The Sound of Silence

This has been a frustrating couple of weeks that have made me not want to post and sound too negative. There have been no referrals for a few weeks now. Apparently the lab that does the HIV and Hep B testing ran out of the substance that they need to do those tests. AAI is not making any referrals until the medical testing is complete, so nothing has been happening.

It feels good to finally know the reason for not hearing about referrals, we were beginning to wonder what was going on. We heard today that the lab did receive the substance but it will be about 10-14 days before the results are back and they are ready to refer.

Since we leave in 2 weeks I don't know if we will get a referral before we leave or not. If we don't, I am hoping that we might receive one while we are there. Please pray that things will start to move again and that the waiting children will be able to be matched with families soon.

Marching on...

We have officially moved on to March referrals! We are getting closer to our referral because we are one of the first April families to send their dossier. Our agency does not give out exact numbers, but we are pretty sure that there are less than ten families ahead of us waiting for a referral.

We have made a big family decision... we have decided to go to Ethiopia for Christmas! We have been thinking about the idea for a few months now and we have decided to go whether we have a referral or not. If we have a referral before we go we will be able to spend 2 weeks loving and bonding with our new baby.

If we do not have a referral, we will not be able to spend much time with the children. We will be able to visit, but we can't volunteer before we have a referral. We will be a little disappointed if we don't have a referral before we go, but we will still have a great time.

This is a chance for us to experience our future child's birth country and culture. We are taking Jackson and Olivia with us and they are very excited. We will not be taking them when we travel to get our baby, so I am glad that they will get this opportunity to visit now.

We are very excited and are looking forward to giving you all some great news soon! And I will definitely give more details about our trip as the time gets closer.

2009 Holiday Project Kickoff

September 30th officially marked the start of Adoption Advocates International 2009 Holiday Project. This is the 4th year in a row that Mandie Doak -an adoptive Mom and AAI volunteer- has agreed to organize a wonderful celebration for all of the children AAI cares for in Ethiopia and Ghana. AAI also plans to use a sizeable portion of the total collected to provide food aid in partnership with Hope Enterprises in Ethiopia and to several small orphanages they are assisting in Ghana.

AAI's Holiday Project is a great opportunity to buy a special gift for those people on your Christmas list who "have everything" and also help some great children at the same time! For each $30 donation (this year's minimum), they will send a special holiday photo card to a grandparent, teacher, or someone special who would appreciate receiving this kind of gift in their honor. Donations can be made online at this link and you can enter in the "in honor of" name and address in the space provided or mail it to Susan Poisson-Dollar at AAI separately.

For more details about the holiday project, visit Mandie's great blog at http://www.destinationdesta.blogspot.com/ She's also creating beautiful jewelry with material from Ethiopia and Ghana to benefit this year's Holiday Project and you can shop for these items at this link.

Thank you so much for considering to help the children that our agency cares for. As the holiday project progresses I will put up periodic updates on where they are pertaining to their goal. They have set an ambitious goal of $21, 630 that will nearly double the humanitarian assistance portion from last year!

Jennifer

Still waiting

I feel like I have not been giving very many updates since I started this blog, but I feel like there is never anything really happening to talk about! If I had started the blog sooner I could have talked about the beginning parts when there were actually things to do, but I didn't start the blog until after we were on the waiting list.

I did call in for an update a couple of weeks ago and they seemed pretty confident that we would get a referral in November or early December. I have heard that things may start to move a little faster, but I haven't seen that yet. I am really hoping to see some referrals this week so that things look like they are moving along.

They are still in February for infant boys and November for infant girls. Our dossier was sent in April so we are still looking at waiting a little while longer!

Jackson and Olivia have been so great about the waiting. They talk about the adoption a lot, but seem to be content with waiting. They are probably waiting more patiently than their parents! Both of them really enjoy playing with younger siblings of friends and kids at church right now. I think they are practicing for when they have a new brother or sister to play with.

We are still debating names. It is a lot harder this time since Jackson and Olivia both think they get a vote in the name and none of the 4 of us really agree on the same names! I may have to put a poll on the blog to get some extra help!

