Things Are Looking Up

Somewhere Out There

Somewhere Out There

performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram

Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight

Somewhere out there someone's saying a prayer
That we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

It's Me; Can You Believe It? Anyone Still Out There?

I know I all, but disappeared it seems. Just totally was not in a blogging mood. In the neanwhile I discovered Facebook and followed some blogs. In a nutshell, here is a little of what's been happening or not happening.

We're kind of in a holding pattern trying to decide what we want to do. We filed our paperwork with USCIS for the country change, plus the change in our homestudy agency and waited and waited to hear something and then last month, I finally e-mailed USCIS to see if they received the paperwork and what the status of things were and they e-mailed back that they processed the paperwork end of December, but they don't send a new 171-H. I'm thinking, well, how the heck were we suppose to know this when you didn't send any kind of letter or e-mail or anything. Then, we were working on our dossier and getting it pretty close to done when I found out that our employment letters did not match the homestudy, we had done a few months ago. We were told to just have our employers issue new employment letters with our old salary figures. That would have been no problem for Kevin since his employer is the same, but with my company was bought by another company and at the beginning of this year, we are now employees of the other company, so I couldn't have my employer do a new employment letter, since the employer is now a different company and the current employer would be different than in the homestudy, . Our other option was to get a new homestudy, which would need to be approved by DCFS, which would have taken a lot of time, since DCFS is often so slow. By the time, we were re-approved by DCFS, a lot of our dossier paperwork would have expired. So, we decided that between these problems, the uncertainty of my job, our growing discontent with our placement agency, etc., we decided it was best we decide which way we wanted to take things. We knew we would change placement agencies and we were unsure if we would switch countries yet again, Nepal or a domestic - an African American/biracial adoption. Nepal is out, since the government is only allowing each approved agency to submit 10 applications a year and the agency we got info from has met their quota for 2009 and 2010. 2011 is too far off and in that time, they could end up closing down again just as they did for 18 months to revamp their adoption system and just as Vietnam did this past summer. We're still not sure if we want to stay with Ethiopia or go with an AA/biracial domestic adoption. No matter, which we choose, things will be unpredictable; adoption always is, it seems.

What A Month

There has been a downpour of referrals this month. 16 referrals since the beginning of the month. 10 just this week. This is such exciting news and the best Chritmas presents all these soon-to-be- parents could have received. Our agency will be closed for the next 2 weeks, but will reopen on Monday, January 5th. Hopefully, with even more referrals waiting!

Also, just this week, I mailed our official country change to CIS (Immigration), received my birth certificate, and sent for our marriage certificate.

It's been awhile. I haven't really been into blogging or the adoption thing at all lately, but today, I just got an e-mail sayiong that DCFS endorsed our homestudy. Now, we have to wait for the letter from our home study agency with the approval and instructions for the next step, sending in for the country change with USCIS. We have a ton to do. We need to work like crazy on our dossier and watch the DVDs, from our agency, "Because They Waited". Now there is only 3 days left of vacation and I feel I haven't accomplished much. I relaxed a lot (the cold and infected finger I had did not help anything. I did get a little cleaning done, but adoption stuff is now priority. Guess I should have worked on Christmas cards and that Christmas letter already. And oh, yeah, I have to bake a bundt cake tomorrow, for an Ethiopian adopted kids get-together. Well, I better get to bed, so I won't sleep too late tomorrow, well actually by now today!

A Taste of Fall

I decided the blog needed a little change. I actually need to do more, but this will do for now.

On Wednesday, we had our home visit with our new homestudy agency. We really, really liked our social worker. Everything went well, but everything is going to take longer than I had hoped for. Home study update should be written up by the end of this month and hopefully before. Then it needs to be approved by our adoption consultant at CHI and then it can be sent to DCFS for their approval, which may take about a month. Once we have their letter of endorsement, we can send it on to USCIS for our free country change and that will probably take another month, so it will probably be February before we can send in our dossier to Ethiopia. This means we will probably need to redo the couple documents that we already have had notarized and/or certified.

In good news, our agency received 6 referrals this week: 3 girls and 3 boys. The girls were 13 months, 20 months, and 6 years and the boys were 6 months, 11 months, and 21 months. These families waited between 3 and 7 months for their referrals.

