Thank you friend

A big thank you to my good friend who missed her son's baseball game to do our reference interview.  I know that was a sacrifice to miss seeing your son's game.  I am very thankful for your friendship.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~Henry David Thoreau

Final home study visit

Our final home study visit is complete!  I forgot to ask our social worker permission to post this so I will just block her out ;)

 It feels so wonderful to have crossed that milestone.  One step closer to HSTK (home study to Korea).  HSTK is when all of these months of work are compiled and sent to Korea so we can begin our official count down.

The visit went well.  The sw ask the kid if they were excited about the adoption and the things they would look forward to doing with their new brother or sister which prompted a quick reply from Banana saying, " wait a minute I thought we were getting a brother" LOL.  I reminded him that there was a very small possibility that it could be a girl and we moved forward.  The kids then showed her their rooms and the rest of the house.

The SW did ask if the deer hanging in our basement was in fact a deer. She had a bit of a look of horror on her face and ask J if "he did that". It was pretty amusing. I think when listing the J's hobbies I put fishing and golf since he has not had as much time for hunting lately so maybe she was just surprised.

She then interviewed our two international students and finished off us.

All in all it went very well although she did deliver some pretty disappointing news that the timing of the finalization of the home study would allow for sufficient time to send our I-600A application (next step) in time to get fingerprint appointments for the boys before they return to Korea for the summer.  This would mean a significant delay.

So some investigating I did :) which I will save for another post........

Why The Apple Pie?

Our final home study interview (the home visit) is scheduled for tomorrow.  At first this was scheduled for the first week of April and the social worker called me the Friday night before and with short notice I was ok with things not being perfect.

Since the visit was rescheduled to this week and I had a nice long rainy Sunday things are "almost perfect" right down to the apple pie I made this moring to serve our social worker.  I know that things don't need to be perfect.   I have heard everyone say  "oh they don't look that close at the house - don't worry about it", and we really like our social worker and I truly "feel" it does not need to be perfect.

This morning while I was making "my speciality" homemade apple pie and I was spending so much extra time on the crust, slicing the apples just so,  and preparing the crumb  topping in nice fine crumbs instead of my normal rush rush rush lumpy sugar clumps - I kept questioning WHY THE APPLE PIE?

Why did I feel the need to make my "best" dessert.  I fully understand it didn't matter.  It takes some time to make apple pie from scratch and I kept pondering that thought - why the apple pie.

I only make apple pie on occasion because it takes so very long but I like to make it for my family because they all love it and they know how long it takes me to make it and I make it because I love them.

As the pie was baking I realized I wasn't spending the time making everything perfect for the social worker but it was out of love for my new baby.  I want it to be perfect for him because I love him already.  I love this little person who has only been a wish in my heart for the past 10 years while I have prayed my husband would come around to the adoption idea.

So why the apple pie?  It is for you my little boy who I can't wait to meet and I hardly know how I am going to put in the long months upcoming waiting for your referral and then to meet you but you are worth the apple pie.

My homestudy interview was almost like a date :)

We took the long 2 hour drive again for my personal home study interview.  J came along so I would not need to drive home alone in the dark.  My interview went well - I think.  I always struggle with those questions like describe yourself in 3 words :)

We finished up sooner than we expected and called home to check on the kids who were already both asleep.  Since we had not eaten dinner and the adoption agency is on the outskirts of the city we decided to try one of the many restaurants we saw close by. 

We walked down the street and narrowed it down to a Japanese place, a Louisiana style restaurant and this little Italian restaurant that we choose and I'm glad we did.  It was completely adorable inside.  Murals on the walls and twinkle lights made it really cozy. 

It was after 8:00p.m. so it was not really crowded but there were two other couples.  One probably recently married and all excited talking about their life and another older couple who must have been on a first date.  It was so funny and I was thankful for my husband and how we are at the place in our lives were we are comfortable with our relationship could just relax and eat our dinner.

We enjoyed our time alone together and had a nice little dinner....next step.  Home visit on Thursday.

Found my Globe

I saw this globe in a local antique store a few weeks back but there was no price on it.  I ask the shop owner who called the owner of the globe and she said it was $55 dollars but if I paid cash it would be 20%off.  I decided to hold off and wait to get the extra off.  I went back to the store last Sunday after church and there was a price tag on it for $70.  I was about to walk out but decided to ask about it since I was given a different  price before. 

I woman called me back and said that the owner would sell it to me for the lower price so I ended up getting it for $42 instead :)  It always pays to ask.

