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.

Frustrated, but it's not what you think

No, not with the adoption, but with clothes shopping. This evening, I went to buy new black dress pants for work. I must have tried at least 6 different styles in 2 different sizes each and I left Kohl's with absolutely nothing, except a feeling of being frustrated. What the heck ever happened with normal trouser dress pants with a high-cut waist. Now, I can't be the only one who does not want low cut hip huggers. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I would have worn them, but I no longer have the 20-something body that I used to have; now that I'm quickly approaching 40 later this year. I always have great luck at Kohl's, which is what made tonight even more frustrating then ever.

I'm still so frustrated and I'm really getting frustrated with CHI. One they should have limited their waiting list. Other agencies had temporarily stopped accepting new applications when they felt their waiting list was getting too big. Also, they allowed way too many people to send in dossiers. Had we not sent in our dossier at the beginning of April to Vietnam and spent all that additional money, we probably would have been more likely to switch countries right away, but we already had even more money invested than we did before submitting the dossier. Others who are working on Ethiopia can work on their dossier while they are working on their homestudy and waiting for CIS approval, but we have to wait!!! We've been waiting over a year and a half from when we first started this adoption and they've had no problem accepting our money, but now when we and they know without a doubt that Vietnam will close, even if it is temporarily and we will be switching countries no matter, since everything is moving at a snail's pace anyway, they just want us to sit and do nothing when there is so much we caould do, if we knew exactly what it was we needed to do. No wonder there atre many people who would love to adopt, but don't one because of the cost and two because they make it so difficult to do so. Well, I'm getting off my soapbox and doing some work, since lunch is now over.

The End and the Beginning

This post should have been posted over a week ago, when I wrote it but I don't really want to rewrite it. It is now pretty much definite our Vietnam adoption wont be happening. Our agency got its last 3 referrals this past week. As of a couple weeks ago, we were down to #78 on the list and now are probably 2-3 positions further down the list, but that probably doesn't make much difference anymore. As of 9/1/08, the dossiers with all the documents we gathered and had notarized, certified, and authenicated, will be sent to our agencies. We've known for over a month or so that we would pursue an adoption from Ethiopia, if Vietnam didn't work, but since we needed to renew some paperwork, we decided to hold off, so we could get our free renewal. We currently are waiting for DCFS to approve our homestudy update, which our social worker did in June. Once our homestudy update gets approved, we can send in for our free renewal with CIS (the former INS). Then we have to wait for an invitation to get our fingerprints retaken (Like they've changed in the past year and a half.) Once we get our renewal approved, we will finally be able to send in for a country change for the adoption. . This should also be free since we renewed the 171-H paperwork first.

Hopefully, once we have the renewal, we will be able to start our Ethiopian dossier. I wish I could start on gathering the paperwork, but they do not want to provide us that information until we are formally in the new program. We want to start on this as soon as possible, because although our agency has had an Ethiopian program for only over a year, it has become very popular and with the closure of Vietnam, it will be even more so. Plus our agency has not yet been Hague-certified. Ethiopia is not a Hague country, so they can work with agencies that are not Hague-approved. (The Hague Treaty is pretty hard to explain, so I won't even try for those of you who have no idea what it is, but as long as our agency isn't Hague-certified the only country new prospective adoptive parents can adopt from are Ethiopia and Russia. Technically, we will be considered new since we will have to start over with another country. Russia is a more expensive country to adopt from with 2-3 trips to Russia that needs to be taken before you finally can bring your child home.

I don't even want to think of what we have spent and much of it has been more or less flushed away. What a waste of money, not too mention time. We started well over 18 months on this, 14 months of which was on the waiting list and for what? NOTHING! We are not getting any younger and I will be turning the big 4-0 in a few months and Kevin is 45. Our parents do not yet have any grandchildren and most likely any child we adopt will be the only grandchild they have. Yes, I am feeling very cynical tonight. I truly feel our agency should not only allow us to switch countries, but but should allow us to get in line ahead of people who have only been waiting a short time. The longest some people waiting to adopt from Ethiopia is 6 or maybe 7 months at the most; that is nothing compared to 14 months and there are many others who have been on the waiting list for much longer. It is one thing if you chose voluntarily to change months ago, when there were first rumors, but now pretty much everyone has to either switch to another country or just wait it out and hope Vietnam allows for American adoptions again in the future. Last time the country closed to the U.S. that wait was almost 3 years, so making us have to wait that long is crazy and is not an option with us either in or about to be in our 40's.

