Kevin told his family

Kevin's dad actually called while we were in our pre-adoption class, Tuesday night!  Doh!  He called him back afterward and shared the news.  I asked Kevin about his dad's reaction but couldn't get much info out of him.  "He was happy," was about it.

The class was nice.  There are 6 couples (all doing international adoption) and I figured out that I had gone to college with 1 of the women.  That was funny.  I'm looking forward to our second class, tomorrow night.

I took the girls for their physicals, today.  Everything went fine!  Nathan's is on Friday and then I can check those off the to-do list.

Guess what arrived in the mail, yesterday?!  My passport!  It only took 16 days from the day I applied until I had my passport in my hot, little hands!  Kevin's renewal hasn't arrived, yet.

One of our personal references told me she mailed her letter to our social worker, this morning.  So excited about that!  I am so grateful for her speedy work on this!

I just want to hurry everything up!  ::deep breath::

Oh!  I spoke on the phone with an International Adoption Clinic that is 2-3 hours from here.  They can review the file on a referral, advise us on travel vaccines and meds to take with, and, of course, do a complete evaluation on our adoptive child once we are home.  I need to share this info with Kevin so we can talk about it and decide whether or not to use any of these services.  They all come at a price but may be worth it.

We told my family

Kevin and I went back to have our TB skin tests read and pick up our medical forms.  As I had predicted, there was one small problem on both of them- the doctor had signed and dated them 2 days prior.  I asked our adoption agency what we should do and have decided to have our doctor re-do the forms when I am back there with the kids this week.  I will feel so much better once that is done!

I mailed in half of our home study fee and our pre-adoption class fee.  The other half will be due when the home study is complete.

We visited my family, yesterday, and told them our news!  To make a long story short, I asked my mom if she was about ready to shop for a new couch.  She immediately asked if I was pregnant.  I then told her we are adopting a child from China.  There is a whole background story to the couch thing.  Suffice it to say that each time I've been pregnant, my mom and I have gone couch shopping.  The first time, she guessed that I was pregnant while we were in the store!  The sales lady almost started crying.  It was funny.  Anyway, my parents reacted the way I thought they would.  My mom was excited and my dad started worrying.  At least they are consistent/predictable, right? ;)  Kevin still needs to call his family to share the news.

We have our first pre-adoption class, tomorrow!  I am excited!

The kids all have their physicals this week- the girls on Wed. and Nathan on Friday.  Another thing to check off the list!  These are not part of the dossier but are required for our home study.  Nathan needs one for kindergarten anyway, so I just moved up his appt. by a month and a half.

I have heard from 3 of our personal references that they have been contacted by our social worker.  They have to write a letter of recommendation for us, answering all sorts of questions.  I hope it isn't too hard for them!

I wonder when our passports will arrive.  They have cashed the checks for them, so now I guess I can start stalking the mailman.  Not really...sort of...

Had our second home study visit

Here's our latest list of accomplishments!

~received our corrected marriage certificates

~both finished the home study questionnaire

~had my physical exam

~Kevin had his physical exam

I heard back from our adoption agency regarding Kevin's Employment Verification and our Financial Statement.  They had me change one little thing on the Financial Statement, and now both items are perfect.

We both had our physical exam appointments, yesterday.  Our family physician was excited for us!  We had to have a few blood tests and a TB skin test done, so the medical forms won't be finished until we have the results of those, which should be tomorrow.  We both have appointments to go back and have our TB tests read and then we hope to have the completed forms to bring home.  I'm not so sure that all of our blood tests will be back by then but we shall see.  I'm almost positive something will be wrong on the forms because the nurse kept wanting to fill stuff in for the doctor, and I already had to have her start over on a new form as we cannot have any errors or whiteout on these.  I will be sure to check them with a fine tooth comb and take extras with in case they need to re-do them.  I will be relieved when these are done!  The kids have theirs next week.  I forgot to ask about vaccines for us prior to our travels, so hopefully I will remember to ask when I am there with the kids.

