1st social worker appointment completed.  Turned in:  Family History; Autumn & Dion's notarized employment verifications; Dion's notarized physical; Lance's health letter; Information releases; notarized financial statement; Dion & Autumn's home study tools (a questionair that took 4 hours to complete); Dion & Autumn's autobiographies; copies of marriage license &  birth certificates; last years tax forms. Sent out: 5 reference requests; State police clearance letters; abuse registry letters.  Next appointment is 1/15 with Autumn for family history interview.

 

Dion deploys 1/11.

 

1/17 - Completed 2nd home study appointment.  Last 2 Dion must be present for; we are at a standstill.  Sent off for marriage cert & birth certs.  Applied for passport.  Joined FCC (Families with Children from China). 

 

Went to the FCC Chinese New Year celebration.  A Lion Dance was performed.  I have never seen so many beautiful babies all in the same place before!  Lance wants to know what we can do to speed up the process after seeing them all!  .      

 

1/26

Dion returns early! Got home Friday night, 1/23.  Went to INS & filed paperwork.  Waited 2 hours to turn in I-600A, pay, & get reciept.  Took maybe 2 minutes.   Sure am glad to be a citizen & not have to deal with INS on a regular basis!

 

Sunday, Sara, our social worker, came out to the house for our in-home meeting.  Interviewed kids - both wanted to know how we could speed up the process & get baby sister home faster.  Dion is set for the last appoint on Tuesday afternoon, then we are done with interviews.  Will get my physical notarized on Wednesday, take parenting class Saturday, & then the only thing holding us back from approval are the reference letters.  Only one has been turned in so far.    

 

1/29

Dion had his last social worker appointment.  Today we go pick up my notarized physical - what a mess that story is!  Tomorrow Dion will get our police clearances redone & notarized - police did it wrong 2 times already - of course they charged us both times - now it needs to be redone again.   Saturday is our parenting class.  We should get one reference in today (hand carried from far away - thanks guys!) & should have another by class Saturday.  That leaves just one more to come in for final approval of the home study.  Certified marriage licenses came in yesterday!  Now we wait for the birth certificates & my passport - but this is all for the China Dossier, not the home study.  

 

1/30

Received one reference letter.  Hand carried from California - with all the snow here right now I sure feel bad!   Police letter done for 3rd time.  It is wrong for 3rd time.  We have now paid Omaha's finest $48 for 3 failed attempts at a simple letter.  Parenting class tomorrow - almost done!

 

1/31/04

HOUSTON...WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

Adoption class is done.  Was a great class & we learned alot.  We also got asked to stay after for a minute.  Seems Nebraska has changed it's adoption rules & now the State Department is refusing to certify certain documents.  We have an appoint next Friday to come in & find out exactly what the paperwork problems are & other country options we have.

 

Contacted Holt International & confirmed that they are having a problem  also. Oh - 3rd police clearance letter - its no good still.  There is a notary stamp on it - but no signature that she is supposed to be notarizing that she witnessed!!! 

 

February 2004

 

2/3

Still no clear answers on what the paperwork problems are.  Appears that  INS paperwork is a problem - State of Nebraska doesnt want to certify it anymore - homeland security issue or some such nonsense.  Still havent talked to the professionals about it.

 

Did find out that Holt has found a way around the mess. I suspect it is because they have a home office in Oregon & are sending thier paperwork there for certification.  Also found out that Holt refuses my international adoption home study & wants to charge me all over & have me start all over if I switch to one of their programs.  Non-profit or not, it's all about money. 

 

Had an encouraging email from another person here in Nebraska that went straight to the Sec. of State & said they sent her a form to use with the INS & IRS stuff to get them certified.  This wonderful person has offered to forward the forms to me.  I hope to have them by Friday to take with me to our agency meeting.  Otherwise, Guatemala is looking awful good!    

 

Seriously considered changing to Guatemala program. At one point we said we've decided to switch.  I started doing research over the weekend & found some very disturbing rumors going around about the US trying to get them to change the way they do things & possible shut down of the country. Just rumors -but enough to send us running back to the China program.

 

Guatemala is a system run by attorneys, social workers, family court & a government agency. Too many places & people for my liking. Thats about 4 different people that could end up being very non-motivated & slow things down. Plus the birth mother signs off about 4 times & if she disapears it shuts the whole process down. Not real comfortable with that whole process.

 

The advantages would be cheaper travel (we could take the kids), a 3-5 day stay, younger baby, & faster process (if nothing goes wrong). After discussing it we decided the China program with their proven track record & only dealing with 1 government agency is far superior. Takes longer but costs less & runs like clockwork to the point of being able to plan & predict when things happen. For those of you that know us well, you know that the thought of more money & less stability just doesn't work for us;we are too frugal & cautious to go there. 

Autumn's passport & birth cert arrived. We have all the copies we were waiting for in the mail. Still need to get the police clearance done correctly. Recieved 1 more reference letter, so we are down to waiting on last one. That should be complete by the end of this week. Sara is almost done writing our home study report. Once we are given the homestudy approval it will be sent in to INS & we should get our fingerprint appointment - and we can officially start the China Dossier. 

