We Run To The Mailbox Everyday!!!

We got it, We got it, We got it......We finally received approval from USCIS!!!

Yesterday I ran out to our mailbox hoping, but not really believing that our our USCIS approval would there, and to my surprise there was an envelop from Homeland Security, which mean something from USCIS. I ran as fast as I could into the house dropped all the other mail on the floor and called Rudy.

Just by the envelop I could tell it was the approval. Rudy asked me not to open it until he got home, so in the mean time I did the happy dance and told Lawson and Eli what we got in the mail. Finally, Rudy came home and we opened the letter. It was our USCIS approval. Yeah!!!

We sent our intial request July 28th, we sent the requested paperwork the end of October and recieved our approval in the mail on December 19,2008.

We went out to dinner with the boys to celebate. As soon as we come home from Buffalo for Christmas we will finish up our paperwork so we can send our dossier to Ethiopia. We will keep you posted.

Merry Christmas and Happy NewYear!!!

USCIS Fingerprinting!!!

On September 6, 2007 we were fingerprinted for the adoption process a 3rd time. We received notice from the Department of Homeland Security USCIS of our ASC appointment. In other word we received a letter stating when and where we were to report to get fingerprinted. Everything went really well. Our appointment was for 10:00 am on September 6, 2008. The boys came with us and they were great. The entire appointment was over in an hour. Although Rudy almost got sent home without getting fingerprinted. In the letter they send you it states: if you have open wounds or bandages/casts when you appear, the USCIS may reschedule your appointment if it is determined your injuries will interfere with taking your biometric. Well Rudy had one spot of poison ivy on his finger with a band aid over it. The girl who was taking his fingerprints called over the girl that was taking my fingerprints to see if they could get a good fingerprint or was the band aid in the way. My face was probably turning red at that moment, because if his appointment needed to be rescheduled, who knows when that would happen and that means things would be delayed even longer. We are approximately 60 days into our potential 90 day wait for our approval form I-171H. So far God has done wonders for me. I have really been at peace while we are waiting for the approval.

3rd Time is a Charm!!

Last Friday August 29, 2008 we received notice from USCIS that we have been scheduled on September 6, 2008 for our fingerprinting. Yeah!!; this means USCIS is processing our paperwork for our Orphan Petition. My guess is that after we get fingerprinted tomorrow it will take another 2 months for us to get our approval back from them. This is just based on how long is has taken others in this area recently to receive there approval. Lets hope things have gotten faster. This will be our third time getting fingerprinted for the adoption.

We are waiting for USCIS

We sent our paperwork to USCIS on Friday July 25, 2008. They received it on Monday July 28, 2008. We are now waiting for their approval. They sent us an acknowledgement of our application. The letter said it could take up to 90 day to process. Typical time in Atlanta these days seems to be 1 month for your fingerprinting appointment (yes, we need to get fingerprinted for a 3rd time), then it takes approximately 3 months from application to receive approval.

While we are waiting on USCIS approval we will be finishing up all of our dossier documents and doing some reading.

It Arrived

Our home study arrived in the mail last Saturday (July 19, 2008). We were so excited. I opened the mailbox took it out and was waiving it as all three boys (Rudy, Lawson, and Eli) were looking out the window. I opened it and immediately read it, and immediately found some major typos. They typed Lawson as Dawson and they called us the Wilson's instead of the Gleason's in a sentence. I couldn't believe my eyes. I have been checking the mailbox everyday for this documents and when it arrives it arrives with typos that need to be fixed. This only means it is going to take longer. Monday morning I called our social worker to discuss the typos. She called back on Tuesday. We received the corrections yesterday. Now we have everything ready for USCIS. After the boys wake-up from nap time we are headed straight to the post office to send this packet to USCIS and then the wait starts.......

Our consultant at our agency told us it currently a 3 month processing time in Atlanta, but she heard they (USCIS) are trying to speed things up in here. I hope so. We can't send our dossier to the state until we get our USCIS approval...which means receiving our I-171H in the mail.

Checking the Mailbox Everyday.