We met with our social worker, tonight, and gave her our questionnaire answers along with all of the paperwork we've finished.  It was quite a stack!  She told us that Kevin's clearance from MI has already come back.  We each have a form to fill out for the IL background checks (in addition to the fingerprinting we've already done).  We also had to go over another document and sign it.  We did some chatting about how things are going.  Our social worker is going to start contacting our personal references.  I mentioned an adoption awareness conference that I am interested in attending, and our social worker encouraged me to go.  She said she has heard good things about it and is considering going herself.  We scheduled our individual meetings with her and that was about it.

I went ahead and scheduled an appointment for my friend to take our pictures in March.  She is a photographer and I'm looking forward to seeing how our pics turn out!  We will take some for our dossier and we will also take some fun/creative ones!  Now to obsess over what we should wear...

I'm looking forward to our pre-adoption classes, next week!  Each of the 3 classes is 4 hours long.  We have 2 of them next week and the last one the week after next.  

I wonder how long it will take our social worker to write our home study once we finish the classes and the last of our visits...

I am hoping to get together with my family this coming weekend.  If so, then we will share our news with them!  Kevin will then call his family.

The to-do list is dwindling

We are cranking out the paperwork!  Here is what we have accomplished since my last update:
~received Kevin's birth certificate
~received our marriage certificate
~obtained Kevin's employment verification (notarized)
~obtained police clearance for each of us (notarized)
~finished our financial statement
~applied for my passport
~applied for a renewal of Kevin's passport
~got fingerprinted for our IL and federal background checks (home study)
~copied our 2013 1040 tax form (home study)
~filled out the "typical monthly budget" form (home study)
~copied Kevin's and the kids' birth certificates (home study)
~filled out application (home study)

Our marriage certificates had 2 misspellings on them.  They were not important misspellings (not our names), but I did make some phone calls to get them corrected.  The new ones are on their way to us. Kevin had to deal with his employment verification.  When they gave it to him, he found some errors/missing items on it, so he had them re-do it.  The police clearances ended up not being nearly as hard as I'd envisioned.  I'm glad I contacted my adoption agency and asked some questions about these.  We don't have a police station in our town, so I was planning to go to the next town over for this.  That would have caused some issues.  They had me go to the county sheriff's department and that worked out well.  They were familiar with what I needed as they have done them for this purpose before.  When I got home with them, I realized one slight error/issue, but my adoption agency has told me how to deal with it (just need to make sure a specific statement is in our home study).

I've emailed Kevin's Employment Verification and our Financial Statement to our adoption agency to be looked over.  I should hear back today or tomorrow.  Hopefully, they are fine.  Kevin and I are both in the process of writing our answers to the big questionnaire from our home study agency.  It has about 50 questions, probing all areas of our lives- a lot of "feelings" stuff.  We need to get these finished up by the next meeting with our social worker, which is in 6 days.  I'm excited to give our social worker all of the documents we've been working so hard on.

Kevin and I have our physical exams next week, and the kids have theirs the week after that.  Getting those done will knock a big chunk off our to-do list!  And our pre-adoption classes start on the 25th.  We did find out that we will most likely still have to take a few China specific classes from our adoption agency.  Those are online.

When all of that is completed, we will be down to finishing up the home study (~3 more meetings with our social worker, the last one being at our house) and taking/printing some pictures.  We need 6 passport style pictures each of Kevin and me, 3 photos of the 2 of us together, and 8 photos of the 2 of us plus someone else (can be family, friends, neighbors, etc.).  I'm thinking about having a friend come over to take some of them.

Once the home study is complete, it will be sent to our adoption agency to be approved.  The next step will be our I-800A, which is permission from the government immigration department to bring a child from China to the US.  This involves an application (containing our approved home study), a fingerprint appointment, and a lot of waiting!  I believe these are currently taking approximately 60 days for approval.  Yikes, that is going to be a hard wait!

All of our documents for our dossier need to be notarized, state certified, and authenticated by the Chinese consulate before being assembled into our dossier and critically examined by our adoption agency.  The last step is to send it to China!!

Our 13 y/o has been asking a lot of questions, lately, about what all these meetings are for, etc.  She knew we had been looking into adopting from China, so I'm pretty sure she knew what was up.  We finally told the kids, last night.  They were all excited!  Our 4 y/o wants to go get Little Brother right now!!  We had to stop the 13 y/o from immediately jumping on FB or texting anyone to share our exciting news.  We haven't told our families just yet.  Kevin will probably call his family to share the news, because we mostly likely won't see them until Easter-ish.  I want to tell my family in person.  Luckily, our niece has a birthday in early March, so, hopefully, we won't have to wait much longer!  I am ready to let the cat out of the bag so we can talk freely!

