Saturday, April 30, 2011
Home visit
All done... I think it was uneventful. We left the room when she talked to Ashley and Dennis. No idea what was said. Will have to see how the 2 vs 4 approval goes... she's going to talk with our agent about it.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Hmmm
Got the apostiled marriage licenses back... woohoo.
On the odd side... our doctor and nurse practitoner signed the medical forms, all seemed good. Then we were told they must only have the doctor's signature. Even though the doctor did so last time now she wants to do another checkup before signing on her own. Appointments on Tuesday... if it gets too messy I'll just submit the copies with both signatures.
Home study visit tomorrow... the house is just going to have to be good enough. Melissa has been out of commission for over 3wks (mostly lying down)... so the rest of the family has been doing what we can. No one starved, went naked, ate off floors, lived in filth... but at the same time none of the spring break cleaning and re-organizing after winter happened, or anything that didn't *have* to get done, so the garage & workshop is a mess, the basement could be better, and the yard hasn't been mowed in over a week.
Fortunately Melissa can now hobble around without crutches so she was able to help sort through winter/summer clothes so we could take of that todo the last few days.
On the odd side... our doctor and nurse practitoner signed the medical forms, all seemed good. Then we were told they must only have the doctor's signature. Even though the doctor did so last time now she wants to do another checkup before signing on her own. Appointments on Tuesday... if it gets too messy I'll just submit the copies with both signatures.
Home study visit tomorrow... the house is just going to have to be good enough. Melissa has been out of commission for over 3wks (mostly lying down)... so the rest of the family has been doing what we can. No one starved, went naked, ate off floors, lived in filth... but at the same time none of the spring break cleaning and re-organizing after winter happened, or anything that didn't *have* to get done, so the garage & workshop is a mess, the basement could be better, and the yard hasn't been mowed in over a week.
Fortunately Melissa can now hobble around without crutches so she was able to help sort through winter/summer clothes so we could take of that todo the last few days.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
CA apostille
This evening my droid app notified me that our CA apostilled marriage licenses were on their way. Woohoo!
Hoping the home visit for the updated home study goes well. Having Melissa be an invalid for 2+ wks and spring break has only the minimum stuff around the house getting done (laundry, trash, dishes, food). Melissa deciding to go through all the clothes to rotate winter/summer clothes added a lot of work too... she's unable to move/carry so you can guess how that happened :) We have the house cleaners coming on Friday to help out... probably been 6mo since they were here.
Hoping the home visit for the updated home study goes well. Having Melissa be an invalid for 2+ wks and spring break has only the minimum stuff around the house getting done (laundry, trash, dishes, food). Melissa deciding to go through all the clothes to rotate winter/summer clothes added a lot of work too... she's unable to move/carry so you can guess how that happened :) We have the house cleaners coming on Friday to help out... probably been 6mo since they were here.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Rolling along
Happy Easter!! He is Risen!
So Friday I got our Virginia State Police background checks. I was floored and just amazed at God watching over the paperwork. That was supposed to be a 12-15 day turn around, it was 3.
Today we got our county assessor home ownership verification stuff too.
So on Tuesday we should be pretty much done with everything but the home study update and getting the marriage licenses back from apostille.
I am going to laugh... a big out loud laugh... repeatedly... the kind that people look at you and think you've lost it... if the SDA doesn't actually close and we get an appointment way earlier than expected. Just as long as it is for after the kids are here for hosting I'm ok :)
So Friday I got our Virginia State Police background checks. I was floored and just amazed at God watching over the paperwork. That was supposed to be a 12-15 day turn around, it was 3.
Today we got our county assessor home ownership verification stuff too.
So on Tuesday we should be pretty much done with everything but the home study update and getting the marriage licenses back from apostille.
I am going to laugh... a big out loud laugh... repeatedly... the kind that people look at you and think you've lost it... if the SDA doesn't actually close and we get an appointment way earlier than expected. Just as long as it is for after the kids are here for hosting I'm ok :)
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Narnia
Trying to think of some new fun stuff we can do this summer. S and Ashley are avid readers, don't know about A. I got S & A Russian copies of the Chronicles of Narnia... really nicely done books. Ashley has the same in English. Figured it might be a nice get away for all of them and we will likely travel a lot in the van.
