We had our fingerprints done today to finish our I600A form (the form we had to fill out to be allowed to bring an immigrant into the country) we had to go to the USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) office which was in St. Paul off of Snelling Ave (not too far from the state fair grounds). Our Appointment was at 8 AM, of course since it was so early it was also snowing to add to the excitement! We arrived about 20 minutes early and had to wait until 8:00 exactly, for them to open the doors. Once inside we had some more paper work to fill out, and then it was on to the fingerprinting!
I have to say I was quite impressed with the fingerprinting capabilities that they had. They were able to scan all of finger prints into the computer, so there was no ink!! We left with squeaky-clean fingers!
So, now it take 90 business days for them to process our information to give us permission to bring an immigrant into the country. This must be done before we can travel. Since we are getting this done now, it should not interfere with our travel arrangements when the referral comes (which might not be for a while anyway).
So now we have officially done everything we can do (except pray and wait)!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
We’re on THE LIST!
Today we had our 2nd home-study interview with our Social Worker (SW). This time it was in our home. Let me give you a glance of our life leading up to this home visit:
Fawnda- cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living-room, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the tub. Trying to calm Jason down from being totally stressing out about the SW coming to our house and having it be clean enough to parent a child.
Jason-cleaning the basement (including the storage room and laundry room), cleaning the office, vacuuming the whole house again (stupid dog hair) and the stairs, scrubbing the top of the stove, going back over all the parts of the house that Fawnda cleaned to make sure that she did a good enough job.
Thankfully we did not get into a fight about the house and we were able to get it, as Annie would say: “Shinning like the top of the Chrysler building!”
Our SW showed up at exactly 12:30 and we gave her the official tour of the house. We then sat down in the dining room to finish our interview. We talked about our parenting philosophy, our support systems and our plans to share our adoption story with our family, friends and our future child. After we were done with the interview she had some papers for us to sign, approving us for the adoption.
So our next question was: “What is our next step?” to which she replied: “you are now done with the home-study and your name is going on THE LIST!” So we are OFFICIALLY waiting. Our names are now in the Korea Program waiting to get to the top of the pile and to get our referral. This could be a long wait, and we may not see a referral for several months.
I am still in shock that we are done with all the paper work and home-study. We just have to get invited to be finger-printed for approval to bring an immigrant into the country, and to wait some more. We thought that there were still more steps to be done. I think that this waiting is going to be the hardest part because there is little we can do; up to now we have been very active in getting to the next step. Now we just wait. To help with the wait, there is a support group for waiting families that meets once a month. I am thinking of attending next month to get support and also, hopefully, to meet other adoptive families.
After we get our referral, we have to wait 12-14 weeks to travel to the country to pick up our child. We found out today that we have some time during our stay in Korea to do some site-seeing. It will be cool to go on some of the tours and learn more about the culture.
Fawnda- cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living-room, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the tub. Trying to calm Jason down from being totally stressing out about the SW coming to our house and having it be clean enough to parent a child.
Jason-cleaning the basement (including the storage room and laundry room), cleaning the office, vacuuming the whole house again (stupid dog hair) and the stairs, scrubbing the top of the stove, going back over all the parts of the house that Fawnda cleaned to make sure that she did a good enough job.
Thankfully we did not get into a fight about the house and we were able to get it, as Annie would say: “Shinning like the top of the Chrysler building!”
Our SW showed up at exactly 12:30 and we gave her the official tour of the house. We then sat down in the dining room to finish our interview. We talked about our parenting philosophy, our support systems and our plans to share our adoption story with our family, friends and our future child. After we were done with the interview she had some papers for us to sign, approving us for the adoption.
So our next question was: “What is our next step?” to which she replied: “you are now done with the home-study and your name is going on THE LIST!” So we are OFFICIALLY waiting. Our names are now in the Korea Program waiting to get to the top of the pile and to get our referral. This could be a long wait, and we may not see a referral for several months.
I am still in shock that we are done with all the paper work and home-study. We just have to get invited to be finger-printed for approval to bring an immigrant into the country, and to wait some more. We thought that there were still more steps to be done. I think that this waiting is going to be the hardest part because there is little we can do; up to now we have been very active in getting to the next step. Now we just wait. To help with the wait, there is a support group for waiting families that meets once a month. I am thinking of attending next month to get support and also, hopefully, to meet other adoptive families.
After we get our referral, we have to wait 12-14 weeks to travel to the country to pick up our child. We found out today that we have some time during our stay in Korea to do some site-seeing. It will be cool to go on some of the tours and learn more about the culture.
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