Ups & Downs

Ups

Our I-600a has been approved and we have received the official letter! I guess they accepted my sworn statement of having no criminal history so we're good to go. We have received our travel packet which is tons of great reading. It has so much information in it from how money works, to meeting birth families, to local cultural norms. We await our court date which will not be until at least a week from next Friday. After court we should get our Adoption Decree in about 3 weeks. With that in hand, Scott will be ready to travel to Ghana to file the I-600 at the embassy.

Williams received the bag of goodies from us last Wednesday. This bag, called the Welcome Bag, is a gallon-sized Ziploc bag that announces to the child that they have been matched to a family for adoption. Included in it was a TY monkey, a soccer t-shirt, a photo album of our family and life, a letter, a bag full of Hot Wheels cars, stickers, glasses with big googly eyeballs, and a little notebook. What a strange sensation it is to imagine him looking at pictures of us and reading the letter that I wrote him! We received a picture of him holding all his loot and it makes my heart do flip flops.

Downs

I got a call from our Adoption Coordinator this evening to let me know of a unforeseen situation that has arisen with our case. I can tell when she calls, just by her voice, whether it is a happy call or a not so happy call. Flip flops from the stomach again, but not in a good way. Best case scenario, this new situation will not effect us at all or slow down our process. Worst case scenario (very unlikely) everything falls apart. I have to let myself consider each option in order to prepare for anything, but I will not get myself worked up. Now, if I can just get Scott to stop saying, "This sounds really bad!" then maybe I can really not obsess over it. I think a good synonym for "adoption" would be "obsession". God can handle how he chooses.

Don't Try This At Home

Hannah who is 9, almost 10, is into food coloring right now. She keeps begging me to add food coloring to all kinds of different foods. Every time my "knee jerk" response is to say no but then I think - What harm can come from a little color?

Well, let me tell you, trying to make yellow hominy purple does not work! She added the appropriate amounts of purple and red, but, as you see, there is a definate mixture problem. We ended up having a lovely lavender cole slaw.

Adam and Hannah thoroughly enjoyed their dinner. My husband Scott and other daughter Holly joined us a little bit later. You should have seen the looks on their faces.

Not a lot of the hominy got eaten.

Fingerprintless

The FBI gave up on trying to see my fingerprints after 2 trips to the Dept. of Homeland Security to the the offices of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. This is where one of the many applications must be filed in order to bring your internationally adopted child home to the US. Today I returned with a 3rd trip to give a sworn statement that "I'm not a crook", as my daughter Hannah puts it. And I'm not, although my lack of fingerprints might suggest that it would have been a nice fit for me.

The good news is that Sharon, my new best friend at USCIS, said that with the statement everything is done and she'll put our approval in the mail. Yah hoo! This step needs to happen in order to get our letter from the US embassy in Ghana giving us the go-ahead to come to the embassy. Scott will go to Ghana when all is in place, to file another immigration application.

By the way, everyone will be happy to know that I found my missing Croc's. They were in my daughter's room next to the bird cage. We also found Hannah's missing single shoe next to the pond at my sister's house. Now why didn't we check there!

(Actually, I didn't even notice she came home with only one shoe!)

Jumping In

Ok, I've put it off for long enough. The pressure of writing just the right thing for my first post has just gotten too much for me! So here it is...low impact, non-entertaining, non-controversial, and caffeine/fat-free. I will mention each of my kids, in alphabetical order, so as not to give them room to claim any superiority over the other, Adam, Hannah, Holly and Williams (on his way from Ghana).



The 3 items in my blog title tend to consume our lives. They are the 4 words that can be heard most often coming out of my mouth, but I certainly had to entertain many other words such as "ball game", "no", "Africa", and "adoption". In the end the winners just sounded good together.



Thanks for dropping in. I have to pick up everyone early from school today for an orthodontist appointment. I'm bummed out because I have to wear my black Croc's because I can't find my cute pink and green ones. I'm eager to get back home to check out my friend's blog for a post. She's in Ghana. (See what I mean by my title!)