I think I will order the movies too and we can watch them in English after the kids have read the chapter in their native languages. That will let the whole family enjoy that with some popcorn.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Off to the races
Got our 4 marriage certificates today. Tomorrow I'll send them to be apostiled. It is supposed to be a week turn around.
My wife's doctor agreed that we don't need any new tests so Melissa is filling out the forms identically to last time and I'll take them down tomorrow to get completed. That is a big one for us.
That just leaves the VA state background check which takes 12-15 business days (ouch), praying that will be quick, and the home study. The home study should go well... we were approved for 4, got 1, that is going great, and we are [hopefully] only asking for 2 this time.
My wife's doctor agreed that we don't need any new tests so Melissa is filling out the forms identically to last time and I'll take them down tomorrow to get completed. That is a big one for us.
That just leaves the VA state background check which takes 12-15 business days (ouch), praying that will be quick, and the home study. The home study should go well... we were approved for 4, got 1, that is going great, and we are [hopefully] only asking for 2 this time.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Tracking packages
For the dossier we use our FedEx account a lot but I've been less than pleased about how to get updated info from it directly. Like automatically getting the tracking number and notification whenever someone uses our account. Unfortunately I don't have a way to solve that... but the Android has a nice free app called "Parcels" that you can put tracking numbers in for just about any shipper and get status updates. Right now I have:
Virginia State Police: USPS Priority, already in Richmond
Marriage Certificate return label: FedEx -- doesn't show up in system yet
Marriage Certificate request: FedEx, sitting in Memphis
It is kind of nice. On another note, I will be asking my facilitator about using DHL instead of FedEx for the actual dossier. I've seen people use it and it appears to take less than 2 days from the US to Kyiv... and costs less.
Virginia State Police: USPS Priority, already in Richmond
Marriage Certificate return label: FedEx -- doesn't show up in system yet
Marriage Certificate request: FedEx, sitting in Memphis
It is kind of nice. On another note, I will be asking my facilitator about using DHL instead of FedEx for the actual dossier. I've seen people use it and it appears to take less than 2 days from the US to Kyiv... and costs less.
Take 2
I am starting a new blog for our next adoption that officially kicked off on 2011-04-15. I didn't want to steal Dennis' blog as even though it morphed over time it is mostly central to him.
On Friday we were told that the SDA will stop accepting dossiers on June 1st. Being the practical person I am, I did the math and even if it is only closed 3 months it is unlikely a dossier submitted after the closure will result in a completed adoption by the end of the year. So off to the races... our goal is to send off the dossier on or before May 9th... and actually we discovered we need 2 separate dossiers.
Friday I sent off a note to the county assessor and scheduled our home visit to update our home study. Saturday we sent off our VA police background check request, our request for our marriage certificates, and finished off nearly all the paperwork for the updated home study. Monday we'll get a few more documents notarized.
Frankly we don't know if we'll make the deadline but none of this is really in our hands anyways. Our goal this time is 2 unrelated children.. and we know them both though have no idea if either will really say yes when it comes down to it. We don't know when this will happen, if it will, or even when/how we'll take care of our kids when it does... heh, so as you can see, all well planned out :) It's about stepping out, not planning out though... learned that well last time.
On Friday we were told that the SDA will stop accepting dossiers on June 1st. Being the practical person I am, I did the math and even if it is only closed 3 months it is unlikely a dossier submitted after the closure will result in a completed adoption by the end of the year. So off to the races... our goal is to send off the dossier on or before May 9th... and actually we discovered we need 2 separate dossiers.
Friday I sent off a note to the county assessor and scheduled our home visit to update our home study. Saturday we sent off our VA police background check request, our request for our marriage certificates, and finished off nearly all the paperwork for the updated home study. Monday we'll get a few more documents notarized.
Frankly we don't know if we'll make the deadline but none of this is really in our hands anyways. Our goal this time is 2 unrelated children.. and we know them both though have no idea if either will really say yes when it comes down to it. We don't know when this will happen, if it will, or even when/how we'll take care of our kids when it does... heh, so as you can see, all well planned out :) It's about stepping out, not planning out though... learned that well last time.
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