So people read my blog. Other people. Like, people I don't know. I guess I knew that. But now I KNOW that. Maybe I should make an effort to be more articulate and spell correctly. Check for typos... :)
Adoption. For those of you who haven't travelled this road, or been down it lately, and to China in particular, there is a bundle of Mystery Paper Work known as an I-800 A correct homestudy, that we are trying to create. We already have a homestudy, but it accidentally fell into a beaurocratic void when the US and China became Hague treaty nations and suddenly new, undefined requirements were necessary for homestudies, and nobody knew exactly what they were. Our homestudy was sent off to the USCIS like...a week....before everybody got the word on what was required for the I-800 A. And it wasn't what was in our homestudy. That was back in June.
It took three months for us to get the word we knew was coming, that our homestudy had to be amended to meet Hague standards. And now we're frantically trying to get it up to par, as the new improved version has to be back with the USCIS within 45 days or we start over. (we have about 20 days to go...)
Emails and phone calls are going back and forth between me, our homestudy social worker, a Hague accredited social worker, and the USCIS adjudicator who has our case file, to tweak the homestudy into the magically correct format with exactly absolutely perfect wording so that we will pass inspection and move on to step two, sending documents to China. I know that this is all happening to protect the child we are adopting, and I keep thinking of her over there in China, waiting. She waits in foster care, we wait in the beaurocratic loop.
She is getting dancing lessons. She asked for chocolate and other sweets. She likes getting email from her sisters here in CA. We are lucky we are able to communicate with her like this...it is extremely rare to have any contact with a child being adopted from China. But we also hear the plea to come get her soon. She has been waiting so long. She wants parents. She wants a family.
We will be patient, but urgently so if that is possible. We have to get this stuff done, and get that little girl home.
I am, in the meantime, gutting and putting a bathroom back together. The chain of events that let to that was typical for our family.
We live in the woods. There are wood rats. They, when they can, make homes under our house. I periodically have to go out and block entrances, and remove rats (not pleasant for either rat or human). As I was inspecting the area under the house for rats a few weeks ago, someone flushed the toilet upstairs. And Lo, large amounts of water came cascading down, two feet from my head. Upstairs, in the bathroom in question, there was no sign of a leak. Upon pulling the toilet, we found that all leaking was going UNDER THE FLOOR TILE and had ruined the subflooring. ARGH. So pulled out all the tile and subflooring. Pulled out the beautiful wainscoting, and had to scrap that as it got damaged during removal. Put new stuff in. Retiled. Bought a new vanity, too, but that's another story. And am now wallpapering the bathroom. So...from woodrats to wallpapering. I am busy. And...after three weeks of under house silence, I am hearing woodrats again, so will make another journey under the house to figure out how they're getting in, and what I have to do to get rid of them this time.
This is fall break time for our school kids. But the 15 year old is doing driver ed this week, so not much of a vacation for her. I'm supposed to be fitting costumes for a huge renaissance era musical production/dinner, but have been trying get the bathroom operable before having people in my house for fitting. I was supposed to take a CLEP test today, but NO TIME, so maybe next week.
The sun is shining. I planted some nice perennials in my garden yesterday and did some weeding. I'm going to take a walk this afternoon and enjoy the fall weather. And life is pretty good!
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoption. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 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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