Hopefully we will have some exciting news soon!

Back to School

We had our first week back with students this week and I think it will be a nice school year. Larry and I both seem to have nice classes. There is still no news on the adoption front. It is difficult to have things moving so slow. I am glad that this time of year is so busy for us because it gives me something else to think about.

I know right now they are giving referrals to families that turned in their paperwork in November 2008 for girls and February 2009 for boys. We turned in our paperwork in April so we still have a ways to go. I haven't called in for an update the last couple of months because I already knew what they would say. I think I will call in this month, but I will wait until around the 20th.

Home Sweet Home

We arrived home yesterday evening and it felt great to sleep in my own bed last night. My husband and I are both teachers and we spent the whole summer visiting relatives in the States. We had a wonderful summer and I really feel relaxed and refreshed and ready to start the new school year.

I am really pleased that I have been able to stop obsessing about the adoption so much. Before we left in June I was consumed with finding out as much information as I could and it was all I could think about. I am not any less excited and I can't wait to meet my baby, but I am enjoying life and am glad to leave everything in God's hands. I am hoping that we will start to hear about new referrals soon, I know they have some unreferred babies, but I think we are still looking at a few more months before it is our turn.

While we wait...

We have accepted the fact that we have a long wait ahead of us, but we are doing some things to keep busy in the meantime. We bought a new Ethiopian Jazz album that we love and have been listening to a lot.

We also had our first Ethiopian food today. We stopped at an Ethiopian Restaurant in St. Paul called Fasika and tried a big combo platter. It was delicious and we got to sample a little bit of everything. Jackson and Olivia ate well and enjoyed the meal too. The only negative is that there were so many good things on the plate and we don't know what any of them are called to order next time!

We also discovered a new family hobby that is occupying our time. It is called geocaching and you use a gps device to locate "caches" that other people have hidden. In each cache there is a log book to sign and some trinkets. You are supposed to take something and leave a new trinket in it's place. We have looked for 4 caches so far, and found 2 of them. The other two eluded us, so now we have to go back and try again the next time we are in New Ulm!

A step in the right direction

We received some news that may help our wait time shorten a little. Another adoptive family was told yesterday that the agency plans on referring every baby in the nursery prior to July 15. Our agency plans on increasing fees for all families receiving a referral after July 15, spo they are trying to refer as many babies as they can before that happens. We will not get a referral before the increase, but hopefully that will bring us closer to our turn. I just can't wait to start hearing good news from some of the other families that we know!

Longer wait...

I called AAI Monday to get our 2 month update and received some disappointing news. She said we should plan on waiting another 3-5 months for a referral. I am really hoping that things will go faster than that, but I know they do their best to give estimates.

We are enjoying our summer vacation with family and hopefully we can keep our mind off waiting and just enjoy our time off. We are leaving Milwaukee tomorrow to go to Green Bay. We will spend the weekend there, and then I will head to Minneapolis. I am hoping that my new niece or nephew will be there to greet me! I am so excited to spend some time with newborns this summer since both my brother and sister are expecting.

Please pray for the situation in Ethiopia right now. Things are getting very dire there right now with food shortages, power outages, and plagues of locusts. Here are some links that you can check out for more information.

http://en.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/1207/26/
http://en.afrik.com/article15813.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8103355.stm

Summer vacation!

It is officially summer vacation. Friday was our last day of work. I am so excited and ready to head back to the States for the summer. The next time I post we should be in Wisconsin!

We had a great weekend. Jackson is at his first Bible camp until tomorrow. I can't wait to pick him up tomorrow and find out how it was. I have such great memories about going to Bible camp when I was a kid. I am so thankful that he was able to go.

We took Olivia and went to Tokyo for the weekend. We went to see the Blue Man Group on Friday night and that was a blast. On Saturday I got my hair done at the hotel and then we went to the zoo for the afternoon. It was a wonderful way to start the summer.

We will have our two month update next week, so hopefully I will have some good news to report. I know referrals started back up again this week after a rather long wait, but the last I heard they were still working on January families. I can't wait to hear that we are out of January and heading towards our turn!

