While I was in UT doing various UT things (spending money, mostly...on clothes for our soon-to-be-missionary son, school clothes from DI (does anyone else buy all their school clothes from DI???) and lots and lots of books) the papers arrived from the USCIS telling us we have to get our biometrics (fingerprints) taken on July 30. So...small bit of progress.
We found out that we had to get child abuse clearance letters from every state we've lived in since age 18, so we're in the process of collecting those. Heard through the adoption grapevine that all of our 13 dossier documents (medical reports, employment verification, etc etc etc) have to be less than six months old when the whole dossier gets authenticated at the Chinese embassy. Which is not nice to hear, as some of those documents date back to Feb 2008, and what a pain to have to go back and get more doctors appointments, etc...but our adoption coordinator says that they only have to be less than a year old, and to go ahead and get the individual documents verified at State level and Chinese Embassy level now, rather than wait until the whole dossier is put together. So we'll start that adventure next. I hate paperwork. But getting all those official, notarized, fancily verified papers back from official sources is kind of cool. The authentication mark from the Chinese Embassy is very pretty...a hologram kind of thing, all different reflective colors.
Our friends ,the Watsons, who adopted Lou Juan's best friend Lou Ming are home from their trip to China and Lou Ming is now adjusting to being a kid in the United States. She had a tough time for a few days, missing and grieving for her caregiver from the orphange in China. Many of the workers in the orphanage (SWI is the real term...social welfare institute) are there for years, and raise the children from babies until they're adopted. They bond with them and miss them terribly when they go. The children miss their caregivers a lot. But Lou Ming is doing better. She was hoping Lou Juan would live next door, so they could be together in the US...hard to explain that Texas and California are very far apart, so probably no play dates for them. But both families have relatives in San Diego, so maybe the girls will be able to see each other occasionally on trips out there.
We heard that Lou Juan did very well on her school exams at the end of the year. She has had trouble with school before, but I think her tutor is helping her a lot, in many ways.
The Watsons carried a package for Lou Juan with them to China...and had to take it in a cooler, since I didn't know I wasn't supposed to send chocolate in July...and so Lou Juan now has a bunch more US made toys (hard to find, by the way...everything is made in China, go check it out!) and a bunch of Little Debbies, which she apparently likes a lot.
Tomorrow, we will see our daughter, Caitlin, for the first time in 18 months. She's been serving a mission in Taiwan. We're very excited!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
SMOKIN'!!!!
I'm not. But I always loved that line (word? very SHORT line) from The Mask. Which some of my children are too good to watch, and others, as bad as I am, occasionally enjoy. I especially like the dance sequences...is that really Jim Carey dancing?
Anyway, I digress....a lot.
It is really smoky here in the foothills of Northern California. One of our ward members believes that when the CA Supreme Court confirmed the legality of Gay Marriage (a few weeks ago), we were given a gigantic warning in the form of a dry lightning storm that started a thousand fires up and down the state.
I'm not in position to confirm or deny that this was divine retribution, but we definitely had/have a lot of fires. All of a sudden, all at the same time. And they're not stopping. Nothing is going on right in my neighborhood, but we had two fires within twenty miles of us right after the big Lightning Storm, and now that those are contained, more or less, we have three more within fifty miles. The firefighters have decided to just let one fire (the Government Fire in Blue Canyon) just burn on, since it's not threatening any structures. It has consumed thousands of acres.
We have been just BURIED in smoke for almost three weeks. It's bad enough that we've been advised not to go outdoors unless we have to. And it's summer vacation! This could go on all the way up til the beginning of the rainy season in October.... Looking outdoors, you can't see more than 50 yards, and everything is a yellow/gray haze.
We're accustomed to wildfires here. Fires are our regional natural disaster of choice...no earthquakes or floods or anything. But usually the truly awful fire season doesn't hit in our area until August or Septemeber, when we can count on a few scares each year, and a real bad fire close to home every ten years or so. We've never had to evacuate, but we've come close. Life is an exciting adventure. I guess I prefer fires to say.....street crime, or.....living in a subdivision.
