Quick one

Only have a couple of minutes and thought I would upload a few pictures. I have been trying to catch up from being at a conference the past two days. Brady (Brian Urlacher – Chicago Bears) and Madison (WIU cheerleader) had their Halloween parties today. Justin and I have parent-teacher conferences tonight. Brady tells me that conferences make him nervous because teachers talk about kids and that it isn’t fair the kids don’t know what is being said. Sounds like he might have something to be nervous about :o) I am also working frantically to get our registration documents together. I’ll write about that soon. Getting our letter on Friday from CIS started a little whirlwind of activity.

After Naperville

So picking up where I left off, we returned with our rug late Tuesday night. Two days later on Thursday, June 26th we took our medical forms to our doctor to have filled out. We needed them as the last piece of the paperwork for the first stage of our home study. Then on Friday morning, Justin and I were back on the train and headed for downtown Chicago for an amazing weekend. Our friends, Bridget and Jordan, were married that weekend. We took a cruise out on Lake Michigan and through the City; jogged on Lake Shore Drive; attended church at one of Willow Creek’s satellite churches; walked through the Taste of Chicago; attended a beautiful wedding and fabulous reception at the Contemporary Art Museum. We took the train home Sunday night and had to have our house ready for the home visit the very next morning – June 30th.

The home visit was obviously at our home (duh!). Carole came and met with Brady and Madison and spoke with them about their openness to the adoption. She walked through the house checking for things such as fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, medicine and sharp objects out of reach of lil’ ones etc… We are pleased to say that we passed with flying colors. At the end of the visit we went through all of the outstanding documents that we needed in order to send the home study to the state for their approval. We still needed the medical forms, the fingerprint/background check results from DCFS, and our documentation of our adoption education hours.

Yippeeee

I am sooooo excited! We got our letter from CIS today!!!! What comes next? I don’t know. I have to read, reread, and make calls. I am just beside myself though with this little break through. Nothing could move forward without this little letter so we are off and running again. The paper reads “Notice of favorable determination concerning application for advance processing of orphan petition. It has been determined that you are able to furnish proper care to an orphan or orphans as defined by (insert lots of legal language)” Yahooooo!

I also want to update this blog by saying God is good! Not only did we receive good news this week, a friend of mine shared news that she is ten weeks pregnant with a healthy little boy or at this point a lil’ gummy bear :o); another friend and her husband confirmed their pregnancy this week after infertility issues; another friend has a ring waiting in a save spot to pop the question soon! There is still lots of heartache in some relationships that I continue to pray for, but there is so much good that is taking place as well.

Naperville – here we come

So my mom and I drive to Arkansas with Brady, Madison, my niece Alexis, and nephew Trevor for my cousin’s high school graduation and for the Underwood family reunion. We left the night of June 20th and returned the afternoon of June 23. Justin and I had train tickets to Naperville and left Macomb around 6:00 p.m. on the 23rd. The rest of this entry was supposed to be super easy to write because Justin actually wrote a journal entry about the entire event. Unfortunately, someone decided to spill coffee on her laptop a week and a half ago and fried the hard drive of the computer. You would think that since this person is a technology director that she would have all of her files backed up. But no, of course not!!!

So we get to Naperville in the evening; grab a cab; stay at a less than stellar hotel; arrange for a cab to pick us up by 7:00 a.m. for our 8:00 a.m. appointment. The next morning we got up, check out of the hotel bright and early and were off with our backpack to spend the day in Naperville. So the first moment of panic was that our cabbie was clueless how to get to the CIS office. We had the street address so you would think that that should have done the trick. He was calling back to his home base to get help and no one seemed to know what he was talking about. My heart was pounding. We could NOT miss that appointment! Finally after we told him to keep driving and get us to the block where the building was 'supposed' to be, we found the CIS office nestled in a strip mall. We were in line right at 8:00 a.m. So the entire fingerprinting process took a whopping 30 minutes. Seriously we were back outside the building at 8:30. We had the remainder of the day to backpack through Naperville. Luckily there was a mall right across the street from the CIS office. As we headed that direction, I noticed a large tent set up in the far corner of the lot with rugs. I jokingly said to Justin, we should get a rug to take home. Ha Ha. We spent the entire day in the mall. We needed to be back at the train station by 6:00 and wanted to grab a sandwich for the ride home. So we headed out of the mall with our backpack and few bags in tow. Off through the parking lot we went - straight toward the rug tent. Ohh, we have some time before we have to get the cab, let’s just take a peek right??? Wouldn’t you know it. I found a rug that would be just perfect for the house. The salesman tried his best to get us to take it, and we explained that there was just no way that we could carry the rug on the train and get it home. We told him why we were in Naperville and walking around with a backpack, and he was moved by our story. He made us a deal that we just could not refuse. So after laughing hysterically at ourselves, Justin packs this rug on his shoulder and off we went down the streets of Naperville. We took it into Panera to order our sandwiches, and we called a cab. When the cab arrived we discovered that the rug would not fit in the trunk!! This was getting more and more ridiculous. Luckily we got it to fit in the back seat with the window rolled down. And we were off. We were able to get it on the train with no problem at all.