I have been checking the mailbox just after the mailman leaves everyday in hope to find our homestudy report. I has been four weeks and one day since our last visit. The homestudy was suppose to be in our hand with in three weeks. I called on Monday as we were approaching the 4 week mark and they said it hadn't been processed as of Friday and we should receive it by the end of this week. I was very nice and said okay, but I don't think I will be as nice on if we don't receive by next Monday. The other documents for USCIS are ready to go we just need our homestudy report.

When Rudy and I were talking about the adoption this week we realized that our baby girl is probably due or was just recently born. It may be possible that Kennedy will have a July or August birthdate. WOW!!!!

Our Home Study is Complete.

On Monday our social worker called and told us that she had finished our report, however there were two missing documents. Immediately I gathered them and brought them to her home. She said she was sending the report to her agency and ours that day. Hopefully we will have the completed notarized home study report in our hands this week. Yeah, I can't wait to see it and send it off to USCIS.

Once the home study is in our hands, that along with other required documents can be delivered to USCIS by courier. Please pray that the approval from USCIS is quick. I have heard it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. We can't submit the dossier until we get the approval in the mail from USCIS.

In the mean time, this week I plan to drive all over Atlanta to get my notarized documents for the dossier authenticated. This means going to three different county court houses to get a stamp on each of my documents with the boys in tow since our sitter is busy. Luckily a friend has offered to go with me to help entertain the boys. ---That's all for now!

We celebrated tonight!

All weekend we prepared for our social worker for our home study to visit our home today. As usual our social worker for our home study is great, real easy-going. The morning began with me waking up before everyone and not being able to go back to sleep, so I started getting breakfast ready for our visit. Finally, I heard Lawson waking up, so I went to get him and the day began; soon after we were all up and going.

Then the phone rang it was our social worker, she almost forgot we had an appointment. When we scheduled it, we were both in the middle of something else, so I can understand. So she was just confirming the appointment and checking if it would be okay to bring her 3 girls with her. Of course I didn't care; our house is kid friendly, there are plenty of toys to entertain and we did not want to cancel the appointment. Rescheduling the appointment wouldn't happen until July because our schedule is so busy until then.

The visit was about an hour, just after she arrived, we ate breakfast while discussing a few things such as the final home study processing, what our community is like, etc,. After that we showed her all around the house and that was it. Nothing to it. I really enjoyed the home study process and am looking forward to reading the report. We will get the report in approximately 3 weeks. Lets pray for a quick return, in other words shorter than 3 weeks.

It felt so good to have this part our the process completed, at least on our end; so we celebrated by going out to dinner. Our next celebration will be when we get our I-171-H form back from USCIS.

So what's next: we are going to fax our dossier documents to our agency to have them check them for errors, etc. When they are complete I will get all our notarized documents authenticated and sealed.

This was a big day for us and we are so excited that things are going so well.

The First Set of Tears!

The adoption process is amazing experience with both joys and disappointments. Monday I shed my first set of tears related to the adoption. Rudy and I have been working really hard collecting all the documents for the home study, USCIS, and the dossier. Now that we are almost finished I called my agency to figure out one of the forms for USCIS. Well little did I know this form can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to get back. That sent me over the edge. Lately I have been pushing us along to get things done so we can get on the referral list, in other words I want the paperwork to be in Ethiopia and I want to be waiting for our little girl to be matched with her family. I know the referral is going to take awhile since the adoptions in Ethiopia are slowing down, but I just want my paperwork to be their, and I want to be on "The List for a Girl from Ethiopia" NOW!!!

Rudy was great when I called him at work on Monday while the boys were napping to tell him this news. Of course he could tell right away that I was upset. We both thought we were going to get our dossier in Ethiopia sooner than we are. Now I am just praying that we can get our dossier in to be processed in Ethiopia before the government shuts down for 3 months (August-October) and that they get enough rain to keep the office open full time.

In the meantime we have scheduled our last home study visit, which will take place at our house on Tuesday. When we are done with this visit our caseworker can write her report and we can hopefully submit our documents to USCIS, etc. Our caseworker has a family and job that keeps her very busy, hopefully she will be able to get the report done quickly; she has already been so great at accommodating our schedules. I will keep you posted on how this goes.