On the adoption front, I contacted the National Service Center for the US immigration service yesterday (USCIS...don't know what all the letters stand for....US central immigration service, maybe?) and found that our 1-800 A was received on June 16. They told me that the adjuticator (official person who will probably tell us to redo our homestuy) will contact us by letter in about two weeks. So, things are happening, if slowly.
Lou Juan's best friend from the orphanage was adopted this week. Lou Ming's family will be back home in Texas in a few days. I'm excited to hear how things are going, and about their China experience. They already have an adopted daughter from China, and they took her with them. She's six now, and they were a bit anxious about how the trip would affect her, emotionally. Some kids are excited about going back to see their homeland. Others NEVER want to go back. We sent a package off to Lou Juan with Lou Ming's family...candy and stuff. The most important gift was a disposable camera. We hope that she'll take pictures of her friends, her teachers, her room...anything important to her. She's lived ten years there, and the pictures may be the only part of her old life that comes home with her.
Anyway, I digress....a lot.
It is really smoky here in the foothills of Northern California. One of our ward members believes that when the CA Supreme Court confirmed the legality of Gay Marriage (a few weeks ago), we were given a gigantic warning in the form of a dry lightning storm that started a thousand fires up and down the state.
I'm not in position to confirm or deny that this was divine retribution, but we definitely had/have a lot of fires. All of a sudden, all at the same time. And they're not stopping. Nothing is going on right in my neighborhood, but we had two fires within twenty miles of us right after the big Lightning Storm, and now that those are contained, more or less, we have three more within fifty miles. The firefighters have decided to just let one fire (the Government Fire in Blue Canyon) just burn on, since it's not threatening any structures. It has consumed thousands of acres.
We have been just BURIED in smoke for almost three weeks. It's bad enough that we've been advised not to go outdoors unless we have to. And it's summer vacation! This could go on all the way up til the beginning of the rainy season in October.... Looking outdoors, you can't see more than 50 yards, and everything is a yellow/gray haze.
We're accustomed to wildfires here. Fires are our regional natural disaster of choice...no earthquakes or floods or anything. But usually the truly awful fire season doesn't hit in our area until August or Septemeber, when we can count on a few scares each year, and a real bad fire close to home every ten years or so. We've never had to evacuate, but we've come close. Life is an exciting adventure. I guess I prefer fires to say.....street crime, or.....living in a subdivision.
On the adoption front, I contacted the National Service Center for the US immigration service yesterday (USCIS...don't know what all the letters stand for....US central immigration service, maybe?) and found that our 1-800 A was received on June 16. They told me that the adjuticator (official person who will probably tell us to redo our homestuy) will contact us by letter in about two weeks. So, things are happening, if slowly.
Lou Juan's best friend from the orphanage was adopted this week. Lou Ming's family will be back home in Texas in a few days. I'm excited to hear how things are going, and about their China experience. They already have an adopted daughter from China, and they took her with them. She's six now, and they were a bit anxious about how the trip would affect her, emotionally. Some kids are excited about going back to see their homeland. Others NEVER want to go back. We sent a package off to Lou Juan with Lou Ming's family...candy and stuff. The most important gift was a disposable camera. We hope that she'll take pictures of her friends, her teachers, her room...anything important to her. She's lived ten years there, and the pictures may be the only part of her old life that comes home with her.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
This blog thing....and why
Hey look! I'm blogging! I feel rather self-conscious....a rather shy person sending my wordwaves out to whoever.
Just for the record, I'm starting this blog to keep a record of a new venture in our lives. Our family is adopting a new daughter, and the ups and downs and ins and outs of the process may be of interest to her someday.
We're already a large-ish family,with some kids grown and some still at home. We have (I have) always wanted to adopt. And now, our youngest biological child is a teenager and my husband is also excited about adopting. He says the house is too quiet with only three teenagers around!
