We have plane tickets!!

Yeah!! Plane tickets!!! Where are we going you ask? Is it Russia?? No, silly, we haven't sent in our dossier yet. We are going to the east coast for 3 days mid October to meet with our placing agency. It will be a very fast trip and because of the 3 hour time difference ahead of CA, we have chosen to go without the boys. I don't think Bubba would make it and frankly, I really want to make a good impression with our agency and I just don't think that's possible with a toddler that's had to sit through a 6 hour flight, is 3 hours off of his schedule and is expected to sit quietly through a half day meeting which starts at 5:30am CA time. I'm actually not sure I'm going to make it... but I'm sure going to try. Luckily, I've heard there is a Starbucks in the lobby of our hotel. Thank you Starbucks!

I would totally be excited about our chance to be away alone together, far away from the kids with a little measure of adult fun. Staying at a nice hotel...a little bit of a nightlife. Getting dolled up and hitting the city. Dining out among other adults with no kids. It would be a dream of a date night, if I wasn't so nervous about meeting with our adoption agency. I really want this to go well. I want to work with this agency and I'm hoping they are everything I'm expecting them to be. And more importantly, I really am hoping there are no surprises that I'm not aware of in the adoption process. There is bound to be some surprises of course, but I hope I have the general idea of what is expected and there are no huge surprises or unexpected turns in the road ahead.

Dare to Dream...Is it safe yet?

I have wanted a little girl for as long as I can remember. I had names picked out since I was a girl...of course they always change. But I always imagined I would have a daughter. When I used to volunteer in the dependency court I would chose girl cases to manage and sometimes I would really fall for a child and wonder what it was like to be her mother. (None of them were available for adoption, they were all going to go home at some point.) Even reading all of the other adoption blogs where their children have come home I still felt very guarded and wondered would that happen for us too? International adoption is not without it's ups and downs and I know not everyone has had a happy ending. So it's safe to feel guarded and not wanting to get too attached too hopeful. Of course, on the inside I'm hooked, totally taken over this little child on the other side of the world that's waiting in an orphanage for a mommy and daddy. And even though we haven't even met and I know nothing about her I can't help but feel for her.

On Friday, was the first time I let myself think outloud that it could really happen with us bringing her home when I talked with our placing agency. He said as soon as he received a roughdraft via fax of our homestudy we could go ahead and meet with them and work on our dossier documents. Wow!! Such a quick conversation but so much hope in his words. It just almost felt for a small moment like such a real possibility!!

So as long as I'm daydreaming, I thought I would share a few things I have found for Emily. I haven't bought too much for her yet but I did buy a couple of cute things. She has inherited a few baby things from her brothers that were unisex; toys, blankets, clothes and most of the nursery furniture..the crib and changing table/dresser. The first thing I bought is this "bunnies by the bay" lovey in cream for her to have at the orphanage. It says, "best friends indeed." I plan to sleep with it a few nights before we travel so that she has my smell with her. My boys have a satin edged blankee lovey that they sleep with every night since they were a year old so I'm excited for my little girl to have a lovey too. I need to get another one, just in case something happens to the first one.

I also bought this cute tinkerbell dress- up outfit for when she is close to 3 years old. I saw this right after we got back from Disneyland. Everywhere you are in Disneyland you see these cute little preschool girls wearing their adorable princess dresses. I couldn't resist. I could hardly get my boys to wear their mickey pirate ears...

She has her own bathroom which I painted a soft green. It matches the border of the butterfly mat so I'm outfitting her towels and bath mat in this cute pottery barn kids butterfly pattern along with their striped pink towels. So cute. Well, that's all for now.

Is our homestudy on it's way?

I spoke with our case manager from our placing agency on Friday. As soon as he receives our roughdraft of our homestudy we can make an appointment with them for our interview and collection of our dossier documents. Yeah!! I'm so excited to be completing the first leg (homestudy) and moving onto the dossier leg of the paper trail. I called the social worker that is incharge of finalizing all the homestudies with our homestudy agency to see if she would be able to fax or email that homestudy over on Friday or Monday but I couldn't get a hold of her. It was Friday after lunch so probably won't hear back till Monday. Hopefully, she got my message and went ahead and sent it since our social worker had already emailed it to her last Monday. I should have called on Wed, but I hate to be so pushy. Keep your fingers crossed she went ahead and sent it over.

FBI Fingerprints Done

Friday we got a letter in the mail from the USCIS office saying they have received our I-600A application and it's been logged in on Aug 27th. The letter also included the forms we needed to get our fingerprints done. The office is only open on Sats and we had 2 weeks to get the fingerprints done...or 2 Saturdays. If we couldn't come in during the next 2 weeks then we could come in on a Wed after our 2 week period was over. So we decided we had better go today. We packed up the kids and planned on a few hours of waiting but was pleasantly surprised at how effecient the office was running and we were out of there in under a half hour. Yeah...fingerprints are done. We have to fax back our paperwork to our local USCIS office so they know we have been fingerprinted and it could still take upto 120 days to hear back if we are approved.

We received a rough draft of our homestudy on Friday. It looks great...just a few minor corrections to make over the weekend and then our agency will forward it to our placing agency to make sure it's okay for our dossier. Hopefully, next week we will be finished with the homestudy and it can be sent in to the USCIS office and to our placing agency.

We are still collecting documents for our dossier. So far we still need a letter from hubby's employer, a letter from our mortgage company and our psych test results. We also need to get a letter from hubby medical insurance co stating that our daughter is covered once she is placed with us.

We are getting closer. The steps or paperwork is getting smaller and smaller.

Passports are Here!!

Yeah!! My passport has finally arrived!! I was wondering when it would come. Hubby's arrived earlier this week and our old passports came back yesterday so I was very excited today to see my passport!! Yeah!! I also got in the mail my postcard saying the local USCIS has received my I-600A application.
I haven't done any paperwork this week and I need to get back on it. Both boys start preschool next week and we have been to back-to-back orientations and meetings about our carpool arrangements and new classes that the week has flown by and I haven't gotten to work on anything adoption oriented. I'm afraid my September will fly by like that too as school is very involved. Hopefully, I will be able to make the time. I have a few more documents to collect, get a hold of our roughdraft of our homestudy and make my appt for the psych test and then we can meet with our placing agency. I'm hoping that if all goes well, we can meet with them sometime in October and hopefully submit our dossier then too. We will see how it goes!! But for today..yeah our passports are here!!