First update

I called the office and got our first update since we have been on the waiting list for 1 month now. She said that they are giving out referrals for families that sent their paperwork in September for girls and January for boys.

We were told that most likely we will have a couple more months of waiting for a baby boy. She also told us that all of the dossiers sent in April were sent later in the month so we will be one of the first April families to receive a referral.

It was an encouraging phone call, but it doesn't seem like many referrals are going out right now. We hope that we will start seeing some announcements from other families soon!

Silence...

This has been a quiet week on the adoption front. We have been on the waiting list for 1 month now, so I emailed on Tuesday for our 1 month update. We have not heard anything back yet, and that drives me crazy! Every morning I check my email hoping to see a response, but it's not there. I tried to call yesterday, but they were already closed. I know we are not even close yet, but it felt like such a big milestone to get to the 1 month mark, and our agency encourages us to check in once a month to get an update on where things are at.

I know several other families that are getting close that are also feeling anxious to get some news. This has been a very quiet month. Usually other families announce their referrals, but we haven't heard from anyone for a long time. I love hearing that someone got a referral because it lets us know that we are moving in the right direction.

Hopefully I will be able to post some updates next week. Enjoy the long weekend.

Do you have what it takes?

We celebrated my son Jackson's 9th birthday today. We are huge Survivor fans in our house, so we had a survivor party this year. It was a blast. We divided the kids into 2 "tribes" with official buffs and everything.

We had the teams compete in various challenges, including a gross food challenge. I was surprised at the things the kids would eat just to get more points for their team! We just kept tallying points and the winning team got to choose their prizes first. (We skipped the voting people off part of the game, in case you were worried!)

Here are some pics from the party, you can see that the kids were having a good time.

171h approval

I am so excited! I finally got an email back from the office in Seoul today and the news was better than I had hoped. They said the approval letter was already sent and attached a copy for me. So I don't need to worry about the license that the agency was talking about after all.

I was really praying that the letter would come before we left for summer break. Now I can breathe a huge sigh of relief that it is here. It feels great to know that the last huge piece of paperwork is finished!

Almost heading home!

This was an exciting week because we booked our tickets to go back home for the summer. We are going to fly in to Chicago on June 16th and fly out of Minneapolis on August 13th. We get a little longer summer than usual this year. In the past our last day of school has been around the 16/17 of June, but this year the last day is June 11.

We are also starting later than usual. Last year the first day of school was August 25 and this year we don't start until September 1. It's a great summer for it because my sister is due to have a baby on June 28th and my brother's fiance is due at the end of July. It will be so exciting to see the babies and I am so glad that we are going to be there to see them right away. It is also exciting to think that our new baby will have cousins that are about the same age.

I love my class and I have had the best year this year, but I am really starting to feel the itch to come home. We are going to spend a few days in Chicago this year and are very excited about that. We love Chicago and used to go about once a year, but haven't done it for a few years. I think Jackson and Olivia are going to have so much fun seeing everything. I know this last 6 weeks will speed by in no time!

One more puzzle piece

If I had started blogging earlier you would have seen many ranting posts about our home study agency. They have been the bane of my existence for the last few months. I thought that when we finally received our completed home study (3 months later than it should have been), that I could move on and not think about that anymore.

Wrong! I received an email from the head of the home study agency a month ago asking me where we submit our paperwork for USCIS. For those of you not in the adoption process, this is the paperwork that we submit to the US government to be approved to adopt a child. Living overseas makes this process different than when you live in the States. For us, we had to take our paperwork to the US Embassy in Tokyo and they send it on to the USCIS office in Seoul, Korea.

When I received the email from her I immediately sent her the address to the Embassy in Tokyo and asked why she needed it. She told me that their license expired and they needed to send an updated copy for our paperwork. This has me concerned about getting our approval back in before we leave for summer vacation.

I tried to contact the Embassy in Tokyo to find out more information about when our file was sent and where they sent it to so I could give that information to the agency. I found out that you have to pay $20 to call and ask any questions to the immigration office at Tokyo. I found that incredibly annoying since I don't think American citizens should have to pay to make a phone call, but had no choice so we called and got the information we needed.