Our family now: Ray, 54, Allison 49, Sarah (off and married with 3 kids of her own), Carolee (Likewise married and similarly occupied with husband and a daughter), Caitlin 22, serving a mission in Taiwan, John, 19, about to leave on a mission to Sao Paulo, Brazil, Laura 15, and Kirsten, 13. And....waiting in Loudi City, Hunan Province, Peoples' Republic of China...Lou Juan, age ten. She knows she is going to be adopted, and (so far) is happy about that.
The paperwork for the adoption process, as well as the beaureaucratic hoop-jumping, is long, ardudous and frustrating. We received our PA (provisional acceptance as an adoptive family) from China on Feb 12, 2008. Our homestudy seemed to take forever to complete...we finally got it done in late May. Now we're going through the 1-800A process with the USCIS, which is brand new, and nobody really knows how long it will take for that to get done.
We are waiting to be told our homestudy needs to be revised (so far, all of the homestudies sent
with the 1-800A have required revision) and then will send it all off again. It is supposed to take a month to get the bad news, and then another month (we hope it's only that long) to get the paperwork approved. After that, our massive dossier of thirteen important documents gets sent to China for official approval...the coveted LOA (letter of acceptance). And then...after that...we wait for the TA (travel approval). And after that, we have three months to travel and bring Lou Juan home.
She's known she was going to be adopted for five months. She is anxious to get to the United States and have a family. We have hired a tutor to teach her English. The tutor has become a friend and liaison for us, a great blessing. We can send packages to Lou Juan, and messages through her tutor, Fiona. But mostly, we wait. We feel a degree of impatience with the process, but maybe it's good to have time to contemplate the huge thing we're doing...taking a little girl from everything she's ever known, and turning her world upside down in the hope that, ultimately, things will be better for her here.
Just for the record, I'm starting this blog to keep a record of a new venture in our lives. Our family is adopting a new daughter, and the ups and downs and ins and outs of the process may be of interest to her someday.
We're already a large-ish family,with some kids grown and some still at home. We have (I have) always wanted to adopt. And now, our youngest biological child is a teenager and my husband is also excited about adopting. He says the house is too quiet with only three teenagers around!
Our family now: Ray, 54, Allison 49, Sarah (off and married with 3 kids of her own), Carolee (Likewise married and similarly occupied with husband and a daughter), Caitlin 22, serving a mission in Taiwan, John, 19, about to leave on a mission to Sao Paulo, Brazil, Laura 15, and Kirsten, 13. And....waiting in Loudi City, Hunan Province, Peoples' Republic of China...Lou Juan, age ten. She knows she is going to be adopted, and (so far) is happy about that.
The paperwork for the adoption process, as well as the beaureaucratic hoop-jumping, is long, ardudous and frustrating. We received our PA (provisional acceptance as an adoptive family) from China on Feb 12, 2008. Our homestudy seemed to take forever to complete...we finally got it done in late May. Now we're going through the 1-800A process with the USCIS, which is brand new, and nobody really knows how long it will take for that to get done.
We are waiting to be told our homestudy needs to be revised (so far, all of the homestudies sent
with the 1-800A have required revision) and then will send it all off again. It is supposed to take a month to get the bad news, and then another month (we hope it's only that long) to get the paperwork approved. After that, our massive dossier of thirteen important documents gets sent to China for official approval...the coveted LOA (letter of acceptance). And then...after that...we wait for the TA (travel approval). And after that, we have three months to travel and bring Lou Juan home.
She's known she was going to be adopted for five months. She is anxious to get to the United States and have a family. We have hired a tutor to teach her English. The tutor has become a friend and liaison for us, a great blessing. We can send packages to Lou Juan, and messages through her tutor, Fiona. But mostly, we wait. We feel a degree of impatience with the process, but maybe it's good to have time to contemplate the huge thing we're doing...taking a little girl from everything she's ever known, and turning her world upside down in the hope that, ultimately, things will be better for her here.
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