Home from Orlando!

We made it back to Indiana on Friday evening after a long, hot, fun-filled week in Orlando!

Grayson and I had a wonderful time during the day hanging out at the pool with Erica, Madi, and Braden. One day I took Grayson to a model train exhibit. He seemed to really enjoy looking at all the trains and following them around the track.


On Tuesday, we went to Disneyworld. Supposedly, it's the happiest place on Earth. But, when it's 95 degrees and there are thousands of people walking all over you, it feels like Hell on Earth! We toughed it out and got to see the parade on Main Street. That was by far the best part of the day. We then moved on to riding Dumbo. After waiting close to an hour in line, we got on the ride only for it down pour on us through the entire ride. After a couple of minutes on Dumbo, we were all soaked to the bone. The good part is, the rain really cooled things off and the rest of the day was very pleasant. Another highlight of the day was Grayson getting to meet Mickey and Minnie. He really loves Mickey so we were excited to see his reaction. Surprisingly enough, he wasn't scared. But, he did get very shy. We stayed until about 10 p.m. I was very surprised we all were able to hang in there that long, but we did and we had a GREAT time!


We didn't really do anything else that was too exciting. We did attempt Sea World on Thursday; however, it rained the whole time. We got to see a few exhibits and the whale show and that was it. I once again spent the entire day soaked!

As much fun as it was, it was very nice to get home on Friday.


On the adoption front, we received the draft of our home study. I reviewed it and sent it right back to the social worker. She will then send this on to Gladney who will take about 10 days to review it. I wish it was faster, but I know that this review is to ensure a smooth process later on in the adoption when it really matters. We also received our FBI clearances that we will include in our dossier. My goal over the next couple weeks while we wait for our home study to be completed it to get the remainder of the dossier documents done. I think we are still on track for being on the waiting list by middle of August. Let's keep our fingers crossed! I have to admit I'm getting very anxious to be done with the paperwork and on the waiting list. However, I know that that's when the hard waiting begins!

Paperwork update and then off to Florida!

Well, we had a wonderful five days at home! We spent the weekend with Aaron's family and had a great meal on Saturday and went to the park on Sunday. Aaron headed out to New York early Monday morning and I stayed behind to spend a couple of days with my family. We had a Father's Day get-together on Monday and just relaxed for the most part.

But, we are now home and life has gotten back to it's crazy, hectic self! We have two days at home to get things together before we leave for Florida on Saturday morning! Aaron is going to Orlando for a work conference and we are tagging along. We are planning to go to Disneyworld one day and Sea World another. Other than that, we plan to hang by the pool and relax!

On the adoption front, we are still making progress. We almost have everything we need to complete our Gladney application and gain Gladney approval. I have to send a few more pictures of extended family and get them a copy of our home study. The home study draft should be finished tomorrow and hopefully it will be to Gladney to review by sometime next week. If everything goes well, we may have the completed home study by the end of June! Wow! I better get moving on the rest of the dossier! I can't believe we're going to placed on the waiting list soon!

Well, that's all for now, I really need to start getting things together for Florida!

Grayson and Ellie riding the Big Wheel together.

Progress and Weekend Plans

This afternoon we head down to Indy for our Immigration fingerprint appointment. Once we are fingerprinted, Immigration runs a very thorough background check. If the background check comes out okay all we have to do is get them a final copy of our home study (we're hoping by mid-July). At that point, we just wait for them to issue our final approval, or our I-171H. This piece of paper says we are approved to adopt an orphan and is necessary before we can be put on the waiting list. So, our goal is to have the rest of the dossier done before we receive this piece of paper. We are making great progress!

