Last Homestudy Craziness!

We had our very last homestudy visit tonight! I'm a little sad because we have really enjoyed our homestudy, mostly because our social worker is the coolest ever. But I'm super excited because we are even closer to getting on the waitlist! Tonight was so crazy though. Here's how it went down. (I should say that I did not take that picture...some local person did and posted it to the local newschannel website)


We started our visit in the living room. Isabel had just woken up from her nap so she was a little clingy and whiny. We finally convinced her to play with her legos and she was okay. Then we start noticing the wind blowing outside and super dark clouds hovering over. We kept on talking but then we started hearing the wind and a ton of rain. We all managed to stay calm and meterologist Brian decided to check the radar. Well, he saw a GIANT RED circle right close to us and said, "wow, this looks pretty bad." But I mean it's the summertime and we always get thunderstorms and we definitely needed the rain. As we kept going on with the visit, the lightning and thundering starting picking up ...so much that when it CRACKED right outside the window our social worker and Isabel both jumped closer to the other end of the couch! At this point we stop to really look at the trees. They are like bending over and twigs and branches are being thrown all over the yard and against the windows....the front glass door is being pulled open on its own. We close the front door and lock it. We all stand up to really look out the back and we notice this weird brightness outside and hail and then see swirly gusts and trees bent so far over that we thought they might crack. At this point we all said, "LET'S HIDE!!!" So, we all ran to our bathroom since we don't have a basement! Brian continued to check the weather and looked outside while we continued to answer homestudy questions in our bathroom while I sat on our toilet holding Isabel and our social worker leaned on our sink! Haha, it was really kinda funny. Finally it all subsided and we went back to the living room. Apparently it was reported that "rotations" were spotted in our area and a tornado warning was in the county next door. Craziness! Either way we are FINISHED with our homestudy!! I just have to go pick up some more paperwork to turn in next week!! YAY!!!

awesome 1st homestudy visit!

Really quick! We had an awesome 1st visit of our homestudy tonight! Love love our social worker! :) We're meeting again tomorrow night and then later this weekend and then next week too. Since we've already turned in all of our homestudy paperwork we will be wrapping this up super quick!! I can't even believe it!! Craziness!

We still need a notary that lives in our county to go with us to get our Criminal Background Checks notarized for our dossier. The lady that answers the phone at the Clerks office is not wanting to allow a notarization. Pray that we would have favor with her and that we could get these things finished up! I also got my fingerprints redone today. I put lotion on this time so that it would help pick up my fingerprints. I'm going to send those back to the FBI tomorrow! Pray they send it back quickly.

Lastly, all of this is happening super quick now. We are getting closer and closer to completing our dossier and homestudy now! As soon as we do and we have the funds raised to send in with it then we can get on that waitlist!! God has provided the money for us before and we are trusting Him to provide again for this step! Pray that we could find some really cool bands to play at our adoption party. We originally thought we'd be doing it in late August but I'm thinking we better move it up!!

Okay, Brian and I are going to work on our WEWO book now!!


Yay!!

Good news of the Day!!

Way cool news for the day! Are you ready??

1. We start our homestudy next week!! We have two visits (one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday)!

2. We have a place for our fundraising event and we get it FOR FREE!!! and it's WAY COOL!! The Old Winston Social Club downtown on Burke Street!! I had an awesome conversation with one of the owners and I'm really excited about this. More info and a date coming soon!

3. We got free tix for the Dash game tonight that includes parking and food!!

4. The people in the Sherrif's office were so nice and helpful and made an appt. very soon for me to get my fingerprints redone since the FBI rejected the first round.

5. We only have 2 online adoption ed. classes left!

6. I still really like my new Chaco's. :)


Yay for good news!!

Yay! Homestudy visits soon!

So, we got the call today that all of our paperwork was received by our homestudy agency and they are ready to begin our homestudy visits!! YAY!!! We should be hearing from our social worker soon so that's so exciting. The agency said she will probably plan 4-6 visits with our family. It's exciting but I'm a little nervous too!

We have also been working hard at our adoption education. Out of 6 online classes, we only have 2 left! Just ask us about medical issues surrounding adopted children, attachment, what types of immunizations we need to go to Ethiopia, trans-racial adoptions and conspicous families, and we'll tell you what we know!! :) We are also still slowly but surely working our way through the 20 chapter With Eyes Wide Open Workbook. It's really good but goodness it does take time...not necessarily cuz the chapters are long but because they take such deep thought and deep heart conversations between me and Brian.

The other thing we are working on simultaneously is our dossier (or big pile of important, notarized documents). We have gotten several things for it but many items are "Items to be completed by others" and they take more work to get. This week we're heading over to the local Clerks office at the Davie County Courthouse. Brian is going to call AGAIN and try to convince the lady that a notarization is not the same thing as a certification and that we really need our criminal background checks notarized. So, pray that they will listen and do it the right way!

We are also working on more fundraising! Our dossier fee will be due as soon as all of this paperwork is completed and our homestudy visits are completed and the document is written up and turned in. We need to have that done by October at the latest. That fee is around $5,000 but it's a super important step in this process. Once we turn that in with this paperwork then we will be placed on a waitlist!!! Then we will wait some more until we receive a referral for a sweet little Ethiopian girl!

I did forget to mention a while back that our church has opened an Adoption Fund up for us. You can make a tax-deductible donation to our adoption by writing a check to Reynolda Church with Hunt Adoption in the memo line. Their address is over there to the right. We are hoping this week to secure a location for a way cool fundraising event this summer. Pray for that for us if you would please. We have been looking all over for a location and we think we may have found something.

Alright, I'm going to enjoy the last night of my vacation! :) I'll post some pics later.

