send our completed dossier(stack of paperwork) to China to be translated. Once that is send off, our agency states that we should travel 3-6 months from that time..
So here is our predicted timeline...
1. get home study back by first week in May and immediately apply for USCIS
2. get USCIS approval back anywhere between the middle of June to the end of July.
3. have dossier ready to send as soon as USCIS approval is received.
4. get dossier authenticated with the state as soon as done
5. send off dossier to China the first week of August
6. wait for the go ahead to head to China to pick up our girl, sometime between Nov. and Feb.
Of course, nothing is certain with international adoption. Just trying to get it in my mind how things will go down.
Aaron and I also got our fingerprints done. Up until this adoption, we would have to go to a local jail to get them done, but now that has changed. You apply online, through a specific website that the home study agency uses. You pay online, print out your receipt, then you take that to one of the fingerprint sites in the state. Unfortunately, there were none in our county, so we had about a 40 min. drive. Mom watched the kids, so Aaron and I got a little "date" in. Of course, we just went and got our fingerprints and headed straight home, but uninterrupted talking is wonderful. And I like it much better than going to the jail. This fingerprint site was in a non US postal service post office.
Answered prayers:
In addition to normal adoption expenses, there will be other things come up... such as needing another bed for another child. I have been thinking for a couple of months at least that we will need another bed for our new girl, unless we wanted to throw her in the same bed with Hannah who sleeps in a double. Which we really didn't want to do, but that was months in the future. I have really wanted bunk beds, which will save us some space. I think I have even prayed about it a few times, but I am not 100% sure. Anyway, had a couple at church ask us the other night if we wanted some bunk beds they were getting rid of. So, I am excited to get those and thankful that God saw our need and provided before I started begging Him for it.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Yard Sale Fundraiser and Home Study Update
Whew! Last week was exhausting and I am still recovering. I will go ahead and get to the most exciting news. In our Pirkle/Starnes yard sale this weekend, we raised $3,700 to split between us for our adoptions! I was hoping for $1000 each. Aaron was his usual pessimistic self and guessed around $300-$500 each. So we were both blown out of the water!
My work schedule at the hospital is made for 4 weeks at a time, so back when I signed up for this current schedule, we were planning on having the yard sale on Saturday only. So I signed up for Mon, Tue, Wed. this week. Then we decided to have the yard sale on Friday and Saturday. Leaving me only Thursday off last week. I have been canceled a lot lately, but of course, the week that I could have used some time off, I had to work each of my days. Which means leaving the house at 6am and getting home after 8pm. Exhausting. So, that was Mon, Tue, Wed. Then the kids and I went up to the church building Thur. and starting sorting through the huge amount of yard sale items donated by our friends and families. We were at the church building sorting from 8:30 until 2pm with a small lunch break. Came home, spent a few hours resting and back up to the church building at 5pm, where lots of our friends from church came to help us sort and get ready for the big sale. We got home around 9pm Thursday night.
Friday, bright and early, Aaron met the other adoptive couple at the church building at 5am to start putting out tables. There were so many things to sell. We live about 25 min. from our church building, so that means leaving early. I managed to get the kids ready for their Friday co-op and we got to the church building by 6am. Poor Ethan was so tired and grumpy (from me waking him up at 5am, a mere 3 hours earlier than usual) that he cried when I let him wear the shirt he wanted to wear.
The weather had turned cold and windy so we about froze in 40 degree weather even when the sun came out.
We sold around $1700 worth by 1pm Friday when we started putting the tables away. We probably had around 30 tables full of items, plus items on the ground and 6-8 racks full of clothes. Took about an hour to move everything back into the storage barn and we headed home Friday night to rest. We got home around 5pm because we had to hang out in Decatur for the kids to get home from their Friday Co-op. We had wonderful friends who graciously offered to take the kids for us, so they wouldn't miss their classes. Of course with 5 kids, we had to split them between friends. I could hardly stay up until 8pm.