Met social worker

Shortly after my last entry, we received the I-800A Filing Guide from our adoption agency.  I was surprised to see 24 pages worth of information!  I read through it all and it now makes sense to me.

Yesterday, I finished our Adoption Petition and my Non-Employment Verification.  I sent those in to be looked over and, today, received a reply that they were both good.  I also wrote our Financial Statement but need to wait until Kevin obtains his Employment Verification so that I can fill in the last number.  Then I will send both of those in to be looked over.  I don't have to email these to be checked at this point but having one of the dossier specialists tell me each document is satisfactory gives me that extra bit of confidence and security.  

Next up on the dossier front is something that has me intimidated- the police clearance on Kevin and me.  No, I'm not worried about the results of them! ;)  I'm just worried about the reaction I will get when I walk into the police station and ask for them.  I have read many blogs where people say they received a less than enthusiastic response when seeking these.  But, it has to be done...

If we can fit it in, Kevin and I are going to go apply for our passports this weekend.  The post office in a town nearby can accept them and has a 2-hour window they are open to passport apps on Saturday.  We need to get this taken care of asap because they take some time.  The passport website is stating 4-6 weeks but I have heard it can take even longer.  I am wondering if we should pay the extra $80 each to have them expedited (supposedly 2-3 weeks, instead).  We do need these for our dossier, not just travel.

Tonight, we had our first meeting with our social worker for our home study.  It went really well!  We introduced ourselves and told how we came to the point of wanting to adopt from China.  She went over some paperwork and gave us a stack of forms and things that need to be done for the home study.  I'm really glad we pushed our physicals back a couple of weeks because she gave us the forms she needs filled out for these.  I didn't realize we were going to need 2 different physical forms filled out by our doctor.  Also, we have to get physicals for the kids.  I gave the social worker some papers I already had for her (home study packet from our adoption agency, my birth certificate, residential history form).

We will be taking our pre-adoption classes through our home study agency on Feb. 25 and 27, and March 4.  They are 4 hours each for a total of 12 hours.  The state of IL does not accept the classes our adoption agency offers, so these are the ones we have to take to meet all IL and Hague requirements.  I'm actually looking forward to them except for how crazy they are going to make those 3 nights for us.  I know they will be worth it, though.

The main thing we need to be working on for our home study is the application, which includes all of the basics that you'd expect, plus a very involved questionnaire from Kevin and me.  That needs to be done by our next meeting, which is Feb. 18.

I'm feeling pretty good about things right now. 

Ordered our birth certificates

Well, we did end up meeting the other couple on Saturday night and it went wonderfully!  We really connected with them and had a lot of our questions answered.  I just loved hearing about their experience!  I think Kevin also got a lot out of the meeting.  He commented how similar their family is to ours, which I think helped him get excited.

Over the weekend I read the dossier guide and the home study packet.  Yesterday, I watched the dossier orientation on our agency's website.  I have made myself a few notes to help guide me in the sea of paperwork and I am feeling a lot less overwhelmed about it!

I pretty much read all of the "families in process" section of our agency's website.  I'm just waiting for our invitation to join the Family In-Process Network, so we can begin connecting with even more adoptive families.  I love support groups!

Yesterday, I ordered our birth certificates.  Today, I ordered our marriage certificates (had to mail my request for that).  Once those come in, we will go apply for our passports.  Kevin still has his last passport, which expired a few years ago.  Because of that, he won't need his birth certificate, so I may go ahead and send him this weekend.  I can't find my OLD passport (we're talking, from my high school days), so I have to start from scratch.

Besides carefully monitoring our adoption expenses and budget, I will be starting on our Adoption Petition, my Non-Employment Verification, and our Financial Statement.  Kevin is supposed to be getting his Employment Verification once he figures out whom to ask for it.

Our first home study meeting with our social worker is in 2 days.  We will meet at her office, while a friend takes our kids to a museum (so thankful!).  And we have our physicals in a couple weeks.