Caught in the Act!

I love to sing. And I had a song stuck in my head. It's a song that is on our computer, so I thought I'd turn it on while I'm reading email and sing along. IT'S A VERY PRETTY SONG. So, there I was checking email and humming along, not really paying attention until my husband walks into the room very slowly. As I finally noticed his presence, I turned around to see the very funny look on his face and to hear him say, "Uh, you're singing RAFFI?!" I don't KNOW any popular songs right now, OKAY? Raffi is as good as it gets around here.

Playing for Change

All my dad wanted for his birthday this year, bless his heart, was for myself and the rest of his family to watch a short Bill Moyers interview with a man named Mark Johnson. Mark is a producer who decided to spend 10 years creating a project where he invited over 100 street musicians from all over the world to play music together by recording and mixing their talents. This absolutely beautiful version of "Stand By Me" is one example. If you would like to see the whole interview, visit http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10242008/watch.html and select 'Playing for Change' in the 'Choose video' pane. Enjoy!

Let's try that again

Whew! What a week. Well, I never thought I'd say this, but I am so impressed with the speed at which two particular government agencies worked. I must have misplaced our copies of our birth certs and I wanted to re-order them (for this and just to have), so I hopped onto the computer and ordered them online on Wednesday. We didn't feel the need to have them expedited, so paid for them to be shipped regular mail. I kid you not, they were in our mailbox on Thursday!! That was an awesome surprise. Then, our other documents that we had needed to include a copy of in our USCIS application, arrived this afternoon. I grabbed the mail, opened it, stuck it right into the envelope with ALL our other USCIS docs (yes, the check was in there-- I checked ten times) and drove off to the post office. We have lift off (again), people! And this time I MEAN IT!! So, that little mistake cost me, what, three days? What am I so worried about?? Now, I can breathe again.

Just keep swimming...

Thank you to everybody who commented on my last post. I was really in a bad place when I wrote that, but today, at least I can laugh about it. Our SW, Marci, who is AWESOME, by the way, helped talk me down all afternoon and in the end reminded me that there is a reason for this mistake-- maybe even that our little girl just wasn't quite ready yet. My dad said it well when he reminded me that we are on God's time, not ours. So true, so true. So, just to bring you up to speed, we figured we wouldn't wait on USCIS to send our stuff back and we are just going to fill out the papers again and send them off. We had to get another copy of one document, but it should arrive any day and we should have things (hopefully) off by early next week. I guess when you're talking about a 6 month wait for processing, what's another week?

Anyway, I just realized that I have been terrible about posting pictures lately! Next time STOP me if I do that... so, now I leave you with our fun little outing to the pumpkin patch last weekend. Enjoy!

QUICK somebody pick me up...

Oh my gosh! I am such an idiot. So, I was all excited that I had sent off my I-800A yesterday. Well, I was just checking my adoption file folder for something else and guess what I found?! You can't imagine, can you? Why, I found a CHECK written out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the amount needed to process said I-800A and fingerprints. I could just SCREAM right now. I need a day off. Or a few prayers.

WOO HOO!

Okay, FINALLY! Major hurdle jumped, our home study is complete!! Apparently, though, our home study SW sent all notarized copies to our agency, so we wait... and wait... HOPEFULLY we will be able to send our USCIS docs on Monday.

This is the home study that never ends...

I've been quiet for a while now, thinking that at ANY MOMENT I'll be able to post the best news that our home study update is complete. Well, I still can't do that. We had news that the draft was done last Friday, so I've been bracing myself ever since. Because China is a Hague country, there are a LOT more requirements than there were with Taiwan. And since our next stop with the paperwork, including home study, is USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), everything has to be just right. Not to mention that there is a huge "return to sender and fix" rate with USCIS right now as the new Hague requirements were only put into place in April and everybody is still trying to figure out how exactly these Hague requirements work. What a pain! In addition to all this, starting Sept. 25th, we are supposed to send our USCIS paperwork to one central office (before that, you sent it to a local branch), so I imagine with this added learning curve, there will be additional wait times involved. We were hoping to be dossier to China (DTC) by Christmas... not gonna happen. Oh well. This is so not in our hands. God's timing. Breathe. Be patient. Repeat.