Shameless Solicitation

It looks like our homestudy is complete and we are now just waiting for approval before we get it in our hands and can move onto step two of this long process: submitting the homestudy and other paperwork to USCIS (Immigration) and getting an appointment for FBI fingerprinting in Boston. Despite the fact that we've already been fingerprinted at the local Chatham police station and cleared for anything criminally related, we must now have our backgrounds checked by the big guns. It'll be worth a trip into Boston at least and then - check! Another step toward getting our baby.

As we wait, we've been killing time reading other adoptive parents blogs, joining in the Yahoo group for Holt's Ethiopian adoptive parents, and seeking out African cultural events like the wine tasting we went to at St. Christopher's church in downtown Chatham where the proceeds benefited HIV victims in Kenya through Maseno Missions. In reading other blogs, we came across a few couples who set up fundraising efforts online to raise money to support their adoption. Initially I thought this was a tad tacky and not really my speed, but let's face it, adoption costs are steep and how many of us have friends who have solicited our support for marathon running, Breast Cancer walks, etc.? All of these are worthy causes and I realized that my hesitation to start a fund raiser stemmed from the fact that our goals were of a purely personal nature as opposed to a larger cause. At any rate, we stumbled upon a website that specializes in selling Ethiopian coffee and allows adoptive families to set up a link so a portion of any sales that come through their page are designated toward their fundraising efforts. This particular donation raising scheme seemed a little less "solicity" to us. Plus, who doesn't like a good cup of Ethipian java to get going in the morning? Win/win, right? Plus, our friends and family and any other random followers of my Ethiopian blog can taste one of our child's homeland's specialties. We appreciate any support - every little bit helps get us one step closer to bringing our baby home.

Click here to buy some Meyer Adoption fund Ethiopian coffee now!

Final Home Study

On Friday, October 1st, we had our third and final home study, this time at our house. I made sure to have Tab on hand for Deb (that's the innkeeper in me) which she was pretty stoked about and plenty of cookies from the inn which Hailey, her daughter seemed to enjoy. We showed Deb around the house and answered questions about our finances, where the new baby would sleep, etc. Since we own the inn and the mortgage for our house is included on the inn's books, our financial status looks really weird on paper. Deb said she might have a hard time explaining our lack of ownership or renting, but will figure something out. Hopefully this will not hold up the process.

After the hour or so visit, Deb told us that she had bumped us to the front of her homestudy piles since we had completed all the paperwork so quickly and had done our homework, so to speak. We are now just waiting for her to write up the homestudy in order to move forward with the process. She guesses she will be done in about two weeks so we are eagerly waiting for this piece and have all documents then ready to send off to immigration for approval so we can get an appointment to get our fingerprints done in Boston.

In the meantime, we have been reading others' blogs about their own process, we took an online adoption course which was one of five that we are required to take. It was called "Let's Talk Adoption" and to be honest, was mostly kind of lame, but gave a few good pieces of advice like the idea of telling the child's birth and homecoming story at each birthday as a tradition. James also surprised us all with a surprise that came in the mail - tee shirts for all of us with "Mom," "Dad," "Sister," and "Ethiopia" across the front. Abigail opened and distributed them all and we were all excited to "advertise" our plans. James has also been avidly investigating travel plans and following the Holt Ethiopia Adoption Yahoo group for tips and to learn about the timelines on others' progress. His enthusiasm is obvious and I'm so excited that he is so excited about the process.

And so we wait...