Projects!

I have been wanting to sort of journal our adoption journey in our house so I have started this project.  I found this card holder on-line and thought it would be perfect so I ordered it for Jeff to give to me as a birthday present LOL

 I am planning to add different pictures and dates along the journey

 I want to get an entry way table to go under this but this will do for now. There is an old vintage world globe at a local antiques store I want to pick up for below or eventually on my new table top.

 I silhouette of Korea with a Bible verse inside.

This was a fun little project and I will update with more pictures as it progresses. 

Sa-lang Hae (I love you) J!

Today J took the long journey for his individual interview.  He is so busy and I know he did not really have the time to take off work for this. He has been so supportive in this home study process. 
J has certainly had his worries in the past about how we would afford this adoption and I sort of expected him to hem-and-haw a little with all these expenses and steps this home study has required but he has been great.  He has had to spend hours gathering financial information, spending nice Saturday's getting fingerprinted,  writing his autobiography, writing checks :) and he has done these without complaining at all (for the most part).

He even came home today and was talking about some reading we will need to do to prepare for this new little person.  He is totally in this now and I don't just feel like he is doing this for me.  I know this adoption has meant giving up a lot of potential "fun items" he had hoped to purchase. I know this adoption is such a time commitment along with the commitment to parent again and the time that takes.

Thank you J for the sacrifices you make for God, for me, and for our children - present and future.

I love you!

Thankful for a good friend

Today I am feeling thankful for friends.  It was very encouraging yesterday when out of the blue I got an e-mail from a friend who was listening to the song "one less" by Matthew West and decided to e-mail me.  The e-mail was short and sweet telling me that she heard the song and was thinking of us and if we got discouraged with all the paperwork to listen to the song and remember how important this adoption is.  This is just what I needed to help me get through this very long week.

Thank you my friend for being my friend and your encouragement and support.  I know we don't see each other very much but you will always be my best friend.

Pause my playlist at the bottom and you can listen to the song via the link below
http://youtu.be/8nqrvkNywcY

Artist: Matthew West
 

There's a child, been abandoned out on the street
Now she's waiting for someone to be her miracle
There's a wife somewhere halfway around the world
Begging God for a little girl she can call her own

Well, worlds collide and colors fade
And a man and wife brought their little girl home today

And there's one less, one less
One less broken heart in the world tonight
Yeah, there's one less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight

We are called to the widows and the orphans
But it's easy to ignore their silent cries
Oh, but every single time somebody reaches into the darkness
Makes a choice to help the helpless, we let mercy save a life

And there's one less, one less
And there's one less broken heart in the world tonight
Yeah, there's one less, one less
Yeah, there's one less broken heart in the world tonight

Well, the truth is we are all the orphans
But love has left the 99 just to find the one

So let worlds collide, colors fade
Let your life be the miracle today, whoa

One less, one less
One less broken heart in the world tonight
Tonight I know there's one less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight, yeah

One less night alone
One less child without a home
One less birthday gone forgotten
One more soul rising from the bottom

One less night alone
One less child without a home
One less birthday gone forgotten
One more soul rising from the bottom

One less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight

First visit with the social worker DONE!

Last night we met with our social worker for our joint interview.  I was so nervous!!!  She was super nice and made us feel at ease right away.  It was a really long night. We left the house at 5:00 after daycare and our interview was at 7:00.  It lasted about 2 hours so we were home right before 11pm.

I started the week with expectations to get all these interviews done this week but it turns out that we will need to space them out and with the social worker out of the office for awhile it means spacing them out over a month.  I am a little sad about the delay but any delay is leading me to the baby that is meant to be mine so it is what it is.

When we got home I was so tired and wanted to collapse in bed but I walked into the kids rooms to give them kisses and we stumbled upon this.

Carrot in bed hugging our picture.  Sniff  - I love these kids so much.

Trying to make the best of our training

We finished our training on Saturday.  It was a long day.  I hate to say it but I don't feel like I learned that much.  Maybe that is becuase we are already parents and we also haven't had to struggle with infertility.  It seemed that a lot of the session was around how to cope with that.

The best part for us was a 23 year old Korean adoptee came to speak.  It was really awesome to just hear his story and see how accepting of the whole situation he is.

To try to make the day a little better I suprised J with an overnight stay at a city on our way home.  I figured since the kids where already saying over with my sister it would be a nice time to just relax and get a nice dinner and sleep in. 