Two years ago today, we first went to our agency's informational meeting. At that time who would think that 2 years later, we'd still not have a child. The good news is that we have our home visit for our home study update scheduled for October 29th.

I Love CVS

My family calls me the coupon queen. I love using coupons to save money and I always surprise my mother with how much I save. Yesterday was my best coupon days. My main things I planned to purchase were a Swiffer Sweeper Starter Kit as well as a Sweeper Duster Starter Kit, which were on sale and by buying both of them, I'd receive 5 Extra Care Bucks. I had a CVS coupon for $3 off $15 or more; actually, the cost of these 2 items were just under 15, so I ended up buying 2 containers of Icebreakers mints, which I of course had a $1 off coupon for. All in all just with different coupons, I saved $15.99: that includes the $3 off a 15.00 purchase, $1 off the Icebreakers, $2off from a previous Extra Care Bucks coupon I received from a previous purchase, $1 off for buying a Swiffer Sweeper, $1 off for buying a Swiffer Duster, and lastly a coupon calling for a free Swiffer Duster when you buy a Swiffer Sweeper. I noticed when I got home that she gave me the Swiffer Sweeper free, but since both items were on sale; the Sweeper was only $1 more. Had I paid full price with no coupons or sale, which I wouldn't have done in the first place, I'd have paid about $25 before tax plus 10% tax since I was in chicago, but with all the coupons and sale prices I only paid $4.08. I have to admit, I was excited over that. And this was only a week after paying only about 44 cents for a bottle of Afrin the week before at Walgreens. There they had $2 store coupon in the sale ad that week and I had found a manufacturers coupon previously. Well I better go. I need to figure out my shopping list for tomorrow and get my coupons in order.

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

I just about died with hysterical laughter when my friend sent me the following picture with the caption "When I get Out Someone Is Going to Die"

Good News for a Change

Last week, the wait for our renewed 171-H finally ended when we received the long awaited document. We now are officially in the Ethiopia program. We now have the paperwork for our new homestudy agency, since the CHI branch offices are offices are officially closed. They have since reopened the Yahoo groups; they were closed down for a while due to spreading of rumours being spread and some groups were having people say not-so nice things about certain people.

Some other good news is that the Ethiopian courts, which close for a couple months each year during the rainy season, opened a little bit ahead of schedule. In additio, there were three referrals this week; all young babies, an 8-week baby boy, a 1-month baby girl and a 5-month baby girl. Very exciting, let the referrals start pouring in

I want to thank Melissa who nominated me for The Smile Award. I haven't been that great of a blogger for the past several months and I really haven;t been in the smiling mood too much lately. But here are the rules for this award.

Characteristics for the Smile Award:

1. Must display a cheerful attitude.

2. Must love one another.

3. Must make mistakes.

4. Must learn from others.

5. Must be a positive contributor to blog world.

6. Must love life.

7. Must love kids.

These are the rules for The Smile Award:

1. The recipient must link back the the award’s creator

2. You must post these rules if you receive the award.

3. You must chose 5 people to receive the award after receiving it yourself

4. You must fit the characteristics of the recipient of the award, as posted by Mere

5. You must post the characteristics of a recipient.

6. You must create a post sharing your win with others.

7. You must thank your giver.

Now, I have to pass this award on to 5 other bloggers. This has been going on around awhile now, so I may be naming some one who has already been nominated, but oh well...

#1 Melanie - She has been on this journey to her Kaylee longer than most people and is still waiting to find her. In all this, she has always kept positive and is now going to find Kaylee in Taiwan. Her great love of God is what has helped to keep her sane and positive in the past 24+ months.

#2 Tara - he is the 1st person I met at the local FCVN Tet Party in 2007. At the time, she and her husband just received their referral of their son. I have been following their journey ever since.

#3 Megan - Another CHI blogger pal and one I expect I'll be meeting in person. We just recently "met", but she has especially been helpful and supportive in the past couple weeks as we go through all the changes with our agency. We'll hopefully be adopting from Ethiopia about the same time.