On Tuesday, we went to the Sheriff's Department to be fingerprinted so we could send off the fingerprint cards for an FBI clearance. Yes, another FBI clearance. This time, it will go in our dossier. So, after the Sheriff's Department, I ran to the post office to get the money order that we needed to include, and then went to FedEx to overnight everything. Grayson did so well while I ran my errands. In FedEx he sat and looked at a fish tank. I told the guy that worked at the store that I was so glad they had the fish tank to entertain him. He said, "yeah, he liked it so much he went to sleep!" I looked down and Grayson was asleep in his stroller. I can't tell you the last time he fell asleep somewhere other than his bed or the car. I felt kind of bad for having him out all morning running around. It makes me feel even worse when he is such an angel! If only he knew this was all to bring him home a little brother, he probably wouldn't be so cooperative!

I'm looking forward to the weekend and taking some time off from the paperwork, although it always bothers me to take too much time off. We're heading home for Father's Day and then on Monday, Aaron is leaving for New York with Katrina and Drew to help move them to Lafayette. Yay! So, I am going to stay with my parents with Grayson for a couple days to relax while Aaron's loading the moving truck!

Ethiopia Adoption Group in Lafayette

I'm so excited to say that someone in Lafayette started a Yahoo! group for those of us in the area who are adopting or have adopted from Ethiopia! It just got up and running this afternoon and we already have 5 or 6 different families logged in. I was very excited to see that there are others in the area who have or will have Ethiopian children.

Anyway, so I posted a message on this Yahoo! group and introduced myself. Just a few minutes later, someone posts and says my name sounds really familiar. I get this a lot even though the name Jarvis isn't that popular. So, I didn't think much of it. Then I realized her name sounded really familiar. As it turns out, it's our neighbor. Her, her husband, and their 3 kids live just across the street! I met her when a package for Grayson was accidentally delivered to her house instead of ours. She brought it over to us and I remember thinking how nice she was and that we needed to get to know each other better over the summer. And now, we are going to have so much in common! They are requesting a little boy between 0 and 24 months. So, chances are, he may be really close in age to Grayson and not too much older than our new little one.


I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of Grayson!

Second home study visit

We have our second, and final visit with the social worker this afternoon at 3. I will update everyone on how that goes sometime tonight or tomorrow. I expect that this time it will be a lot of gathering information. How many siblings do we have, what do our parents do for a living, how would we describe our childhood, how do we plan to discipline our children, etc. So, nothing too exciting, but necessary none the less.

We are still working away on the paperwork. I've gotten the pictures together that we need to send. We have to send in pictures of the house as well as pictures of us with Grayson and "special" family events. I'll post a few pictures of the house that I'm sending to our agency. Aaron also received his employer/insurance verification letter from Purdue today. As large as Purdue's HR office is, I was very impressed with how quickly they worked and how willing they were to do everything to meet our specific needs.

I was reading some posts on an Ethiopia adoption forum last night. Someone had posted that they had just gotten court approval and that their little girl was coming home soon. They attached a couple of pictures of the cutest little baby girl! I have to say that those pictures got me very anxious for the day that we receive our referral. I clearly remember the evening we received Grayson's referral. Our coordinator called at 6 p.m. so we knew she had to be calling about something important. She got on the phone and asked us to sit down and then told us she had a little boy for us! She told us his name and birthdate. I remember when she got to the point where she told us he weighed 5 lbs. 7 oz. I just started crying! He was sooo little and precious! She told us all this information and I asked her to repeat something and she said, "aren't you writing this down?" We were so excited we didn't think to write it all down! But, like all mothers, I didn't need to. He was my son and I remembered word for word everything she told us as if I had been right there in the hospital when he was born. Our coordinator said she'd email a couple of pictures and after waiting a half hour to receive them we were DYING! She had forgotten to send them and went home for the evening!!!! Luckily, she realized her mistake when she got home and asked someone else to send them. Finally, we got to see his precious little face! The next day we were to receive a FedEx package with more pictures and all the details. Aaron stayed home from work to wait on the package with me! It was certainly the most exciting time of our lives and I can't wait to get to experience it all over again with this little guy!