Finally, the last bit of news, we are so excited friends of ours are going to pick up their little girl in Ethiopia this week. We can't wait to meet her.

Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork!!!

We are almost done with our home study. We have been working hard at collecting several of the documents needed for the home study and on Friday March 16, 2008 Rudy and I had our individual appointments with our caseworker. As usual I had no idea what to expect and was nervous while I was driving to her house. The meeting was a piece of cake. It lasted an hour, the first half I gave her all the documents Rudy and I had been collecting for her, and the second half she just asked me to elaborate on some of the questions I had completed for my personal profile, and finally we discussed how we are going to handle becoming a transracial family. Rudy's meeting was identical except that I had already given her all the documents, so his was even shorter.

We are now waiting for our FBI cards to come back, by then we should have the last few documents needed to have our final home study meeting at our house; which means we will be working hard to prepare our house for this visit. Hopefully around that time we will also be getting ready to finish up our USCIS and Dossier paperwork.

Other exciting news: While we have been working on our paperwork several of our friends have travelled to Ethiopia to pick up there child or children, and several are getting ready to travel. Please keep all of us in the adoption process in your prayers.

What have we been doing????

Well we have been slowly working on gathering all of our documents for the adoption. For those of you whose are not familiar with the process there are three main groups of documents. These include documents for your (1) Home study, (2) USCIS, and (3) Dossier. Rudy and I have been working on collecting documents for all three of these at the same time but primarily placing our focus on the home study.

We have just finished completing our personal profilesf for the homestudy. This was 15 pages of questions about you, your spouse, your childhood, adoption, etc. Some questions included: Describe your personality, How did your parents teach you to be self-reliant, describe how you and your spouse met and dated, and What is your present participation in an organized religous setting. As you can see some the questions were pretty easy and straight forward and others were more thought provoking.

Some of the other types of documents and tasks we have been working on include:
--> requesting all the 911 calls from our residences for the past 5 years which includes Georgia and Texas for us
--> Getting out GBI fingerprinting and we need to go back because we misunderstood that we could do our FBI fingerprinting at the same time.
--> We have doctors appointments next week.

We plan to have all our homestudy documents collected by the end of April and hopefully all other documents by the end of May.

This is what we have been....what have you been up to?

I have NO Birth Certificate!!!

Since we started the adoption process started we have been throwing everyone for a loop. Every consultant we have talked with has told us we are going to need certified copies of our birth certificates. My response to there requests is that I do NOT have a Birth Certificate!! There response is us usually what, then what do you have and why do you not have a birth certificate?

This is how I have responded to this question my entire life: I was adopted from Bogota, Colombia when I was an infant. I was born in April and my parents travelled during the summer to bring me home. We flew home on August 28th. My mother asked immigration if and when I would get a birth certificate, and they told her all I was going to get was this birth data card and that would be all I ever needed. Ha...what did they know. My birth data card has my name, date of birth, where I was born, and sex.

Two weeks ago, my home study caseworker asked me to call NY to see if I could find a birth certificate. I was fairly certain that one was not going to turn up, but I did as she requested. I call all over NY state. Long story short, I was finally connected to the international adoption vital records department. They explained to me was that in the 70's the US was not issuing or keeping track of international adoption births. It was not until the 80's that that there was a requirement to keep track and issue birth certificates if the child was readopted in US.

So I will never have a birth certificate....How weird and how normal for me.

Disaster!!!

The morning started really early with the pounding rain and the howling of the wind outside. I didn't realize how much damage there was until our babysitter was an hour late because of traffic due to the down trees blocking the streets. Luckily Rudy and I were planning on going out to breakfast before we met with our caseworker for our home study. While we were waiting for our babysitter to show up I decided to call the preschool I wanted to register Lawson for. They had in house registration on Monday and I was planning on standing on line at 4:30 am to get him registered on Wednesday. Well they filled up in house and told me if I wanted to get on a waiting list I could sign up at 6:00 am tomorrow, but there is already an in house waiting list. In other words, I was not going to get him into the preschool I wanted.