Got up again bright and early Saturday morning. Aaron again got to the church building by 5am, and I brought the kids again by 6am. I was moving even slower Saturday and since I had worked M, T, W, sorted T, yard sale F, we had NO food in the house. I was really scrounging and I HATE to pay a restaurant when we are scrimping every dime. But I broke down and got biscuits for the kids on the way. (took our own drinks though) :)
Around 1:45 pm, we started boxing up what was leftover. Even with selling $3700 worth of items, we still filled a large moving van that the local thrift store brought to take away our extras. We are so blessed with a generous church family and our own families and friends that donated so many, many items. THANK YOU!!
Again, so exhausted last night...bedtime around 8pm. One kid didn't feel well last night. Another one felt bad this morning, so I kept them all home from church services. Since we are trying to work as many hours as we can, poor Aaron had signed up to burn today for overtime and had to go into work exhausted. He didn't have to be there until noon, so he went on to church services and left early enough to get to work.
I managed to get to the grocery store today, so now we can eat again!
Now onto cleaning a house and doing laundry that has been neglected for a week.
Oh, and Aaron had his first home study meeting this week. It went well and our 2nd one will be this Thursday. We are planning to get our finger prints done this week also.
My work schedule at the hospital is made for 4 weeks at a time, so back when I signed up for this current schedule, we were planning on having the yard sale on Saturday only. So I signed up for Mon, Tue, Wed. this week. Then we decided to have the yard sale on Friday and Saturday. Leaving me only Thursday off last week. I have been canceled a lot lately, but of course, the week that I could have used some time off, I had to work each of my days. Which means leaving the house at 6am and getting home after 8pm. Exhausting. So, that was Mon, Tue, Wed. Then the kids and I went up to the church building Thur. and starting sorting through the huge amount of yard sale items donated by our friends and families. We were at the church building sorting from 8:30 until 2pm with a small lunch break. Came home, spent a few hours resting and back up to the church building at 5pm, where lots of our friends from church came to help us sort and get ready for the big sale. We got home around 9pm Thursday night.
Friday, bright and early, Aaron met the other adoptive couple at the church building at 5am to start putting out tables. There were so many things to sell. We live about 25 min. from our church building, so that means leaving early. I managed to get the kids ready for their Friday co-op and we got to the church building by 6am. Poor Ethan was so tired and grumpy (from me waking him up at 5am, a mere 3 hours earlier than usual) that he cried when I let him wear the shirt he wanted to wear.
The weather had turned cold and windy so we about froze in 40 degree weather even when the sun came out.
We sold around $1700 worth by 1pm Friday when we started putting the tables away. We probably had around 30 tables full of items, plus items on the ground and 6-8 racks full of clothes. Took about an hour to move everything back into the storage barn and we headed home Friday night to rest. We got home around 5pm because we had to hang out in Decatur for the kids to get home from their Friday Co-op. We had wonderful friends who graciously offered to take the kids for us, so they wouldn't miss their classes. Of course with 5 kids, we had to split them between friends. I could hardly stay up until 8pm.
Got up again bright and early Saturday morning. Aaron again got to the church building by 5am, and I brought the kids again by 6am. I was moving even slower Saturday and since I had worked M, T, W, sorted T, yard sale F, we had NO food in the house. I was really scrounging and I HATE to pay a restaurant when we are scrimping every dime. But I broke down and got biscuits for the kids on the way. (took our own drinks though) :)
Around 1:45 pm, we started boxing up what was leftover. Even with selling $3700 worth of items, we still filled a large moving van that the local thrift store brought to take away our extras. We are so blessed with a generous church family and our own families and friends that donated so many, many items. THANK YOU!!
Again, so exhausted last night...bedtime around 8pm. One kid didn't feel well last night. Another one felt bad this morning, so I kept them all home from church services. Since we are trying to work as many hours as we can, poor Aaron had signed up to burn today for overtime and had to go into work exhausted. He didn't have to be there until noon, so he went on to church services and left early enough to get to work.
I managed to get to the grocery store today, so now we can eat again!
Now onto cleaning a house and doing laundry that has been neglected for a week.
