Luckily, we received that information and we’re thrilled to say that we’re continuing forward with the adoption!  I am, of course, ridiculously relieved as I think I would have fallen apart had it gone differently.  Of course, there’s still the chance that he’s older than the age range given to us, but we feel we’ve done the best we can to get the best possible information that we can get.  We have to just trust that and keep moving forward.

We sent our dossier to Holt on Saturday and it was received today.  We have two documents that have to be revised and then we’re good to go!  It looks like we won’t receive a court date until November at the earliest, but every day is one day closer.  =)

Tomorrow, I’ll be taking care of one of the documents and Stephen is calling about the other.  His document is the letter from his doctor and I’m worried about how long it will take for the rewrite to be ready. His doctor is very nice, but she’s not been very helpful in any of this.  Documents take weeks and they’re never in the format that we’ve specified.  I’m hoping he doesn’t have to go down there and raise a fuss about it.  How hard is it to copy a letter onto your letterhead and sign it?  I mean, really, we’re not asking for the moon here.

Anyway, that’s our big news!  I have a few pictures from dropping the dossier off, but can’t find the USB cord for the point-and-shoot camera, so those will have to wait a bit.  Until there’s more news, we’ll see y’all around!

The bad news is that we realized that it’s been a few months since Steve sent off his passport application and we haven’t received it yet. I checked the status via the passport website and it says they HAVE NO APPLICATION for him. =( He called and if he can find the receipt, they’ll reprocess it (expedited, no less) for no additional charge. We’re hoping it’s in the glove compartment of his car.

Speaking of his car, it totally died on us yesterday. It needs a brand new fuel pump. Awesome. Almost $700 that we REALLY needed for the adoption and not the frickin’ car. Oh well. Nothing to do about it, I guess. Thankfully we can pick it up tomorrow and check the glove box for the receipt!

Okay, off to walk to our local pizza place with Eliza to pick up dinner. My mom’s sweet treat! Lovelovelove Pizza Box!

You’d think that my being a web designer might make this process a bit faster, but quite the opposite! I don’t have much time lately due to some unrelated hosting account (my business account), software and hardware issues. So by the time I finish working for the day, this sort of thing is the LAST thing on my mind. =) Hopefully within the next couple days/weeks.

Not much to report. We finally had our last home study visit and I can only hope that it’s being written right now. We called and left a message for our social worker yesterday morning to see if we could get a quick status update, but haven’t heard back yet. Hopefully! We’re sooooo close on our dossier. We never received our bank letter, so we called and ask them to resend. I have my police clearance to get and have to have another set of passport pictures taken because I apparently lost my dossier set. Then we take some things to the notary and that’s it until the home study’s done! Once that’s done, I’ll drive it up to Richmond to be state certified and will overnight it to Holt right away. Then we start waiting for our court date!

Okay, gotta get Eliza in bed. Hopefully the site will look better ASAP!

Our FBI fingerprints are back, which is AWESOME!  I’ve heard of it taking weeks and weeks for some families, so while I feel terrible for them, I’m happy that was not the case for us.  My mom’s CPS check was sent out, so all that’s left is one little piece of paper before we can schedule our home visit (my mom’s medical form) and it’s already been faxed over to the doctor’s office!!  So should be done in a few weeks.  =)

Tuesday starts a VERY trying week or two for us.  We’re having a company come in and semi-gut the downstairs to install a crazy-fancy sump pump system to solve our flooding problem FOREVER!  No one is more happy about this than my mom, of course, since it’s her level that’s been flooding.  As in, every time it rains for more than 36 hours.  So while I’m happy about the fix, I’m NOT looking forward to the renovation time.  Our phone and internet is run through the downstairs, so I’m terrified that we’re going to lose both for large chunks of time/days.  Yes, I’m semi-addicted to Facebook (ha! semi!) and it will suck to not be able to check it hourly, but the major problem is that I’m a WAHM (work-at-home mom) doing web design.  A bit tricky with no internet.  So hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a way to keep the internet running and my local friends won’t see me floating around the area coffee shops (at least the ones with free WIFI) all week.  =)

Today, as always, after church, we went with fellow church friends to Moe’s for lunch.  Now that the weather is warming up (however temporary that may or may not be), we can finally get back to going to the park as well.  We headed out to our favorite park and let all the girls (five total between three families) go nuts.  While there, I was watching the other kids and families and for some reason, it made me profoundly MISS our little guy.  I don’t know if it’s because we’re (finally, hallelujah) almost done with our home study and so are right on the edge of the TRUE waiting period or what.  Or maybe it’s the fact that everything has been taking so long and we’ve had so many delays that I was almost wondering if the whole thing was a figment of my imagination.  Was this really going to happen or was I just fooling myself?  Whatever the reason, I sat there on the park bench desperately wanting him.  Now.  I’m sure every adoptive parent can relate to that feeling, but today was the first time that I was almost driven to tears by it.

