All the application paperwork is together, and ready to go to AAI this week.
I am looking at a different homestudy agency, WestSands Adoptions. I went on AAI's website and they refer you to 1800homestudy.com to look for a homestudy agency, and WestSands came up for Utah. I know WIAA is already Hague accredited, so, they are a fine choice, but, WestSands costs less than half to do our homestudy. That said, WestSands did not recieve Hague accreditation as an adoption agency, but, I am having trouble confirming if they need to be in order to just do the homestudy, as long as they are licensed to do them, isn't that just as good for the dossier as long as the adoption agency itself is Hague accredited? I am still digging on that. Plus, I can't get WestSands to answer my emails, so, I will need to call them to confirm. Ky at AAI is out of the office for a week, so, I will need to wait til she gets back to confirm with her.
In the meantime, I am checking on the RumorQueen site for the answer.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
And the beat goes on
Today I sorted all the old paperwork I have from the previous homestudy attempt, and the new paperwork for this homestudy. Everything is carefully filed in my red file dossier, divided into sections based on what it is for- homestudy, USCIS, dossier, agency, misc, official document originals, and a section for things ready to be mailed.
I can't believe how much stuff I have already. All I really need to get for the homestudy, that I know of, are the medical clearances, the financial statement, and those are pending, as I know WIAA will have their own form for the financial, and we haven't recieved our packet from AAI for the medical clearance forms, so, we can't schedule our physicals til we have that.
All I need for USCIS is the homestudy.
All I need for the agency is to complete the financial statement they sent with their application packet, and that will be done tonight, and attach the copies of our last three years tax forms.
For the dossier I still need to get Tim's birth certificate, our marriage certificate, both of which have to be mailed for. I need to get our police clearances and employment letters signed and notarized. The medicals and the financial statement will be in the AAI packet they send us when they recieve our application fee, probably sometime next week, as I didn't have all the documentation they asked for until today. I am almost ready to print out our letter of interest and have it notarized, I just want to wait until I get the packet from AAI to make sure there isn't a format they prefer to follow that is different from ours. I'll gather the family life photos in the next few weeks, as I want to take all new photos for this dossier in our new house with the kids ages current. We'll take a few shots of the whole family, with and without the kids that live at home, and let the agency decide which one to use. I already have the passport page copies and then Tim and I can go get the passport size head shots for the dossier when we are closer to sending the dossier to AAI. The USCIS approval has to wait for the homestudy to be complete before we can apply for that, and once both are done, and all the official documents except the I800, are certified, authenticated, and an apostille where necessary are complete, and the letter of interest is also certified and authenticated, we are done.
I'm really looking at the following timeline as a hopeful progression, but, we learned last time around that nothing is set in stone, and the Lord will proceed at his own pace and in his own time.
Send applications to WIAA and AAI week of Sept 28, 2008, apply for Tim's birth certificate and our marriage certificate, and complete notarizations on financial, employment and police letters
Homestudy appointment scheduled some time mid October 2008
Medical clearances and family life photos completed sometime mid to end of October 2008
Homestudy complete first part of November and sent with I800a to USCIS
Send all documents to be certified, authenticated during the month of November 2008
Recieve I800 approval form sometime in December 2008 and send copy to agency
Dossier complete, and send to agency December 2008
Dossier to China by January 2009
We'll see if I can keep to this schedule or not.
I can't believe how much stuff I have already. All I really need to get for the homestudy, that I know of, are the medical clearances, the financial statement, and those are pending, as I know WIAA will have their own form for the financial, and we haven't recieved our packet from AAI for the medical clearance forms, so, we can't schedule our physicals til we have that.
All I need for USCIS is the homestudy.
All I need for the agency is to complete the financial statement they sent with their application packet, and that will be done tonight, and attach the copies of our last three years tax forms.