Oh, and Aaron had his first home study meeting this week. It went well and our 2nd one will be this Thursday. We are planning to get our finger prints done this week also.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Home Study and Fundraising
We had to change our home study dates up a little bit, due to our social worker's schedule. So, next week, Aaron is driving to B'ham to do his individual interview. The week after, she will be coming to our house. Then I will probably schedule my individual interview and finally, we will all meet together by the end of April. I really hope our home study is done by the first week in May.
Hoping to have our fingerprints done for the home study this Saturday.
Once the home study is finished we can apply for USCIS. That approval normally takes 6-10 weeks to come back and once it is back, we can turn in our paperwork to China. I am just praying that everything takes the minimum amt of time to process so that we can get our girl home sooner, rather than later.
I think we found one grant that you can apply for while you are working on your home study. The rest of the grants, you have to have a completed home study. So I am hoping to have all the grant applications filled out and ready so as soon as we get our home study in hand we will send them out.
Please consider donating!
Hoping to have our fingerprints done for the home study this Saturday.
Once the home study is finished we can apply for USCIS. That approval normally takes 6-10 weeks to come back and once it is back, we can turn in our paperwork to China. I am just praying that everything takes the minimum amt of time to process so that we can get our girl home sooner, rather than later.
I think we found one grant that you can apply for while you are working on your home study. The rest of the grants, you have to have a completed home study. So I am hoping to have all the grant applications filled out and ready so as soon as we get our home study in hand we will send them out.
Please consider donating!
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Home Study Dates
I am excited that we have heard from our social worker and we have set 2 dates to meet. Per China requirements, we have to meet 4 times. So, our first meeting Aaron and I will drive to Birmingham and meet with her. That meeting is not this coming week, but the week after. Then the week after that, she agreed to meet again, this time at our house and meet the whole family.
I wish that we could have used our previous social worker. Things would have been SO much faster and easier. But because of multiple factors, we are adopting from a Hague country this time, she works for both a non Hague agency and a Hague agency. Since we have to use a Hague agency, to use our previous social worker, her Hague agency was going to charge us a ton of money to use her for our home study, even though we weren't using them for the adoption.
In other words, it would have cost us at least an extra $1000 to use our previous social worker.
Crazy! Because all she would have had to do was update our stuff. Oh well, what can you do?
If you haven't done an adoption, I don't think you could even imagine the huge amounts of paperwork you have to do. Of course, in the midst of us printing out all our forms, making copies, etc, our printer decides to stop working.
I was scheduled to work 4 days this week, which would have been 8 hours of overtime, since I work 12 hour shifts. But of course, census was low on Monday, got cancelled. I got to work all day Tuesday. I left early Wed, when the census dropped, and then today I got cancelled too.
I'll just be thankful for what hours I get.
I wish that we could have used our previous social worker. Things would have been SO much faster and easier. But because of multiple factors, we are adopting from a Hague country this time, she works for both a non Hague agency and a Hague agency. Since we have to use a Hague agency, to use our previous social worker, her Hague agency was going to charge us a ton of money to use her for our home study, even though we weren't using them for the adoption.
In other words, it would have cost us at least an extra $1000 to use our previous social worker.
Crazy! Because all she would have had to do was update our stuff. Oh well, what can you do?
If you haven't done an adoption, I don't think you could even imagine the huge amounts of paperwork you have to do. Of course, in the midst of us printing out all our forms, making copies, etc, our printer decides to stop working.
I was scheduled to work 4 days this week, which would have been 8 hours of overtime, since I work 12 hour shifts. But of course, census was low on Monday, got cancelled. I got to work all day Tuesday. I left early Wed, when the census dropped, and then today I got cancelled too.
I'll just be thankful for what hours I get.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Pre-Approved!
Great news! We had sent in our paperwork a few weeks ago for a specific little girl in China. She is about 4 1/2 . Because of the Chinese New Year, things were a little delayed, I think, from normal, but we got the email tonight that we have been preapproved by China to adopt this specific little girl as long as we get our paperwork in, etc. One step closer.
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