2/16/04 
Last piece of paper for home study turned in today! Hand delivered last reference letter. Now we wait for report to be completed. Hopefully that wont be too long so we can get it in to INS & get fingerprinting appointment done! Still worried Dion will get sent out before we get that appointment. 

Sent guardianship papers to Stayce & Barry for signature/notary. When those get back that should be last of what we need for China dossier paperwork - that's pretty good considering we haven't even signed up for the China program yet (home study must be final first). On signing for the program we will be able to hand over almost 100% of dossier paperwork for them to have certified & sent to consulate. Of course all of that takes a long time also - & nothing gets done until INS fingerprints us & does an FBI check. Praying to be DTC (dossier to China) in April - which would put us traveling in January or February if all goes without problems. 

Dion went back to police department again today to try to get the mis-spelled name off the record & get the right type of letter. The lady was not happy to see him yet again & obvious about it. Once it was explained why we needed this paperwork & why we needed alias removed from computer, she was more helpful. Still, she needs supervisor approval to remove the mis-spelled name that she put in the computer, so he has to go back on Wednesday to see if they will do it. At that point we hope to get the correct letter also. 

2/17/04 
Dion has an appointment with our financial advisor today. We need to figure out the smartest way to pay the agency fee for the China program as we hope to sign papers soon. Unfortunatley, Nancy is out of town until the 23rd so it won't happen before then. We have a bunch of old savings bonds that we plan to cash, plus 1 fund that is not with our financial planner that, when cashed & combined with the bonds, will cover our agency fees no problem. Then, hopefully, with this 2nd job, & extra money we are putting away each pay check, we should have the rest of the money for our trip to China & their fees before we leave. Our goal of doing this with minimal debt looks very feasible at the moment. 

Later... 

Dion saw the financial advisor today. He wants to give us a low interest loan instead of seeing us cash in bonds & 1 fund. LOL! Of course he does! We should have seen that one coming! His job is to get our money into funds - not out of them! Hah!  

BEST PHONE CALL YET!!!!!! 

Sara called to tell us all our paperwork is in & she can finish, print & send our homestudy in to INS!  I shamelessly begged her to draft a cover letter to ask them to expedite the fingerprinting appointment for Dion before he gets deployed. Everyone cross those fingers & say those prayers!! 

Tomorrow Dion has the appointment to try & get the police letter (again x 4). Fourth time is a charm??? 
 
2/18/04
IT IS DONE!!!!!!! Dion picked up our police clearances, with no alias, signed & notarized all correctly!!!  Took copies in to ALWW. Paperwork Done!  

When Nancy gets back we can pay for the China program!! If the INS office will kick it up a notch we actually could make a April DTC & be logged in to China by April.

2/22/04
Stayce, Barry & Garet came up for the weekend. They brought notarized guardianship papers for baby. That was the last piece of paper we didn't physically have for the China dossier. Now we just need to sign papers for the China program so we can turn them in. We will still need to wait on INS to get our fingerprints done & returned for final approval to bring an orphan into the states - but that is out of our hands. 

Nancy returns tomorrow so I will probably give her a call to get the ball rolling at some point Monday - or maybe I will give her a few days to catch up 1st. The money from our cashed fund & savings bonds has come in so we are good to go. 

2/23/04
Busy day on the phone. Turns out another deployment is dropping so we are scrambling to get things done. Dion called Nancy (who just got back today) to see what we could do about getting paperwork signed & paid for & see about getting fingerprints asap. She was still concerned about the copies of the passports & not being able to get them certified by the secretary of state. I called her back and let her know that according to several people (one an attorney), China does not require that step so it shouldn't be a problem. She said she'd let the people in California know & check with another company.  Gave me the phone number & name of person at INS that I want to talk to. The home study was sent 2/18 but all mail is being checked for homeland security issues, & taking longer than normal to get through. Nancy is willing to give us a new original to hand walk if it will speed things up. Tried to call but the lady is out today - will try again tomorrow. Will also get all the deposits done tomorrow so we can write the big check.

 

Nancy asked how far I was on the paperwork;  I told her we are done with the exception of a couple of notaries that we can get done in the morning. Made an appointment with Nancy for Wednesday to bring all our paperwork & pay for the China program. 

Nancy called back to let us know that California does not want to send out copies without the certification, as that is the way they have always done it & they never have problems with thier paperwork. Good news is, since Nebraska wont do it, they will have it done in California. Makes no difference to me as long as it doesn't slow us down! I can understand wanting to stay with what works. Also, there is another couple here doing paperwork (they are ahead of us) & it's possible we will be traveling together. That would be neat. 

Send up prayers that we get an asap fingerprinting appointment!

2/24/04
Good news! I was nervous about making the call to INS & asking for an asap appointment - but my fears were ungrounded! I spoke with Libby & she found our home study in the stack of mail (even though it hadn't been logged in yet) & said we could come in tomorrow morning at 8:00 to be fingerprinted; they have everything they need! I am so glad I filed the 600A early!! So now I just have to find somewhere that Cierra can stay the night & be taken to school & we are good to go! God is good!

As of today we are now in the 2nd phase of the adoption.  Journal - Step 2 has been added...will continue updates there.