Anyway!  I’m so thrilled that things are finally moving along and we’re finishing up with this phase of the adoption.  Now to hustle through the rest so that we can pass court before the court closures!  I do NOT want to have to wait until November to go get my sweet boy!!!

Oh, by the way, have you been to The Pioneer Woman yet?  I’ve been to this website before, but have been OBSESSED with it this weekend.  Do any of y’all read it?  If not, check it out, but only if you have a cup of coffee (shameless plug!!) or tea and a bunch of time on your hands!  It’s renewed my interest (read: obsession) with getting a entry-level DSLR camera and learning how to take truly decent pictures.  Aim high, right?  =)

I have thoughts going through my brain about today’s sermon at church and how it relates to our lives, adoption and life in general, but it’s just too late for that kinda nonsense right now!  Maybe I’ll have it hashed out in my brain in the next few days.  Until then, have a great start to your week!

Now it’s rush time on getting the house ready.  So much to do!

So I got my hair cut yesterday and, as I posted, I didn’t know how I felt about it.  I think I’ve decided.  I think I’m not thrilled with it.  It’s not the hair cut that’s the problem.  It’s EXACTLY like the pictures that I brought in, which is a great hairstyle for my hair type.  I think it’s just not the right length.  I think it either needs to be longer or shorter, but I’m not sure which.  Luckily, I’m seeing a bunch of my girlfriends tonight, so I’m sure they’ll let me know what I should do!

We’ve been making a lot of movement on the adoption front.  Steve and I had our fingerprinting (digital) done for our I-600A and my mom is getting hers done on Monday.  Steve and I will be going into our social worker’s office tomorrow to have our FBI fingerprinting (ink) done for the home study and I’ll turn in a few pieces of paperwork that we’ve knocked out.  We’ve both finished our potential adoptive parent questionnaires, though I need to check to see if Stephen emailed his to the social worker or if we’re taking a print copy tomorrow.  I still need one thing notarized from my mom (form for CPS check) and I’m not sure if Steve’s given my mom the medical form she needs.  Need to check on that as well.

Next up for us is finishing up the little things that need to be done before the home visit.  Mostly just straightening up, but have to paint the ceiling in N.B.’s room, declutter my office (you can’t see the floor in most places), etc.  Nothing to get excited about, but has to be done!

I’ve signed up and am currently doing Brook Noel’s Extreme Home Makeover: 10 Weeks to the Home You Want online class.  I haven’t been able to keep up with the pace (and I started late), but I’m going through it all slowly and am going to follow the plan.  Just at my own pace, I think!  Like I said, I’m easily overwhelmed and the state of our house has me in a near panic when I try to figure out where exactly to START!  This is helping a lot and I think that over the next couple months, it’s going to allow us to get rid of a lot of clutter and work out a system to keep the house running smoothly.  The idea of getting the house to (mostly) clutter-free and finding a place for all of our stuff to live (so that we can easily clean up) is almost intoxicating.  I want this so much!  I’m really hoping this class will be able to help us get there.

I think the only other news is that I got a hair cut today.  I chopped my almost waist-length hair up to my shoulders.  I think I like it.  It’s only been 2.5 hours, so I’m still getting used to it.  Of course, the real test will be when I try to style it on my own.  =)  The real surprise in all of this is that Eliza’s decided that SHE wants her hair cut shoulder length as well!  If you know Eliza, you know how much she LOVES her long hair.  She calls it “princess hair” (no worries about self-esteem here).  But when I told her I was getting mine cut, she said she wanted hers the same length.  She said she likes it when we have “twin hair”.  =)  So she has an appointment on Saturday to get hers chopped off.  I’m so nervous that she’s going to hate it, but it’s her decision.  Hopefully she makes one that we can ALL live with!

Anyway, I plan to get back on the ball about writing consistently now that I’m finally feeling better.  I’m not really any less stressed or busy, but I really want this blog to be a priority.  For that, I need to be more consistent.  We’ll see how it goes!