#4 Amber - She was my first internet friend, that I met when I went to her son's 1st birthday. She has the cutest little boy and girl and one on the way.I may not keep in touch the way I should, but I really enjoy following the adventures of Payton and Ashleigh.

Now I have to decide who to put as #5; there's so many whom I enjoy following and help cheer me up on a less than sunny day and there have been many of those lately. #5 for The Smile Award goes to Jess. I can't post the link to her blog, since it is semi private, but I met her through Amber #4 and love watching as Caleb grows.

Depressing Thought

Our local radio station has a segment called "The Impossible Question of the Day" and earlier the question was this:

Q: According to recent figures the average person experiences this for the first time when they are 47.

A: Become a Grandparent

How depressing is that for those of either over 40 or nearing it. My parents are 74 and 80 and they have yet to be grandparents and if we get a child in the next year, we won't see ourselves as being grandparents until we are in our 60's or 70's.

Major Changes Again!

More news and changes have been announced and this time it was from our agency. Friday, I got an e-mail from our social worker - SW that it was urgent that she talk to me. So, I e-mailed and left a voice mail message with the best phone number to call me at. She called me back on my cell and of course, I just happened to be outside at the moment, so I told her I'd call her back in 15 minutes, so I could take notes on what she said. I called her back again and was told that CHI was closing the branch offices and only the main office in St. Louis would stay open as a placement agency. What this means is that since they will no longer have a Chicago office, they will be unable to do our home study update for Ethiopia as well as any of our post-placement reports. So we would have to find a home study agency, they had spoken to 2 local agencies and they offered to accept CHI clients. I ended up calling and leaving voice mail messages at both of these agencies; one called me back a couple hours later and the other called me back that evening. We finally decided which agency after some feedback and just a general feeling and things we knew had occurred lately with one of the agencies.

Now after all of this happened, we also all found out that all of CHI Yahoo groups have been closed. For those who aren't familiar with Yahoo groups;. they are like mailing lists, a kind of chat group exclusively for CHI clients. We all feel a great sense of community and offer each other a great deal of support. We are there for each other in good times and bad. Thank goodness a couple people received the news that the Yahoo groups were closing ahead of the time they were actually closed and were able to create their own Yahoo groups for CHI families and then were able to post the group, just before the group was closed and one was no longer able to post. So, I have joined both the general and Ethiopia groups and hopefully we will get back most everyone, who was in the specific groups.

Happy New Year!!

In Ethiopia that is!

September 11th is Ethiopia's New Year, the new year is 2001 (Enkutatash.)Ethiopia still retains the Julian calendar, in which the year is divided into 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of 5 days and 6 days inleap year. The Ethiopian calendar is 8 years behind the Gregorian calendar from January to September and 7 years behind between September11 and January 8.

The Amharic word for New Year's Day is "Enkutatash" which means the gift of jewels. History tells us, when the Queen of Sheba returned from her jaunt to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem, her chiefs welcomed her by replenishing her treasury with "inku" or jewels.

The Enkutatash spring festival has been celebrated since the Queen's historic return. As the rainy season comes to its abrupt end, dancing and singing can beheard at every village in the verdent green countryside. Meskerem (the first month of the year) is seen as a month of transition from the old year to the new. Like many Ethiopian holidays, Enkutatash is not exclusively a religious holiday. Modern Enkutatash is also the season for exchanging formal new year greetings and cards among the urban sophisticated - in lieu of the traditional bouquet of flowers (which is now seen as a more rural custom.) It is a time to express hopes and dreams for the future.

Back and in a better place

I'm back and doing much better than I have been in quite awhile. These past few months have been really rough, but I feel as if I'm now ready to get on with my life. Back at the beginning of August I sent in for the renewal of our 171-H and on the 29th, we finally were able to get fingerprinted. Hopefully, it won't take too much longer until we get our renewal in the mail. Last week, I sent for Kevin's birth certificate; it's suppose to take 3 or 4 weeks, since they send it to get state certified also. Actually, I think that it shouldn't really take that long. Last time I got my birth certificate, I took only an hour or less and then when I went to get all my documents state certified, it only took an hour. I'm waiting to hear from my agency's social worker, but next week we should get our home study updated to get ready for when we will be able to formally switch to Ethiopia. Hopefully, things won't take too long.