July 2006

July 2, 2006
The month of May and June just flew by. Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to post. May was a busy month with school coming to an end and going to all the end of the year activities. P and I worked on the pre-adoption workbook With Eyes Wide Open. It took us the whole weekend to complete all the questions. Good thing it rained. Our first home study meeting went great. It lasted 2 1/2 hours, and time went by very quickly. Our second Home study meeting was at our home. The social worker arrived at one and left about four. She interviewed all the boys. It was fun to hear what the boys think about the adoption and their lives in our household. Overall the meeting went great; it was just long. With each interview with the boys, she told them that they could have a sister by Christmas. As she left our home she was hoping to get the report written up the next week.The next week went very fast and on June 8 she called to tell us we were verbally “home study approved” and she would write up the hard copy when she got back from Europe. That meant we would not have our hard copy of our home study until July.I kept myself busy while she was gone by collecting documents for our dossier. ( The dossier is a large stack of papers that Vietnam requires to adopt.) By the time she got back from Europe I had all the forms I needed to finish our dossier except for the home study. So, we wait.Once the final home study is complete. P, A and I will go toDes Moines to get our fingerprints taken at the Immigration department. Fingerprints will be check to assure the Vietnam government that we do not have a criminal background. Once that is done we will need to wait for the 171 form.All of the dossier forms have to be notarized and some will have to be state certified. More time more waiting.The final step is to send all the forms to be authenticated in San Fransisco at the Vietnam Consulate. More time more waiting and more money. It will cost $50 per document to get authenticated, about 400 to 500 dollars. After that, the forms get sent to our agency. They will check everything over and if they are O.K., they will send it Vietnam. And then the waiting for the referral begins.