Saturday, November 14, 2009

Hi, I-171!

I got home from a business trip this afternoon to find our I-171 in the mail!

I guess that when the USCIS said that they would send us their decision "shortly," they meant "right away!"

Here's hoping that any other issues that we encounter are resolved as quickly and easily.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Back on track

I received a response from the USCIS this morning:

Dear Ms. A,

Please disregard the denial you received.

The information you submitted is enough to have the decision over turned. You will be receiving a decision on your application shortly.

Thank you,
District Adoptions

*Sigh of relief*

Thank you for commiserating with me!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Ooph!

We received a letter of decision from the USCIS today. The decision was that we have abandoned our request and they have subsequently denied it. The reason? That we did not respond to a request that they sent us on August 20. Hmmm... If we didn't respond to it, why do we have a receipt from them from August 31 indicating that they received our response?

I called the USCIS main office to find out what we need to do - they gave me an email address. I emailed our USCIS office and attached copies of all of the correspondence we have received from them.

Hopefully, this will be resolved quickly. At least we are not in a hurry right now!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Things my mother said

My mother told me that the first word I ever uttered was the "s" word. She claims that my sister taught me how to say the word and how to appropriately use it in a sentence. My first sentence being "S***! I cracka toe-a!"

My mother used to like to tell me about how when they were trying to potty train me, they let me watch my sister and brother use the potty, and that I insisted that I wanted to pee like my brother "Standing up!"

When my brother and I were teenagers and went to the humane society and picked up a lab-mix puppy, I called my mom at work and told her "We have a visitor, and he's going to stay." Her first words were, "If you brought a puppy home, you had better bring it back to wherever you got it, because you cannot keep it!" How did she know that we had gone and picked up a puppy behind her back?

When I asked my mom if we could just bring him by her work so that she could see him before she made up her mind, she said "Ok." I knew we had her :). She ended up loving that dog - she even let him sleep in the bed with her when she watched him for 5 weeks while I was in Europe years later.

One time, when I was being a terrible teen, my mom asked me "Do you tell your friends how rotten I am?" I told her, "No, but I can start!" My friends actually loved my mom - they always told me how lucky I was to have such a cool mom. I couldn't let her know that at the time, though!

When I was living two hours away from my mom, going to college, my phone broke. When she tried calling, all she got was a busy signal. Concerned, she hopped in her car and drove to my place to make sure I was ok. She knocked, I answered, she said "Thank goodness you are ok! Do you know your phone is broken?" Then she hopped in her car and went home.

My mom said "I love you" to me a LOT. I think that is probably one of the most important things she said.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Books, Books, Books

It seems that whenever we go anywhere, we find new books to buy for our daughter. Jason came home last night with a bag of books that he bought at a hospital book sale:

"Goodnight Moon"
"Where the Wild Things Are"
and a Dr. Seuss reader.

So, if you are keeping count, so far we have two Ugly Dolls, four paintings for her bedroom, and ten books. All while we say to ourselves "It is too soon to really start buying anything."

Hmmm...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A list

We received a list of things that we will have to get together for our second dossier with instructions not to begin working on any of it yet. Our agency told us that we should hold off on collecting any of the items until January-ish. The list isn't very long and it doesn't look like it will be too difficult to get what we need - aside from something that we will need to get from our mortgage holder - they have been extraordinarily unhelpful when we have needed anything from them thus far. There is also a County Property Document that we will need to have filled out by our county tax assessor - I'm not sure how difficult that will be...

It is nice to at least have some idea of what we are going to need down the road a bit. We can start finding out exactly whom we need to bug to get these things done.

Aside from that, we are still waiting for our I171h - our finger prints were taken on August 24! Come on, Dallas! How slow can you go???

Oh, and will someone please stop me from constantly checking out Janie and Jack? My fingers are itching to do some serious clothes shopping!!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Nothing new here

We don't have any new news to share, but I have been having such a great time reading about other families who are in Russia for their court dates this week and other families who have received referrals within the past few days!

It makes me so happy for the families who have been waiting for things to move, and for their new family members. I hope that things continue to move along for everyone - including us :)