Another reason I Love CVS

During lunch today, I went to CVS and bought the above, plus some lotion which isn't shown. Everything I bought was on sale; had it not been on sale it would of cost $72.78, but since it was on sale it $51.16, plus tax, but Kevin doesn't call me the coupon queen for nothing. I used $23.25 in coupons, so the everything came to $29.96 with tax. Plus since CVS gives store coupons and extra value bucks, I received $13.00 in extra value bucks. plus $15 worth of store coupons. Wow, I can't wait to see what is on sale next week.

This week there was a referral of 7 week old twin girls. The lucky family waited a record-breaking 15 months. The wait for siblings is the longest of the waits. I think the wait for a baby girl is about 11-12 months and for a baby boy about 10-11 months. There were also 2 families who accepted referrals of waiting children, a boy age 5 and a 7 year-old girl. So we should have moved down three more places on the list and be about #94.

Officially Added to the Waiting List

This post is long overdue.In fact, I thought I posted here, but I must have done it on Facebook only. On May 22nd, our dossier returned to our agency from D.C. all authenticated. That means we were added to the waiting list. We started out approximately as #98 on the waiting list and since there was one referral this week of a baby boy, we are now down to #97. This waiting list is all-inclusive and includes everyone, regardless if they are waiting for a baby boy or girl, toddler boy or girl, older child, special needs child or siblings; so our waiting list # does not represent exactly how long we will wait. When I was sent the e-mail that we are on the list, I was told the wait can be anywhere from 6-13 months. Based on what the waiting has been lately for a baby boy, it should be about a 10 1/2 month wait. Could of course be sooner or even later. The wait for a baby girl is about 11 1/2 months, but many more people are requesting girls, so I'm guessing, we'll have a son, but who knows!

Our dossier was sent to Washington D.C. for authenication. It should get back to our agency in 2 weeks!

Happy day!

Today was a really good day for alot of us in the Ethiopian program. There were 4 referrals at our agency 2 infant girls and 2 infant boys. Other good news is our dossier arrived at our agency, this morning. They will review it and then it will be sent to Washington D.C. for authentication. This whole process is expected to take 2 and a half to 3 weeks and once the dossier is returned to our agency, we will be added to the waiting list.

Here are 2 updates regarding the aband children issue in Addis Ababa. The first one is from a couple days ago and this one is from today.

St. Louis Bound

The last few documents for our dossier were state certified today and at lunch, I FedExed the whole dossier to our agency in St Louis. It should arrive Wednesday morning and they will ready it to be authenicated and send it to D.C. for authentication. It is such a relief to have this part out of the way. Now let's all keep our fingers crossed and pray for no more problems.

Getting close

Most of the documents for our dossier have been notarized and all we need is our police clearance letters. We will be stopping in at our police department in the morning and hopefully, we will receive the letters early in the week. Also, I need to get the pictures developed that we may use in our dossier. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll be able to get everything certified. I need to first e-mail copies of all the notarized docs to my adoption consultant at the agency.

But I Do Love CVS

My last post was more-or-less about hate, but this one is about love, my love for how much I can save at CVS. This week I made 3 shopping trips to CVS (that's a record for me) but even better I saved $54.00. Last Sunday, after having to chuck all my make-up and buy new stuff, because I became allergic to something in my current make up, I noticed they had a buy one get one free sale on Almay Cosmetics (which is hypo-allergenic, which my doctor recommended)I bought Almay Foundation, Blush, Mascara, Eyeliner, and Eye Shadow. I had 4 $1 Almay coupons, I had a CVS coupon of $4 0ff $20 and another CVS coupon of $10 . I saved 30.00 on that shopping trip, plus I got a couple CVS coupons back to use later. Friday, I bought some mouthwash and some personal female products. It should have cost $24 plus tax, but I had 2 $2 coupons and $1 coupon, also I had a $4 off $20 CVS coupon and a $3 CVS coupon, so I saved $12 and paid just 13.82 and also got a few CVS coupons, including $8 extracare bucks that you can use on anything. But I had really wanted to buy some Neutrogena face powder, which was advertised as being 40% off, so I decided to stop at another CVS a block away (I was in downtown Chicago, so there's a CVS or Walgreen's, it seems on every other block) So, I got the Neutrogrena powder, which is usually $10.99 , but was 40% off . Since I wanted to use that $8 off coupon, before it expired and I knew I'd be a buck or so under $8, I grabbed some breathmints (always comes in handy) for 1.99 and went to the cashier. It came up before coupons $8.59, so after the $8 extracare coupon, I spent only 59 cents. I wish I would have had a Neutrogena coupon, but I had not clipped any coupons for this before, because I was happy with my brands of make-up, but that was before I developed a makeup allergy and needed to splurge on all new makeup , but I am extremely happy with my savings. At this pace, I am going to beat last years record on money saved on coupons and rebates (I don't count store sale price differences or anything, like some do. Maybe I should but that would be too time-consuming and it is much easier to just jot down savings from coupons and rebates.

Another Reason to H*a*t*e My Employer

My company was bought late last year and this year when those of us who kept our jobs started working at the new company, we were all in consensus that we were not a bit happy and if it wasn't for the economy, we'd have been out of there. Well, I like the others are hanging in there and was in fact having a surprisingly good work week. Well, WAS is the operative word. Since Kevin and I have decided to move forward and continue our adoption to Ethiopia with the same agency, were also told that us having to re-do our entire home study was a misunderstanding; it would not need to be redone. We could just get a new employment letter discussing that the current company I work for is "the company" that bought my "old company" and my salary as of 2007-2008 was "X" and my benefits included such and such. Well, with the old company, the office manager and later the managing attorney signed the letter stating my income and benefits, but this time when I talked to the office manager. She said she'd have to check what the company policy is regarding this (okay). I gave her a copy of the actual letter that was everything that must be included in the letter. Well, she came back to me the next day (Friday) and gave me a letter. All she could provide me was my salary and my current salary. My agency says the salary in the employment letter must match the home study EXACTLY. Doesn't matter that it is more, it has to match to a "T". She said that since I am no longer with "the old company", she does not have access to such information. In addition, she also said she is not able to include benefit information, because she does not have access to that information. I did say I could provide her with that information and she still said she couldn't do it, because my benefits are none of her business. After I called my husband (who luckily was on his way to work since he started work late that day), I totally ranted and raved to him. Of course, I went out of the building, where no one could hear me from work and to get a signal for my cellphone. Now, of course, Kevin said we'll work everything out, and that we've had so many hurdles and this is just one more we'll get over. I have no idea what we'll do, I've got to send my adoption consultant as well as my home study social worker an e-mail about this major problem. I so cannot wait for the economy and especially, the job market to improve, so I can get out of where I am. What's a shame is before the company I was working for was bought, I was extremely happy with my job. Nowadays, my co-workers who were also my former co-workers realize that our complaints we had before with the old company were nothing compared to our complaints now. We really had it good before.

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.