Garden Variety Family

RSS

I just discovered, well just took the time to discover RSS.  Which is a silly thing to say, because subscribing to RSS feeds is all about saving time.  I now have a reader that automatically subscribes to cool blogs that I follow.  I know I am slow on the uptake here but I am excited. Now I can read what everyone is talking about really quickly and click through if there is something I want comment on or connect to through my blog.  In case there is anyone out there like me who isn't down with RSS there is a very cool video here  made by the people at CreativeTechs (they speak my kind of language).  There Their tag line is "left brain support for right brain professionals" I love it!  I found it at Blogging Basics 101.  Trust me, it doesn't get any easier than their explanation no matter what side of your brain you use.

approved!

I am simply elated to report that our home study, once plucked from limbo, was approved on the first try!  Fabulous!  Our social worker at Hillside Family of Agencies is awesome!  My agency is doing a great job as well.  The fact that they marked it "urgent" and pushed it through to be approved in one day is really more than I could have asked for albeit what I wished for. 

Now things are going to move kinda fast.  We have to send out our I-600A form (check out this page too.) in order to get the 1-171H--approval to bring a foreign orphan into the US.  I feel like I am not ready, but I am -- I just have to revisit all the paperwork that I have set aside for this and check it over again. 

Wow!! this is really happening!  I am happy again, so fickle...

speedy home study

Things are moving along.  A week ago we had our home visit and the draft of the report was done the next day!  We have an intern doing alot of the leg work and we are her only case right now.  We met this week to verify and go over everything so in a week and half we have it at our agency being reviewed as we speak.  This is incredibly fast and things are moving along at a decent clip.  I don't want to make predictions but I think things might actually get done sooner than I thought!

Above is what I wrote, then saved as a draft, but of course in the meantime it seems my home study draft is lost in limbo somewhere.  My social worker sent it via e-mail but my case worker at the agency says she didn't get it.  Uugh!  I have a feeling kit it got filtered into her "junk" folder.  Sometimes that happens to the e-mails I send to her.  So yes, now we have lost a week of time.

The week started with hope and has ended with frustration...so goes the ebb and flow of adoption labor..as I have learned...

certifying our existence

Naturally part of the dossier is getting together proof that my husband and I are who we say we are.  We have been advised by our agency that we will need 2-3 copies of our birth certificates and 2 copies of our marriage certificate.  They referred us to vitalchek, an on-line company that will obtain records: birth, marriage, divorce and death, for you from anywhere in the country and send them to you for a fee.

The fees for each state are different, which appears to be based on what that state charges for the particular document requested plus vitalchek's processing fee. The fees charged seem to be somewhat in line with each state's office of vital records.  I checked 2 states that apply to us, New York and Missouri.  Rather than going to all the government sites to obtain your records, you can accomplish the same thing on one site.  However; I did notice that if you don't mind waiting longer, mailing your request is cheaper at least in New York but, you are going to wait --3-4 weeks-- and you have to provide a copy of your license or passport.

Please note that a marriage license, it is a whopping $45 each, since we need multiple copies, this seems a bit tough to swallow.  We happen to live in the town where we obtained our marriage license, after contacting the town clerk, I learned it is only $10 a copy.  All I have to do is go to the town clerk and I will have my record, no waiting!!!  So if you are out there trying to get vital records for any purpose I suggest you check out these three options. 

One more bit of advise, be sure the record you are purchasing is a "certified copy"  something with a raised seal that is acceptable for legal purposes.  There are a lot of genealogy sites, or sections of sites, out there where you can obtain "unofficial" copies for building family trees, etc.  These are not what you want.  More to come....