Given how long it has been since I last posted here I can't imagine I have anyone still checking, but in the event that I do I wanted to invite you to my new blog at shelley123.wordpress.com

I am making this change because we have accepted a referral of a beautiful baby girl from Ethiopia and it doesn't make since to have a blog address of ourvietnamadoption.blogspot.com

A Special Thank You

Although we had decided to adopt from Ethiopia a few weeks ago we were not officially in the program until our agency received our updated home study. Therefore we did not have the information we needed to begin working on our home study. Also we thought we had to wait to change our i-171h which we have now found out we may be able to wait until we actually receive a referral from Ethiopia. What this mean is that we are now in a mad dash to get our dossier done ASAP and with Christmas just a couple of days away we don't want that to delay anything.

So today Mike and I began contacting people for paperwork we needed. To our amazement all 3 of our references and both our employers completed the letters we need for our dossier in just one day.

I would like to say a very public THANK YOU to these people. We are lucky to have such special friends and family.

Christmas Swap

Yes I know it has been a long time since I posted. First off we did make a decision, we are going to do a dualing adoption with Vietnam and Ethiopia. We have been working on getting our home study updated and paperwork for our dossier. In fact today we just had our home study officially approved and we are now part of both programs. Our next step is to submit our paperwork to UCIS so we can get a i-171h for Ethiopia.

The most exciting reason for posting today however came in the mail today. As part of one of the Vietnam Yahoo group I belong to Mike and I participated in a Christmas swap. I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to Shawn and Carolyn who are currently living in China. The gifts they sent were incredibly special. First they sent a silk baby blanket. It is so soft and beautiful. The symbols on the blanket mean good fortune. Second they recently took a trip to Ho Chi Minh City. While there they went to a quilt shop managed by the French NGO providing jobs for woman. The website is www.vietnam-quilts.org. they are a great cause and worth supporting. From there they bought us a handmade ornament and a 2008 calendar. I am such a sentimental person, that these were just the perfect gifts. We will cherish them always.

Here are the pictures:

Options

We still haven't made a decision but I have decided to post what options our agency has given us. I emailed our agency to find out about starting a concurrent adoption. Though not impossible she said it is a lot harder.

Instead she suggested that we do a dualing adoption. This is where you submit a dossier for a different country then which ever country has a referral first you take that one and your other dossier is withdrawn. The only extra fees are what it takes to prepare the dossier.

The other countries our agency works with that we qualify for are Russia, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, and an African American Domestic Adoption. We have already eliminated Ethiopia because it is a pioneer program for our agency just like their Vietnam program, and we are just not ready for another pioneer program. I don't think we will do Russia because the program is just starting back up and the children are older than we were hoping for.

The good news is Kazakhstan also allows for adoptions of unrelated children so we would still have a chance of bringing home two children. The difficult part is it requires 6-7 weeks in country or 2 trips and I am nervous about a "blind referral." I also still haven't figured out what the average age at referral is for our agency.

We are also seriously considering an African American Domestic adoption. This was actually our first choice when we started this adoption journey but I felt more comfortable being in a line than waiting to be chosen. I love the fact that we could bring our child home from the hospital, that he/she would be ours from almost the beginning of his/her life. I still don't know if I am strong enough to deal with the possibility that the birth mother could change her mind.

So there you have it. As you can imagine I am a basket case trying to decide what is best for us and our future children.

Scrap booking party

I went to my first scrap booking party Friday night. It was a lot of fun. Everyone shares supplies and ideas. The best part was every time you finish a page you get a small prize provided by the hostess. I did two pages so I got this great eye cream (awesome since I'm not getting any younger) and some adhesives to put pictures in my scrapbooks.

The bad part was I was unable to take my scrap booking stuff. I had planned on coming home after work before going but I didn't make it. So the two pages I did were my friends. It ended up being her youngest daughter's baptism. Her daughter is a student in my classroom and being the youngest her scrapbook has the least amount in it, so that made it ok that I didn't have my own pages to do.

Isn't she precious:

Vaccinations Part 1

Despite all the recent discussion about vaccinations on the yahoo groups and blogs I am actually talking about mine and not our future children. I went in and got my first Hepatitis A shot. Luckily because of my job I had the Hepatitis B series years ago. Mike will be starting his series of Hepatitis shots next week. He unfortunately has to endure both A and B.

In adoption news the wait only seems to be getting longer. Our agency is now thinking it might be April of next year before they get their first referrals and we are not #1 on the list.

The good news is our agency is giving us some options that we are considering. I don't want to say anything more until we make a decision, but I will keep you posted.

We Need Children

Mike and I went to Fairmont Hot Springs in Montana this weekend to celebrate our anniversary. Now while most couples our age were relaxing in the hot pool we were in the swimming pool racing each other to the bottom of the of the deep end. It really turned into more of a Mike pushing me down to the bottom because, to steal a term from Lawmommy, I am freakishly buoyant and no matter how hard I try I can't get to the bottom on my own.

So we are ready to entertain our children, and we are even willing to move to the shallow end.