I then tried to contact the Seoul office. I have sent 4 emails in the last month. One a week and received no response at all. I looked at their office hours and they are open 9:30-11:30 and 1:00-3:00 Monday through Friday. I teach from 7:30-3:00, so calling is out. Since the office is in Korea I cannot call from school or use my cell phone.

This weekend I signed up for a fax via email service and sent them a fax. Please pray that they receive the fax and respond back to me. This is really the last piece of the puzzle before we receive our referral and I would really like to have it to send to our placement agency before we go home for the summer.

The waiting game

We have been on the waiting list for 1 week now! I feel a little bit like I don't know what to do now. The beginning of the process was so much paperwork and it consumed my life. Now that the paperwork is finished, I'm not sure what to do next!

I was reading another blog this week where they were talking about adoption and comparing it to pregnancy. The time line they gave really made sense to me. The first trimester is the paperwork stage. You are busy, busy with paperwork and planning and it is exciting to tell everyone you're expecting again.

The second trimester is the waiting list. This is the time to relax. In pregnancy the morning sickness is over and you are feeling pretty good. In adoption, the paperwork is finished and it feels great to know that you are officially waiting for a referral.

The third trimester is the time between a referral and going to pick up the baby. I have heard that this wait is the hardest because you actually know who your child is and can't wait to hold them.

Personally, I'm not sure the 3rd trimester will be the hardest. You'll have to check future posts to find out! I think it will be better because you have pictures you can show to family and friends and you have actual information to share. I find this stage hard because everyone asks what's new with the adoption and the answer is nothing! We are just waiting, waiting, waiting. There is no "news" to share.

I was reading James 5 today and found some encouragement. James 5:7-8 says, "Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near."

A baby is much more exciting to wait for than land to bear fruit so I will continue to practice patience!

Waiting list

Today is the day that we have been waiting for! I can stop "waiting to wait" and just "wait." I called our adoption agency this morning to ask about the status of our dossier and they told me that our dossier was being assembled and we are on the waiting list as of today.

We have requested an infant boy or girl less than 12 months. The agency shared with me today that there is quite a big time difference between families waiting for infant girls and boys, so we will most likely be having a baby boy! They are currently giving infant girl referrals to families who sent their paperwork in August 2008 and infant boy referrals are to families with their dossiers sent in January 2009.

After we receive a referral we will be assigned a court date and then once we pass court we will probably be able to travel about 6-8 weeks after that to pick the baby up. We are hoping to get a referral sometime this summer and would love to be able to travel before Christmas, but I am trying to not to stress too much about dates right now. I am listening to my "In His Time" song as we speak!

Growing up

This week I discovered another way that my children are growing up. My 9 year old son, Jackson, started baseball this week and my husband is the coach of the team. We were informed that this year the boys needed to start wearing cups! I did not realize this was necessary, nor how the topic would take over our life!

It is hilarious to listen to the boys talk. Last night he had a sleepover with some friends and it was all they talked about at the dinner table. My husband assures me that this is normal, but since I have never been a 9 year old boy I'm not so sure...

Anyway it has been cute to watch and something that I never knew could generate so much excitement!

Starting to blog

This is my first try at this, and I am starting a bit later than most adoption blogs I read.  My husband and I have 2 bio children, Jack (9) and Olivia (6) and are in the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia.  We are anxiously waiting to hear that our dossier was sent to Ethiopia and that we are officially on the waiting list.

A bit about our family... My husband and I are both first grade teachers.  We met in college and have been married for almost 11 years.  We have been living overseas for almost 6 years now and we are currently living near Tokyo, Japan.  We have been living in Japan for the last 2 and 1/2 years, before that we lived in Germany and Saudi Arabia.

We began our adoption journey in October and expected to be on the waiting list several months ago.  We ran into some unexpected and baffling delays with the agency handling our home study.  At church a couple of months ago we sang the song "In His Time" and it really touched me and has become my mantra during this time.  I have to keep in mind that God is in control and He has a child in mind for our family.