This picture was given to me by my mother-in-law for Christmas 2006. I absolutely LOVE it. When I read it, I have tears coming because it is so true...




This picture was an inspiration of the one that my mother-in-law gave me. When I read this one, the tears come as well. We lovingly call the green envelope I am holding, "Emma." Anyone that is going through adoption knows exactly how I feel. Those documents are our baby and it was extreme patience, alot of time, and a lot of money to "conceive" them. So, we hold them dearly close to us.




Being "Paper Pregnant" for this long is VERY painful! The number 13 for us seems to be coming around alot. We have a LID of 01/13/06, which was Friday 13th and we are now at 13 months 1 week. There are ONLY 13 more LIDs in front of us. And we THINK Andy wieghs at least 13 pounds. HAHAHAHA This can't possibly be bad luck.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them to read what they say.

USCIS has received our I-600A application on February 5, 2007. They sent us our fingerprint referral notice to come get our fingerprints done. They want us to bring a copy of our homestudy with us. We are still waiting on getting the homestudy finished. We have come into a couple of hiccups during this "update", but we are getting closer to getting it finished. We need to finish one more homevisit and then Brenda will be able to complete the homestudy and we can get this ball rolling again. Keep your fingers crossed for us that it will be done soon.

Tom got the rest of the paperwork that we needed to finish up our "updated" homestudy. Just emailed Melissa to see when we can get the thing finished so we can get a copy to the CIS office so they can process our I-600A. Ugh the stress in having to do all this over again!!!!!!!!

Wendy and I woke up with Andy at 4:00 this morning. When she looked our the kitchen window, she decided that yesterday's snow was nothing compared to last night's. She could hardly wait for the sun to get up so she could take some pictures with the dogs.


The news said we got three inches.....


The girls enjoyed themselves


Front of the house


Backyard

We were going to drive into Memphis this morning and see about getting Andy's Social Security card but, they are saying the roads are still pretty slick. I am afraid we might have to wait until next week to get it. That's one of the things we need to finish up the Homestudy update.

We are getting closer to our January date!!!

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 22, 2006.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before October 13, 2005.

We met with our new Social Worker yesterday. Melissa was very polite but, man, we feel like she is taking us all the way back to day one on this adoption. We are having to re-do a lot of our paperwork which I guess is required because of the move to Tennessee and the birth of Andrew. I can understand some of this but, she has us answering questionaires about our feelings on internatioanl adoption and coping with cultural differences. She made both of feel like she is treating us as if we are just starting this journey instead of a year into the process.
She criticized the home study that Dr. Brown did and made it sound like it shouldn't have been approved. She actually made comments that she knew what was required for approval and things were missing from our homestudy that "really need to be there and was surprised that our homestudy was approved". I had to remind her that our dossier is already approved, logged in and we are waiting on our referral. I'm guessing her feelings towards Dr. Brown's format just don't meet her's and she has a "need" to re-write it. We're going though with it just because this is so important to both Wendy and me.
Another big issue with the update of our package is that, according to Melissa, our rep in Orlando seemed to leave out a lot of the paperwork from our package. It appears that Cathi isn't following CHI's guidelines and that's scarey. I hope it's only a difference in two states requirements and not a lack of professionalism that will hang some families up in China. I'd hate to think that a family had their dossier disapproved because either paperwork was omitted or certain verbage was left out of their homestudy.

On a happy note, we had a lot of what she wanted already completed and barring a major issue with me getting my medical paperwork and a letter of employment updated next week, we're only waiting on Melissa to finish the homestudy re-write and the USCIS to send the letters for our I-171 and fingerprinting. Melissa told us we should be able to stay right on schedule. YEAH!!!!!

We got a little snow last night.....

Angel was really curious about it and cruised the whole yard investigating. As soon as Daisy's feet hit the deck, she decided she could care less for it and rushed back in the house.

Wendy's SNOWMAN... her hands got cold...

Tom's SNOWMAN rework :o)

Before sunrise

After sunrise

It looks like a heavy frost to me but, all of the schools are closed around here so, it must be worse somewhere. In all reality, listening to the news there are a lot of icy patches on the roads this morning causing a lot of accidents so, that's why they closed the schools. There is also another front moving from the west and, we are expecting more this afternoon.