Mexico....you are annoying me today

Mexico....today you are annoying me. Listen, don't get me wrong...I love Mexico. I lived there for my junior year of college. I stayed from August of 2001 to August of 2002 and loved it all!! I have been to more Mexican states than I have US states. The majority of my students are from Mexico. I love talking to them and they think it's hysterical that I understand their Mexican slang. So, I had to say all of that before you got upset with me for being annoyed with the country.

For our adoption, we are required to provide child abuse clearances for every place that we have lived in since age 18. Now, for Brian that is easy. He has lived in NC the whole time. Even if you have lived in other states, it's super easy because the United States has a central child abuse registry. They check to make sure your name isn't there and ta-da you're ready to move on to the next steps of the adoption process.

However, if you have lived in another country you are required to get clearances from that country to prove it. Well, Mexico doesn't have a national based system like we do. They do it by state. Oh, and guess what? I lived in 2 different Mexican states (Veracruz and Quintana Roo). Now, God has been amazing to provide already! My great friend Carla that I met through Vida Estudiantil (Mexico's version of Campus Crusade) had a connection with someone that could help me. That guy sent me the info to another department that said they can give me a verification for what I need. This is all for the state of Veracruz. Anyway, so I was all excited and ready to fill out some form when I received an insane email. I had to read the thing like 4 times to understand it because of all the legal jargon. I thought my Spanish was getting rusty but my friend Carla said she read it out loud a couple times too to actually understand everything!! Anyway they want me to scan some rather important documents and send them to them via email. They want my scanned passport, scanned birth certificate, scanned handprints, a front and profile head shot, and a simple power of attorney (which I will explain in a minute). Yes, ALL of those things in an EMAIL to some person I have NEVER met in some office in downtown Xalapa! So, as you can imagine I'm a little concerned about sending my Identify Theft Kit (as my friend Ben called it) to just anybody. That's not all mind you!

The next thing is that I have to have someone that I know and trust that still lives in Xalapa to go pick up this verfication and then have an apostille placed on it. He then has to mail it back to me here in the US! This is what the Power of Attorney is for. It gives him permission to pick it up for me. Now I do have a friend that said they will do this for me. However, remember this is just one state!! I still am working on the 2nd one.

And to top it all off, my printer stopped scanning today. :( So, if you are thinking about adopting, DONT GO LIVE OUT OF THE COUNTRY or if you do make sure they have an easy to use/track child abuse clearance system.

México...te quiero...pero me caen mal tus trámites

What we're up to!

I realize that I haven't posted anything new in a while and it's because we have been working on our paperwork! Last week we had our first talk with our Case Manager at AGCI. She went over everything that will need to happen for our dossier and what we should be focusing on right now. Our main focus for the next couple of months is our homestudy and our education. We are currently gathering and working on our homestudy documents (some of these are the same as our dossier documents). After we get all of these gathered and signed, etc. we will send them to our local homestudy agency and then we will begin our visits with our social worker.

I have been busy working on my autobiography. Brian and I are each required to write up an autobiography discussing our childhood, school, relationships, how we met, our dating relationship, marriage, our daughter, etc. So, as you can imagine this is pretty time consuming. I've enjoyed writing it but I also am having a hard time finishing it.

I also mentioned that we are working on our education. Our agency requires that we complete 6 online classes about adoption as well as a huge workbook that Brian and I will do together. It has 20 chapters and just about every page has questions. We've already looked through the book and I am really excited about it. It's going to be tough but stuff that we need to think about and ask ourselves. I'm so thankful that our agency wants us to do this education so that we are better prepared.

So, if you wonder where we are or why you don't see us as much it's because we are working on all of this! This week Brian is going to get our certified birth certificates and marriage certificate. We have to take pictures of each of us and the front and back of our house too. We are also going to be getting our criminal background checks done. The list is long guys and I won't list everything but we are eager to get it all turned in! Pray for us that this will go smoothly and we can schedule our visits soon!



Much love,

The Paper Chase!

A couple days ago we received our homestudy packet. It is full of information that we need to complete and collect. Some of the items are to be turned in sometime before the last visit but most of it must be turned in before we are able to schedule the visits. Next week we are scheduled to receive our adoption planner and have our dossier run-through call with our new Ethiopian Case Manager. I think this officially means that we are beginning the paper chase! One thing in particular that I am chasing after now is a report from Mexico. In order to adopt you are required to prove that you have not been on any child abuse registry lists. This definitely makes sense! If you have only lived in one state then it's a pretty simple process. If you have lived in another state you work with the FBI to get that but if you have lived in another country since you were 18 then you must check with the registry in THAT country. Well, apparently Mexico does not have a central registry but one for each state and I lived in two different states in Mexico. So, I am going to contact the DIF (Desarollo Integral de la Familia) for both states by writing up a statement requesting clearance. Good thing I speak Spanish! DIF is like the Dept. of Social Services in our country. Our agency said that this has been a long process before so pray that it goes smoothly! :) We'll keep you updated! I can't believe we are already in this phase of gathering documents!! It's exciting!

p.s. that is not our current stack of paper, don't worry! It's a cool picture I found though!

UPDATE!!!
I told you guys about having to get in touch with the DIF in the two states that I lived in while I was in Mexico the other day. I decided to ask a great friend that I actually met living in Xalapa. Let me just say that she is awesome! I asked her if she happened to know anybody that worked in the DIF in Xalapa and guess what? She does!!! Crazy! And get this! The guy that she knows actually works in the adoption dept. of the DIF. AND they went to the same church that I went to in Xalapa and we're thinking that I might have even met them. I really am amazed at how God has continually provided for this adoption. One of these days I'm gonna write up all the ways because it's amazing!