I was panicked. The morning was a disaster!!! The babysitter was an hour late, Rudy and I could not go to breakfast together, I couldn't get Lawson into the preschool I wanted, and now we were suppose to go meet our caseworker. I was convinced it was going to be a disaster too. But to our surprise our caseworker for our home study was really nice. We had our orientation meeting at her house which lasted approximately an hour. We went over the policies and procedures, documents we need to collect, the number to times we need to meet with her, etc.

We will meet with her again individually after we are done with our personal profiles. The personal profiles is 16 pages of questions all about you. Some are easy such as where did you go to high school, other are more thought provoking such as, how did your parents teach you to be self-reliant. After we both meet with her individually and she has all our paperwork she will visit our home. So everything went really well, it was not the disaster I thought it was going to be. I am starting to feel more relaxed about the home study.

Our first phone call

On Tuesday February 19th we called our social worker and scheduled our first appointment with her. After the phone converstaton I got very excited and starred working really hard to get together the paperwork we already have as well as ordering other documents. As usual I am trying to organize and label everything and Rudy laughs at my organization but at the same time is very appreciative. We are really excited about starting the home study, and are counting down the day until next Tuesday.

The Home Study is Moving Right Along

We sent the home study application on Monday and by Friday we received a packet from our home study agency stating that they were going to accept our application and assigned us our social worker. Tomorrow Rudy and I are going to call our social worker and hopefully set up our first of four appointments.

This weekend we had another gathering with the Georgia Ethiopia adoption group. Stephanie and Jason openned up thier Rainbow showroom to host this gathering. Of course Lawson and all the other kids had an amazing time playing on all the playground equipment. We too, had great time on the slides, but most of all we enjoyed talking with friends we made last time and making new friends this time. Thank you Stephanie and Jason!!!

We Finally Sent the Application!!

Our intentions were to send the home study application out two weeks ago, but for several days we forgot to sign it, then we forgot copy it, etc. Finally today 2/11/08 I mailed out our home study application. I have also created a sheet for keeping track of all our documents needed for the adoption. WOW!! We need a lot of documents.

Last week was Eli's first Birthday (2/4/07). He was born on superbowl Sunday last year. We had a great birthday party for him Saturday. It is so much fun to watch all the kids playing together in our playroom. I expected Lawson to get a little jealous of his brothers birthday but he was amazing. He was so happy for Eli and just wanted to celebrate his birthday with him.

Back to the adoption; I am going to start collecting all the documents we need this week. My initial thoughts are that it is not going to be difficult just tedious, and time consuming. We will see. I am sure I will have plenty of comments on this later.

It's Almost February Already!

It's almost February already, where has January gone? Aside from a sniffle here and there we are on the mend and back into our daily routine. We have filled out our home study application and will be sending it in on Monday (January 28, 2008). I am not sure what to expect during the home study. I have heard that it is not big deal and I have heard they are very intrusive. I guess it depends on the agency and the social worker you are assigned. Eventhough I am a little nervous about this part I am really excited to see what questions they are going to ask us and the assignments they are going to be giving us. I think that is the psychologist in me.

I have started scrapbooking Lawson as a baby, I would like to have Lawson and Eli's books caught up by time we bring Kennedy home. Ha, Ha, Ha, is't that a funny idea. Rudy bought me a pink scrapbook for Kennedy. The idea of pink in my house is so exciting.

Happy New Year

Christmas was difficult both boys got sick. Eli got sick the second day we were in Buffalo; he had a viral infection and was miserable. Lawson started getting sick on Christmas day and eventually ended up with bronchitis and a double ear infection. Since both boys were sick we ended cutting our trip short. We couldn't wait to get home and get well.

When we arrived at home a packet from our adoption agency was waiting for us. We were so excited it was there, but it took us a few day till we could sit down and look at the material together. The packet was from our consultant and contained all the information we need to complete our dossier, the USCIS paperwork, etc.

Yesterday I spoke with our consultant on where and how start all this paperwork. WOW!!! This is going to be a very busy year gathering documents with 2 children. In the next couple days we are going to be contacting our home study agency to start that process. I am already feeling a little overwhelmed!

Rudy has started back at school, he is teaching to classes on top of doing research and guiding his students. I am sure he will have another great semester.

2008 is going to be an amazing year!!!