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.