While I feel good about getting that stuff done, I otherwise feel like crap.  I’m so tired of being sick.  I got a nasty cold about a week before Christmas, but was feeling much better about a week or two later.  It was a false sense of hope.  I just transitioned from the cold to a nasty sinus thing.  Now my head and face hurt every day, just about all day.  Nothing to promote motivation like feeling like your face is going to fall off.  And kind of hoping that it does.  While we were picking up the family photo and pictures of N.B., we got some sinus meds, so I’m very thankful for that!

Anyway, I think that’s all the adoption news that’s fit to print!  Steve’s hoping to finish his online training tonight (which I didn’t realize he hadn’t finished) and I’m going to finish up the questionnaire from our social worker.  It’s so freakin’ hard!  Questions like, describe your spouse’s personality and describe yours.  What if Steve and I’d descriptions don’t match at all!  Also, things like, describe how you argue and what about?  Uh, I whine and bitch until I get my way?  Oh wait, no, that’s not the right answer.  *sigh*

Okay, here’s what’s been going on.  We had a bunch of trouble trying to find a time to meet with our social worker for our home study visits.  She was on vacation for a week in November and also had a week of out-of-town training.  Then in December, she was taking the last two weeks off.  Also, she’s only available four days during the week anyway, so trying to nail down a time was a source of great annoyance effort.  Not that it ending up mattering very much because of the storm and the flooding, but still.  We tried to see if we could switch social workers, but they basically said no one would be able to get to us any faster anyway.

The good news is that we’re almost to the point where we can have the house ready for our home visit.  Steve and I both have individual appointments with our social worker next week (1/14!!) and I’m hoping to be able to schedule the home visit for the end of the month at the latest.  It’s my hope that if we can get that done by the end of the month, that the home study will be totally done and that we can send off our completed dossier by the end of February.  This is MUCH later than I had thought back in October, but I’m trying to let go of the things that I can’t control and just work on the things that I can.

We still have a bunch to do around the house, but I’m so looking forward to getting through the home visit.  That’s the only big thing that’s holding up the process.  I’ve made us a schedule (see below) for getting the rest of the home study and dossier documents together and god help the person that tries to hold up my schedule!

Another bit of good news is that we sent in our I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) last month.  It originally was sent back because we didn’t send my mom’s birth certificate with it (didn’t know we had to), but resent it ASAP with said birth certificate.  Obviously we sent it in without the necessary home study.  I’d heard that new changes to the rules might have made doing this a mistake, but today we received our appointments for our FBI fingerprinting!!  Yay!  So as soon as our home study is done, we can send it over and we’ll be way ahead on the process since getting your fingerprint appointment can add 4-6 weeks.

The only thing that’s a bit of a bummer is that they didn’t send over appointment info for my mom.  We called our HS social worker to ask her about it and she said that my mom didn’t need to be fingerprinted.  That didn’t sound right to me, so I called Holt and they confirmed that my mom DOES have to be fingerprinted.  We spent forever trying to navigation the automatic menus of the USCIS and finally got a hold of a real person.  She basically said to just bring my mom to our appointment, but the appointment is smack dab in the middle of my mom’s busiest day at work.  There’s no possible way for her to leave work at that time.  I’m going to see if we can schedule a separate appointment for her, so hopefully that works out!

So!  Good thoughts for quick processes!  Can’t wait to get to our boy!

SATURDAY
* money order for CPS checks from post office
* mail off jewelry orders
* send out state police check forms for Leila and Steve
* send out CPS checks for everyone
* get passport photos of Steve for dossier (already have them for the passport application)
* Steve’s passport application (appointment scheduled)
* talk with Mom about her documents
* finish Potential Adoptive Parent Questionnaire (Leila)
* pick up family photo from Walmart for home study (and proper pictures of N.B. to frame)

MONDAY
* call about Steve’s employment letter (stress need for fast turnaround)
* schedule physical for Steve (try for expedited timeframe)
* get local police clearance letters (Leila)
* get local police clearance letter (Steve)
* send Leila’s questionnaire to social worker

WEDNESDAY
* finish Potential Adoptive Parent Questionnaire (Steve)

THURSDAY
* send Steve’s questionnaire to social worker

FRIDAY
* Steve’s home study appointment
* Leila’s home study appointment

FRIDAY NIGHT
* celebrate progress!

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 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!