All I can say is I TRIED :)

It was an old INN on the waterfront and was really neat but old buildings don't do the best on soundproofing so we were woke quite a few times as people came up the elevator at night. 

We ate a this great little spanish restaurant and that was awesome but it was raining so hard as we left we couldn't even walk around and visit any of the shops.

I suppose it is the thought that counts!

First Homestudy Interview!!!

Friday night we got the call from our social worker.  She was hoping to do our home study interviews all this week because she is going to be out for 3 weeks.

First thought - I am not going to get the house in order the way I wanted to.  Second  thought - forget the house it is good enough lets just get this done and over with.  So I made all the necessary calls to my daycare parents to see if it could all be arranged for them to pick up early on Thursday for the homevisit.   It seemed to be working out nicely but today the SW called and said we may need to space the meetings out :(

Tomorrow we have our joint interview.  It is nice of the social worker to allow us to meet at night so I don't need to close the daycare but we are going to be so tired.  We have to leave right at 5:00 after the daycare kids leave and then drive 2 hours for the interview.  I have no idea how long that will take, then the 2 hour ride home.  We are going to be wiped out.

Thursday we will have our home study visit here at the house and the kids and our international students will be interviewed as well.

If we can't piggyback our personal interviews onto those meetings J and I will need to make the two hour drive again another night or possibly two separate trips for each of us. 

Please keep us in your prayer that everything goes OK, that we could possibly get our extra interviews done with these other meetings, and that my poor husband can manage these next few weeks that are going to be so hard with his schedule.

Lots of reading!

This weekend we need to travel back to our agency for our all day required adoption training.  Wishing it was not a 2 hour drive each way on top of our 9 hours of training :(  It should make for a long Saturday.

We also have a pile of reading that needed to be done before the class.  This has been a little challenging here for us since J does not have a lot of free time.  Here is J's schedule LOL

Sunday - church, 3 hours in basement doing church work, 2 hour break for dinner and some time with kids, 5 hours more in basement.
Monday - work until 7, basement for church work until 11
Tuesday -work until 4:30, basement for church 2 hours, church meeting 3.5 hours
Wednesday - not home from work until 8:30 because had to catch up because from leaving early on Tuesday

Sigh! Makes it hard to fit in required reading.  I am hoping we can do it on our way down to the training.

I read your blog...

Written by J
I had a good friend at church make a comment to me this week that he had read my adoption blog.  After he said that, I thought to myself that perhaps I should read it too.  :)

My wife has been advertising to me for a long time that we had this blog.  She even emailed me a link so that I could post something, however, I haven't really had the time to write but I wasn't quite sure what a blog was either.

I finally invested some time tonight to read some (I guess all) of her postings.  Isn't it amazing how life passes so quickly and likewise how quickly you forget life?  This post is my encouragement to her to keep up the good work.  Maybe I'll even post some things from my perspective in the near future.

God connects us!

I touched briefly on our international student Ooney and JonJon (Blog names) in my autobiography and I get quite a few question on how they joined our family so this is the story about how we became a family of 6.....

Last summer J and I were discussing the adoption....in fact we attended the required open house for the agency but J was still not 100% on board that the timing was right.  J was on a regular banking call to the school the boys attend and the financial manager told him about the need for host families and told J that if anyone in our church was interested to let her know.

Since we were planning to eventually start the adoption process J thought what a great way for us to learn the culture so we would have that knowledge to share with our baby one day.  J called me and ask what I thought????  J gave me the number to the school to ask questions and literally two weeks later we were at the airport picking the boys up.  I quick made pink room into more boyish colors and we were set. (BTW the rooms is not that clean anymore)

It is awesome to see how God has a hand in all of this.  When we were presented with this idea school started for these boys in only 3 weeks.  They were unsure if they would be able to come as a family had not been identified....but God knew.

 Under normal circumstances a host family would need to go through the required background checks and fingerprinting which would take quite a while but due to my daycare all that was done and on file and the school was able to take copies of all that....GOD. 

Second the week they needed to fly in we already had scheduled vacation so we were able to be available for errands and all the things they needed to do to get ready for school and take a little mini trip to the shore which was great initial bonding for the family....GOD.

Third when the representative from the school came out to interview us for a host family she told us there was a monthly host family allowance to help with the cost of food, gas, etc.  Now you can imagine the additional cost of feeding two teenage boys but we were still able to figure a way to set some of the money aside to begin saving for the adoption......Hello there is GOD in the details again.

Fourth we have made wonderful connections in country and one of the boys families said he would like us to allow him to show us around in his country if we come.....GOD.