We've also been thinking about baby names for a couple of months now. I have always said our second boy would be Anderson Isaiah Jarvis. But, I have heard another name that has made it to the top of our list. So, for all you out there that may be having little boys soon, we have staked our claim on the name Beckett. I'm not thinking of a middle name at this point because we hope to use one of his birth names as we did with Grayson. We want the naming to be completely equal. We will pick their first names, their middle names (1 or 2) will be part of their birth names, and of course their last name will be Jarvis.

Here are some newer pics of the house:

And the paperwork keeps rolling in!

I got a call from the doctor's office this afternoon saying I could come by and pick up our paperwork today. As you remember, there were very specific forms that needed to be filled out stating we are clear of certain communicable diseases. Of course these forms then needed to be put on office letterhead and notarized. The letter head at the doctor's office has a big band of gray that goes down the side of the paper. That I guess caused some problems and the forms had to be carefully copied. Then, we found out that the entire office building is without a notary! They used to have two working in the building but neither work there any longer. Luckily, our doctor's office has a wonderfully helpful and caring staff! They got the paperwork copied on letterhead, filled out, and arranged for a notary to come to the office so the doctor could sign! I was still holding my breath when I looked at the paperwork, just waiting to find a mistake. But, to my relief, everything looks PERFECT! And, even the notaries commission is far enough out to not give us any problems. Whew! That is a huge relief. It's always hard to relinquish that control and trust other people with your adoption paperwork.

I also dropped off a medical form for Grayson's doctor to fill out. This is part of our Gladney application. They are really good about getting stuff done so I hope to pick this up sometime tomorrow. So, I will be able to send all our medical reports to Gladney for our application, to Children's Bureau for our home study, and we'll keep the originals for our dossier. Things are really starting to come together!

One home study visit down, one to go!

Today we had our first home study visit with our social worker from Children's Bureau. She is very nice and everything went very smoothly. She was here about an hour and a half and we covered all sorts of things such as why we're choosing to adopt, why Ethiopia, how did we know we were ready for another child (do you really ever KNOW), do we think we'll face cultural and racial issues, etc. I felt like everything went very well and we were certainly very open and honest about all our hopes, dreams, and uncertainties.

After we answered many, many questions, she took a quick tour of the house. Grayson was very happy to show her his playroom and his bedroom. Each time he ran into the room, threw up his arms, and yelled, "YEAH!" He knows these are his rooms and he is so proud to show them off.

We asked the social worker a few questions about what to expect as far as how long it will take to get a draft of our home study and then the finished product. We were very pleasantly surprised to hear that once she does our second visit and has all our other paperwork (which she has most of), it will only take her a week to do a draft. At that point, her supervisor has to check it, we check it, and our adoption agency checks it. Then, any corrections that are needed are made and we get the final copy! I'm really hoping that if all goes well, we should have the final copy by the end of June or beginning of July! This all keeps us right on track for getting our dossier into our agency by the middle of August (if not sooner).

S0, we have our second home study visit on Friday! Yay! We are really making progress - very exciting, kind of scary!

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!

Introduction

We are Emily and Aaron living in Indiana. We adopted Grayson from Guatemala in May of 2007. It's so hard to believe it's almost been a year! Wow, time does certainly fly when you're having fun. Grayson is 18 months old now and we have been discussing for a few months how and when to expand our family. After much debate, prayer, and number crunching, we have decided to begin the crazy process we've come to know as international adoption! We are so excited about the idea of bringing home a baby brother for Grayson. For many reasons including our age, the relatively quick process, the nearly 5 million orphans, we have chosen to adopt from Ethiopia! I have been blog-stalking for several months now, and blogs are what have really helped us make our decision to adopt again, and in particular, from Ethiopia. As crazy as it sounds, I miss the excitement of completing paperwork and hearing your case has made progress. I'm so excited for that moment when I see my child's picture for the first time! But, most of all, I can't wait to feel the weight of him in my arms as I hold him for the first time! That rush of love so strong and so pure you're sure you must be dreaming. There's no better feeling in the world! So, I start this blog as a way to chronicle our journey to baby numero dos! Hold on, it's bound to be a wild ride!