UPDATE: We did get our letter of endorsement from DCFS and I sent for our free renewal on Saturday. We are now waiting for our return receipt notification that it was received and then for the dates of our fingerprinting. And yes, we are now #75 as of 7/24/08, for whatever that's worth!!

Blogger Problems

I guess blogger had problems, where they had a large amount of blogs that were shown to be spam blogs and they had all of them lockied until the blog owner asked them to investigate. They found out it was a bug in there progrem and are fixing that bug and have also since unlocked those blogs. Since mine was only recently unlocked, I haven't had a chance to post, but hope to soon!

DCFS Letter of Endorsement

We had our home study update done in June and were waiting for DCFS to issue a letter of endorsement, so we could file for our free renewal of the 171-H. Well, our agency, finally received the letter of endorsement and will mail it to us along with the instructions so we can file for our renewal. The renewal can't be filed any earlier than 90 days before the expiration of the 171-H and today marks the 90th day before expiration. So hopefully, we will receive the letter from CHI in the next day or 2 and I'll be able to immediately send for the renewal to CIS. Then our social worker says it takes CIS 2-3 weeks to process it and then a week later, we should get it in the mail. We'll also need to get our fingerprints redone (like they've changed!!!) I will be posting an update soon about our adoption. I wrote it out the other day on the way home from work and just need to find the time top type it.

Weird Dream

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was pregnant with twins and then I gave birth to one twin and then the doctor said the other one is not ready, yet and that I cango home. When I asked how long until the other one? The doctor said it could be a day or 2, a week, maybe a month. Weird, huh? No wonder I was so tired this morning; I had a hard night of labor.

Second-Guessing Myself?

Should we stay with Vietnam and hope for a miracle? Should we switch to Ethiopia right away and risk not getting a free renewal? Should we go with a domestic adoption; most likely a transracial adoption? Or even should we try infertility treatments? (We know we are, but we never underwent any fertility treatments) and at just about 40years of age, should I and do I really want to be pregnant? Where is this coming from?? Well, in the past month(s), there have been so many other prospective adoptive parents that have either become pregnant (I don't think I can name overyone, but congratulations to all of you and several who have adopted domestically (congratulation to the latest new parents, Megan and Larry)

Your Support Is Needed

Please go to the link I've attached and sign this petition. It directly affects us, because our dossier is logged in to the DIA. You can read the details, sign the petition, and then log out. You do not have to give a donation for your "signature" to be recorded. Thanks in advance!http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Grandfather_All_Dossiers/index.html

Child Of The 80s

Oh memories!

Early Morning Meeting

This morning, we met with our new social worker to discuss our 171-H renewal, changing to Ethiopia and home study update. Our 171-H needs to be renewed this fall and we can renew it up to 90 days before, but the orphan officer has recently changed at our local USCIS office and many families who are changing countries and then trying for a free renewal of their old 171-H are being denied. Therefore, the best option was to stay in the Vietnam program and just updating our home study and getting our free renewal , which will be sent at the very end of July and then once we have received an updated and renewed 171-H, we will then file a change of country form and add an addendum to our homestudy for Ethiopia. This really allows us the best of both worlds, since if by chance Vietnam adoptions do continue we will still be in the Vietnam program and we will be able to just continue with it, but if it turns out that Vietnam will not be continuing adoptions with the United States, we will be already approved for Ethiopia. Since we already have our dossier in Vietnam, we will be able to continue the process to adopt, but at the same time once we have filed for a renewal, it will take some time for it to get through the reapproval process (hopefully, we'll get our approval at about the same time we find out if adoptions and the giving of referrals will continue after September 1st.) In the meantime, we might be able to start getting our paperwork together for an Ethiopian dossier. If we won't be able to continue with Vietnam, then at least we may have somewhat of a headstart when it comes to getting our new dossier ready and hopefully, it won't be very long thereafter until we can send off our dossier to our agency and then Ethiopia. In reality, this is the perfect option; more or less, it is a win-win opportunity. If Vietnam continues, we win in that we have not totally dropped out of the program, but if it closes for certain, we still win because we are ahead of the game on the road to Ethiopia. Not everyone will have this option, but since our immigration paperwork needs renewal and our USCIS office is so finicky about the order of renewals and country changes, it works on our behalf.

Also, since our home study was done in March, another home visit is needed and that is scheduled for Monday June 16th. Only one of us needs to meet with our SW at our home, so since I have a couple floating holidays that I must use up at work, I'll be the one to stay home. Plus it is easier since I work in an office to get a day off, then Kevin who works in a child care environment. They need people to cover and one of his co-workers is getting married around that time, so coverage will be limited and they'll need all the people they can get. Well, I've really babbled on and on, so I'll just end this post until next time.