I am pleased to report that the rug fits nicely in our office. It will always bring back the memories of our Naperville fingerprinting excursion.

Whirlwind of Activity

Ok so I left off with our first visit with our caseworker. The month of June was a flurry of activity. Before I lay out the timeline of how things went let me first explain a little about the fingerprints I mentioned several entries ago. We sent our I-600A form to Citizens and Immigration Services (CIS). They then send you a letter assigning you a location and time for you to get your biometric fingerprints taken. People in our area are either assigned to go to Naperville or to St. Louis. We couldn’t believe our ears. Keep in mind that we just had had our FREE biometric fingerprints taken at WIU 5 minutes away from our home just prior to this. Unreal! On Friday, June 13th we get our letter from CIS stating that we are assigned to get our prints taken on June 24th in Naperville at 8:00 a.m. Why is it that the people the furthest away are assigned an 8:00 a.m. time? This is beyond me. So Justin and I decide that we would have to go up on the train the night before, stay at a cheap hotel, and get the prints done. Not so bad right? Well here is how things went – Letter received on June 13th; Next meeting with caseworker in Peoria on June 19th; the kids and I to Arkansas June 21st – 23rd; drive like crazy on the 23rd to get me back to Macomb for the 6:15 p.m. train on the 23rd; Naperville on the 24th; I was supposed to be in charge of VBS registration that entire week; June 26th get physical form to the doctor; back to Chicago June 27th – 29th for a fabulous wedding; June 30th our home visit/inspection; July 2nd leave for Disney. Not to mention I am supposed to be getting a lot done at work including deploying an entirely new phone system. Things were seriously insane!!!

So the meeting with the Carole, the caseworker, on June 19th was a full day ordeal. She interviewed Justin and me together for about 3 hours. We went through all of the paperwork we had turned in; discussed parenting styles; our relationship; feelings we have about people who give their children up for adoption; awareness to cultural differences etc… We had a short lunch break and then she interviewed each of us separately for about 1.5 hours. This was to get a feel for our upbringing; more conversation about our marriage; our parenting styles; etc… I think she was trying to find out if we are nuts or not. Luckily that day we appeared to be somewhat normal :o)

Random thoughts

I haven’t had even a second to get back to this blog! I thought I’d squeeze in a few updates between duties. First of all, for all that requested the Cat Litter Casserole recipe – just click on this link and it will take you to the recipe. We used ground sausage in ours. Secondly, I did take the bedroom pictures. So they are ready whenever we get ready to send our packet to CHI. Third, we had a very fun weekend. My friend Bridget and her husband Jordan come down from Chicago for the weekend. (Now if I could just get a friend to come visit from North Carolina and one from Pennsylvania to come visit I’ll be happy!) It was great to hang out with them and to get to know Jordan better. I am pleased to report, the more we got to know about him the more we liked him! Lol. It was also WIU’s homecoming and Madison walked in her first WIU homecoming parade with her Dazzler dance team. We took the city slickers out to the farm to ride in the combine and tractors so they could see what harvest is all about. Unfortunately the tour was cut short when the combine decided to breakdown and throw sparks on the ground lighting a little section of the field on fire. It didn’t do much damage to the field. Thankfully there were plenty of feet to stomp it out. I told Justin and Lisle that they didn’t have to put on a show for our guests!

On a more serious note. I have been praying for many relationships lately. If you pray, I would ask that you partner with me in asking God to lift up families that are struggling right now. It seems that there are a lot of strained relationships. There are couples that are considering divorce, there are couples that are trying desperately to get pregnant, there are couples that are pregnant and they are on pins and needles because of some risk factors, etc… I know that these are regular life issues, but for some reason I feel like they are more prevalent right now among the people I know. It really is weighing heavy on me that I can't figure out a way to make things better for each of them.

Ohh and at 6:28 we found Squirmy dead in his tank :o( Madison was sad until I told her she could pick out a new fish since I obviously picked out one that was sick!

Bedroom pictures

This entry is way out of order, but I wanted to ‘vent’ just a little. I have really got to get this blog up to date so this makes more sense. Anyway… yesterday we sent pictures to our social worker to include in our dossier (again – I’ll get to that later). Children’s Hope said to include 2 pictures of Justin and I, 2 pictures of us with Brady and Madison, a picture of the front of the house, one of the back of the house, and then a picture of each of the rooms in our home not including bathrooms. So I took pictures of all of the rooms, but I chose not to take one of our master bedroom. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t want to share that with the bazillion of people that will be looking at the documents. Honestly, there is nothing special, weird, or anything else about our master bedroom. It is simply a bedroom. So anyway, I get an email from our social worker yesterday afternoon. She said that she noticed that we did not include a picture of our master bedroom. She was wondering if I forgot that picture?!?!? No, I didn’t forget! I shared with her briefly that I had intentionally left it out. She is so sweet and of course said that it was my decision whether or not to include the picture. Ugh! I told her that I would include it. If she noticed right away that is was missing, that means that as the paperwork works its way ‘up’ for approval it is bound to come up again. I would rather just include it now then run into a road block later. I know this sounds so petty and silly. And to be honest, I don’t really know what the big deal is. It just bothers me. Guess I’ll have to suck it up, make our bed, and take the picture!