Quick paperwork update

While out and about yesterday, I took a couple of things by the bank to have them notarized. Well, I got busy watching Grayson and didn't realize until after the man had signed them that his notary commission expires in October. In the normal world, this would NEVER be a problem. However, in the crazy world of international adoption, this could hold up our adoption once our paperwork is presented in the Ethiopian court system. We faced this with Guatemala and often had to have people redo paperwork for us 3 or 4 times until they found a notary whose commission didn't expire in the next year. So, today we got up early and headed to another branch of Chase in search of a notary with a longer commission. Low and behold, we found one whose commission doesn't expire until September of 2009. So, we got the papers re-notarized, made copies, and sent off another group of documents to Gladney. We're really starting to make some headway!

It's really amazing how calm I have been so far about the process this time around. By this time in Grayson's adoption I was just dying to have the paperwork done and see our little boy's face. I think it really helps to have Grayson to keep me busy. Plus, I think I just realize that the timing is what led us to Grayson. If the paperwork would have gone even one day faster, there's a great chance we wouldn't have been referred Grayson. So, I guess the living proof that God's timing is always perfect is making this process much easier this time around. Sure, I'm excited to see my little boy's face for the first time, but I know I have to wait until it's MY little boy. I did stop and think today that there may be a woman in Ethiopia carrying our child as we speak, or maybe he's already been born and is in an orphanage waiting for us. With Grayson, he had already been conceived before we even started talking about adopting. Amazing how the world works.

Weekly Update

So, I'm hoping to post at least once a week while things with the adoption are pretty slow going and we are busy with summer activities.

On the adoption front, we received our fingerprint appointments from Immigration! I was not expecting them this soon at all. They are still waiting for a copy of our home study (which hasn't even started yet) and with Grayson's adoption we didn't even get an appointment until they received it. So, this is a good thing. We will be fingerprinted on June 12th. After that, they will wait for a copy of our home study. Once they get that, they can issue our final approval to adopt an orphan from Ethiopia. With Grayson's adoption, and in most cases, this is the last piece of paper we will be waiting on before being placed on the waiting list. So, if all goes well with the home study, we could be on the waiting list by Aaron's birthday as we hoped! In other adoption news, we are still waiting to start our home study. We sent our application to our agency a couple of weeks ago and are waiting for them to assign us to a social worker. We are going with a different home study agency this time in order to save some money ($600) and I'm hoping this wasn't a bad decision. I'm trying to be politely persistent.

In other news, we spent the Memorial Day weekend in Tennessee on my Mom and Dad's houseboat. We all had a great time and Aaron was very excited to get to take the boat out for the first time. We were all extremely nervous to take it out and I believe we narrowly missed taking a slide off the back of a houseboat next to us! But, Aaron made docking the 48-foot beast look like a breeze! I was so proud of him!

I think that's about all that has been going on around here! Grayson and I are loving the nice weather and spend as much time as we can outside!

Grayson helping Daddy drive the big boat!

Grayson on the playground.

Paperwork, paperwork, and oh, more paperwork!

So after many weeks of debate, we went with our gut feelings and sent off for our application to adopt from Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, Texas. We did lots of reading and talking to representatives and felt this was the right agency for us.


Right now we have been busying ourselves with lots and lots of paperwork! Being our second adoption, I learned that we can complete the paperwork faster if we work on many aspects of the paperwork simultaneously. So, we are currently working on completing our home study (the part where a social worker comes to our home and either recommends us for adoption or not), gathering up all the documents for our Gladney application, sending off our 1-600A to Immigration, and working on our documents for our dossier (our application that we send to Ethiopia).


Part of our Gladney application and our dossier is a letter from our doctor stating that we are all healthy. To Ethiopia, this includes being free and clear of Hepatitis B & C, HIV, and Syphilis. So, we had all our labs done this week and hope to have our letters from our doctor sometime next week (fingers crossed). Of course, it wouldn't be international adoption if we didn't first have a mix-up as to whether we needed to be tested for Hep B&C or just Hep B. And, of course, this mix-up caused one of us to have to have our blood drawn twice. Guess who that was. Yep, poor Aaron who hates this sort of thing anyway!


In other news, Aaron's sister just got married this past weekend. Congrats to Allie and Andrew! The wedding was absolutely beautiful and perfect in every way. Grayson was the ringbearer and was a trooper that day considering he had an ear infection. With our decision to adopt coming so close to the wedding, we chose not to tell some of our family (including Allie and Andrew) until after their big day. So, I can't wait until they get back from their cruise and we can tell them they are going to be an Aunt and Uncle again!