Archive for November, 2009
Progress
Posted by: | CommentsWe’re making progress on all of the paperwork that’s been consuming our lives lately! We went out the I-600A and our home study agency application with most of the paperwork. I have my physical tomorrow so that I can have my HS medical form filled out and can get a medical letter for Holt. Eliza’s physical is in early December, so should have her medical form for the HS done then. Steve’s in charge of his own medical paperwork, but I’ll probably nag a bit, just for good measure. =) I also submitted my passport application today, so that’s done!!
All we have left is the Prospective Adoptive Parent Questionnaires for both Steve and me to fill out, Steve’s employment verification letters (2), Steve and my mom’s physicals, the sworn disclosure statement for my mom (waiting for it to be mailed to us) and getting the house ready for the home study! We still have a bit of work to do on the downstairs from the flooding, but I don’t think it’s all that bad. A bit of drywall, some new baseboards and painting the floor. Not too bad!
One thing that needs to be done before the home study is to run cable from our living room into our dining room. Sounds weird, huh? We’ve decided to switch our living room and dining room, but Steve won’t allow the switch until we have cable in the new living room (current dining room). Once that’s done, we can switch the rooms, which is necessary because our guest room (to be N.B.’s room) has extra furniture and a HUGE rug stored in there, waiting for the switcharoo.
One amazing thing that happened today came in the mail. There was something addressed from our church, which I thought was odd. I opened it and found a check for $200 from our social justice committee. Wasn’t that the sweetest?! I was in shock! We feel so loved, welcomed and appreciated by fellow church members. Honestly, I don’t know what our lives would be like if we’d never found UCN.
Okay, off to make dinner for the girlie!
ETA: I forgot to mention one of the biggest blessings I’ve had lately. I’ve been getting to know two women that are also adopting via Holt and it has been SO amazing for me. It’s such a relief to be able to talk with people that not only know what you’re going through, but are going through it themselves at the same time! I’m hoping against hope that we all get to travel together!! Fingers crossed. =)
The good and the bad
Posted by: | CommentsLife has been a big rollercoaster for us lately. Got the good sprinkled in with (quite a lot of) the bad, but hey, that's life sometimes, right?
The Bad
Tropical Storm Ida did a major number on the Tidewater/Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Including our house. We're close to the Elizabeth River, but are not in a high risk flood area, but flood it did. Right into my mom's level of the house (the basement, which is only two feet underground). Thursday morning we woke up to 3 inches of water across the whole level. We spent much of the next four days battling the rising water as the storm just stopped and hung out for four solid days of straight rain. =( We had to pay to have professionals come out and clear up the water that we couldn't with our little pump and wet-vacs. They just came today to take all of the industrial strength fans and dehumidifiers. After five days of a constant LOUD fan noise, it almost seems eerily quiet around here!
In any case, the water is gone and we're pretty much all dried out, so now comes the rebuilding. We'll definitely have to replace all of the baseboards and will probably have to replace a good bit of the drywall. We're going to look into bricking up one of the doors down there and making it a wall. My mom wants to not replace the carpet and instead paint the cement, which I think will look really neat! She's thinking of painting it black, which should add a lot of drama to the room, which is I think what's she's going for. The colors for the living room are black, red and cream, so I think it will look really nice.
We had to spend a chunk of the adoption loan on having the water removed, but I'm hoping we won't have to pay for a ton more. I'm thinking of trying to put together a work party with friends from church and seeing how much we can do ourselves. The baseboards shouldn't be a problem and I think we have friends that know drywall pretty well. I'm hoping we can do a good bit of it ourselves and then hire out what we can't to a friend or two that are contractors. So at least most of the money we will have to spend will stay among friends!
The worst part of all of this is that we can't have our home visit from our social worker until the work is done. So that might push everything back a few weeks. =( I was SO excited about powering through everything and getting the home study finished lickity split. Oh well, could be much, much, much worse.
The Good
1. Today is Eliza's birthday! It's hard to believe that it's been five years since the first time that I ever held her. It's just as hard to believe that I could even HAVE a five year old! She's in kindergarten for goodness sakes! I'm SO not old enough to have a kindergartner. Nevermind that I'm 30 and so very MUCH old enough. I don't FEEL 30!
2. Everything with the house isn't nearly as bad as it could have been. We should be able to get it back into a livable condition pretty quickly, all things considered. No one was hurt and the house didn't suffer any major structural damage or anything. Apparently a family at Eliza's school had their oil tank (or something) break/leak and absolutely EVERYTHING is covered in oil. Their house isn't even habitable. So although this is all a huge hassle and money drain, at least we have a roof over our heads and a safe place to live still.
3. I'm about to head out to mail off our I-600A,home study application/fee/forms we've done and submit my passport application! A grand total of $1935, but totally worth it. =)
4. Crossed off several more things on our checklist. We're getting there!
Walking on sunshine!
Posted by: | CommentsToday has been the most amazing day! We've been working on an adoption loan and it closed today! I can't believe it. We can power through the rest of the dossier and the home study so that we can formally accept N.B.'s referral and start waiting for a court date! I can't even think about it without getting shaky and out of breath! You know that feeling when you're so ridiculously happy and excited that your chest feels tight? That's been me ALL DAY.
I lovelovelove how we got our loan. Instead of going to a bank for a personal loan, we used LendingClub.com, which offers peer-to-peer financing for personal loans. If you're familiar with Kiva, you've got the general idea. Lots of people each lend a small amount until the loan is fully funded. 219 people in our case! It's such a win-win-win because we get the loan we need, regular people like you and me get to make better rates than they might be able to find elsewhere on their investments while helping out their peers AND we get to bypass the banking industry altogether and instead allow individuals to profit. Awesome! If you're interested in setting up a loan or investing in other people's loans, my referral code is Member_565917. Using that should give you $25 extra to use for investing and/or give me a $100 referral bonus for each new loan.
Other highlights include getting sweet messages from a client whose site I just launched on Friday (including one saying she wants to send me a BEAUTIFUL clutch!!) and getting the sterling silver blanks delivered for my hand stamped jewelry! There's nothing like opening a package of sparkling silver! It's like being a kid in a candy store!
Next up, sending out the I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition), various background check requests and submit my passport application tomorrow! Yay! With this loan, our savings and our remaining fundraising efforts (Barefoot Books, sewn goods, hand-stamped jewelry and Fair Trade coffee), we're ready to power through the rest of the paperwork and process.
N.B., here we come, sweet boy!!