I could really go on and on about how God is in the details of this whole adoption, we are learning the good, some words and phrases and so on. 

It is really awesome to just sit back realize you never need to worry in life because God has all the details worked out.  You step out in faith and he provides.  I often wonder how many times He looks down at me and says "Child why are you fretting over that.....just leave it to ME because I already have a plan in place".

Over Christmas one of the boys went home to Korea for the holiday's and I must have had my kids ask a million times when JonJon would be coming home we decided they were so part of our family we could not imagine if they wanted to come back to our house next year having to tell them no so we decided to offer them the option to stay as long as they would like....they are part of our family and we love them.  Next year Ooney is a senior and JonJon a Jr. so if they decide to come they could be here for quite a while.   I can only imagine how many times over the summer I am going to here, "when is Ooney and JonJon coming back"....

So that is how we became a family of 6

One for the United Postal Service

Yeah!!!  I just got confirmation that all our documents where delivered to the adoption agency......One for the united postal service.  Now keep in mind I did pay $18 dollars to have this delivered overnight and guaranteed but I was still nervous. 

I was standing at the post office trying to decide how to send this and I just kept thinking of all those documents that were notarized and envisioning me having to go back to the doctor's office and have all those physical forms resigned........

It was totally worth the money. 

The papers will be reviewed this week and we will be assigned a social worker.

Copies

Ok I should have said Hooray after I made the copy of our documents LOL  Wheew!  That was a lot of standing around on my cold basement floor.

Paperwork Complete!!!!!!

Can we rest now! 

Hooray!!!  First stage of paperwork complete.  This is so exciting.  I will be sending my paperwork back exactly 3 weeks from receiving it..  I don't think that is too bad for everything thing that has needed to be done.  Below is an example of some of what we have had to do.

Background clearance forms notarized for us and the International students
Fingerprinting
Individual Autobiographies
4 page medical form physicals for each of us
Medical report for International students
Medical report + letters for kids from pediatrician
Tax documents
Financial statements + supporting documents
Monthly Expenses form
Marriage certificate
Birth certificates for all of us
Certified driving record for each of us
Notarized Guardianship agreement
12-14 photos of our family, house and community
5 signed policies
Evacuation plan for home
Health and housing inspection results
Pet vaccinations
Service agreement
Release of information
Letter to birthmoter

Employment letters

Fingerprinting

Today we headed off to get fingerprinted.  Not the most fun thing to do on a nice Saturday but at least it is done.  Poor Onney and JonJon had to get fingerprinted too because they are 18 and are planning to come back next year.  Though they will not be living here when the new baby comes it unfortunately still needs to be done.  This is one of the last things we had to do for our first set of paperwork.  I just need J to finish up his autobiography and collect the kids papers from the doctor and we are done papework for now.

Who am I???? My Autobiography Part I

It is interesting how when working on an adoption you really have to pause from your fast pace life and slow down and ponder who you are, where you have been, what you want in life.  I just finished up my autobiography for the adoption.  It was somewhere in between torcher and almost a little fun to write it.  I put it off and off and off. 

I struggled with starting -  mostly the beginning.  I didn't want to just start off and say Hello I am A XXX XXXX  and thanks to my dear sweet niece Meaghan who helped me with the beginning I got started and it wasn't all that bad.  I might post it.....maybe.....do I want the world to really read my story????  I will think on that but it is my story  - uniquely mine.  The best part is it is not that bad.  After I finished writing I paused and thought, "I have had a blessed life". 

I'm pretty sure the social worker wants more that just "I don't know why my marriage works it just does" but for real it just does.  Why do I have to provide my husbands strengths and weaknesses?  Does any of that really matter if it works.  I am going to leave it and see what she says.  I'm sure she will try to dig up the bones in the closet but you know what there aren't any.  I have been truly blessed and feel so thankful that I have had 11 years with my husband and it just works.

Paperwork Paperwork and More paperwork

I have been so busy doing paperwork I have not had time to post that I am in the paperwork phase.  It has been a bit overwhelming at times but is almost done.  I am renewing my daycare license and the good news is I can kill two birds with one stone.  I can get one water test, one Dr. physical, one set of fingerprints (the list really goes on and on) and just take two forms one for the adoption and one for the daycare renewal.  The tricky part is just keeping it all straight.  Tomorrow we head off for our fingerprints.  We have to travel an hour and half for this and are planning to make the most of it and visit some sights.  JonJon and Ooney have not been to xxxxxxx yet so it will be like a field trip.