For the dossier I still need to get Tim's birth certificate, our marriage certificate, both of which have to be mailed for. I need to get our police clearances and employment letters signed and notarized. The medicals and the financial statement will be in the AAI packet they send us when they recieve our application fee, probably sometime next week, as I didn't have all the documentation they asked for until today. I am almost ready to print out our letter of interest and have it notarized, I just want to wait until I get the packet from AAI to make sure there isn't a format they prefer to follow that is different from ours. I'll gather the family life photos in the next few weeks, as I want to take all new photos for this dossier in our new house with the kids ages current. We'll take a few shots of the whole family, with and without the kids that live at home, and let the agency decide which one to use. I already have the passport page copies and then Tim and I can go get the passport size head shots for the dossier when we are closer to sending the dossier to AAI. The USCIS approval has to wait for the homestudy to be complete before we can apply for that, and once both are done, and all the official documents except the I800, are certified, authenticated, and an apostille where necessary are complete, and the letter of interest is also certified and authenticated, we are done.
I'm really looking at the following timeline as a hopeful progression, but, we learned last time around that nothing is set in stone, and the Lord will proceed at his own pace and in his own time.
Send applications to WIAA and AAI week of Sept 28, 2008, apply for Tim's birth certificate and our marriage certificate, and complete notarizations on financial, employment and police letters
Homestudy appointment scheduled some time mid October 2008
Medical clearances and family life photos completed sometime mid to end of October 2008
Homestudy complete first part of November and sent with I800a to USCIS
Send all documents to be certified, authenticated during the month of November 2008
Recieve I800 approval form sometime in December 2008 and send copy to agency
Dossier complete, and send to agency December 2008
Dossier to China by January 2009
We'll see if I can keep to this schedule or not.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Buried under paperwork
I have spent the past week or so sifting through what I have and what I need. So many little details need to be cleared up. I checked with our insurance company to make sure a special needs child would be covered under our policy, which she will. I needed to gather a master copy of that insurance anyway, so, two birds with one stone. I still have to send for both our marriage certificate and Tim's birth certificate, but, have plenty of time for that, as it is only for the dossier, we already have sufficient copies of those documents for the homestudy and USCIS, we just need new ones to be authenticated and included for China.
I'm really just focused on the homestudy for right now. The house is great, shows off nicely, so, I will just do a thorough cleaning just before the first visit. I still need to get the outlet covers, we really don't use them since our youngest at home is now 6, so, he may want to see that we have them for a younger child. I know he will ask about the stairways in our house, but, I already had planned on getting gates anyway, for future grandchildren. That and a couple of fireplace screens or something like that to keep the little one away from the two fireplaces.
I really don't expect this process to be smooth at all. Who knows what bumps we are headed for, but, the adoption road is never an easy one, and I am trying to steal myself for what is ahead.
I'm really just focused on the homestudy for right now. The house is great, shows off nicely, so, I will just do a thorough cleaning just before the first visit. I still need to get the outlet covers, we really don't use them since our youngest at home is now 6, so, he may want to see that we have them for a younger child. I know he will ask about the stairways in our house, but, I already had planned on getting gates anyway, for future grandchildren. That and a couple of fireplace screens or something like that to keep the little one away from the two fireplaces.
I really don't expect this process to be smooth at all. Who knows what bumps we are headed for, but, the adoption road is never an easy one, and I am trying to steal myself for what is ahead.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Still waiting
Geez, we can't send in our fees to get our homestudy done until we close on the old house. The old house was supposed to close last tuesday, and then friday, and now maybe by the end of this week. I am going crazy.
I am thinking it is time to just do it, get it going, just send in the fee and go, but, Tim wants to wait until he knows how the whole thing will end up with paying off the line of credit we took out for the repairs on the old house. The profit from the sale will pay that off and bring down our debt/income ratio to a more acceptable amount.
So, we wait.
I am thinking it is time to just do it, get it going, just send in the fee and go, but, Tim wants to wait until he knows how the whole thing will end up with paying off the line of credit we took out for the repairs on the old house. The profit from the sale will pay that off and bring down our debt/income ratio to a more acceptable amount.
So, we wait.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
And change is good, right?
Okay, so we changed back. Our agency will be AAI in Washington. WIAA will do the homestudy. We just weren't comfortable being restricted to SN adoption when there could be a chance that NSN would work out for us.
So, back we went. Luckily, we hadn't started the homestudy yet.
Today I started filling out all the paperwork for both the adoption agency and the homestudy agency, so we can get started officially. That means coming up with $1700 for WIAA to do the homestudy for 1200, and the post placement report deposit of 500.
We will send in our application fee to AAI in about a week. No hurry, we really want to take it easy, because once it gets going, it will be a truly wild ride.
That is, of course, if we are approved at all. We have some challenges. First, we have a hit on our abuse clearances, due to my daughter who is now 27, back when she was 13, filed a complaint against Tim claiming abuse. It wasn't true, and we were never charged, but, the investigation is still on our records, and always will be. The last time around, when we adopted Myleigh, it was checked, and dismissed as not valid, but, now that China is a Hague country, it will be more important that the HS social worker clears it thoroughly. The agency approving us has to be sure they are not getting themselves into a problem with China for future adoptions. so, I am really praying this won't stop us in our tracks.
Second, we have a failed homestudy from the last time we pursued this, back in 2006, a year after our son Nick passed away. We were not approved by the social worker from the homestudy agency we were using, a different one, due to Matthew being a slow reader, and due to the recentness of the loss of Nick. They suggested we apply in two years and that they would be happy to approve us, but, this time, we just don't trust them. They were extremely slow, took eight months to get around to telling us we weren't approved, and kept losing paperwork. It was a nightmare I don't want to repeat. Tom with WIAA took up our case back then, and after a long discussion with him about everything, he was ready to proceed forward, but, we decided that we wanted to postpone, mostly because it had been such a terrible eight months, and we weren't up for anymore disappointments. So, we postponed, and he said to call him when we were ready to move forward. When I contacted him this month, he said he still had all of our paperwork and was happy to work with us again.
And that brings us to today. Filling out applications, financial statements, and back to explaining the abuse hit all over again. I think we are ready to put our heads down and plod through it.
So, back we went. Luckily, we hadn't started the homestudy yet.
Today I started filling out all the paperwork for both the adoption agency and the homestudy agency, so we can get started officially. That means coming up with $1700 for WIAA to do the homestudy for 1200, and the post placement report deposit of 500.
We will send in our application fee to AAI in about a week. No hurry, we really want to take it easy, because once it gets going, it will be a truly wild ride.
That is, of course, if we are approved at all. We have some challenges. First, we have a hit on our abuse clearances, due to my daughter who is now 27, back when she was 13, filed a complaint against Tim claiming abuse. It wasn't true, and we were never charged, but, the investigation is still on our records, and always will be. The last time around, when we adopted Myleigh, it was checked, and dismissed as not valid, but, now that China is a Hague country, it will be more important that the HS social worker clears it thoroughly. The agency approving us has to be sure they are not getting themselves into a problem with China for future adoptions. so, I am really praying this won't stop us in our tracks.
Second, we have a failed homestudy from the last time we pursued this, back in 2006, a year after our son Nick passed away. We were not approved by the social worker from the homestudy agency we were using, a different one, due to Matthew being a slow reader, and due to the recentness of the loss of Nick. They suggested we apply in two years and that they would be happy to approve us, but, this time, we just don't trust them. They were extremely slow, took eight months to get around to telling us we weren't approved, and kept losing paperwork. It was a nightmare I don't want to repeat. Tom with WIAA took up our case back then, and after a long discussion with him about everything, he was ready to proceed forward, but, we decided that we wanted to postpone, mostly because it had been such a terrible eight months, and we weren't up for anymore disappointments. So, we postponed, and he said to call him when we were ready to move forward. When I contacted him this month, he said he still had all of our paperwork and was happy to work with us again.
And that brings us to today. Filling out applications, financial statements, and back to explaining the abuse hit all over again. I think we are ready to put our heads down and plod through it.
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