Our dossier has officially been in Korea for two weeks now and the suspense is high! I didn’t think much about how I’d feel about our dossier being sent, before that it was just more of a race to check the boxes of things I needed to do to get it sent. I was kind of amazed by how quickly things moved all in one day. Before the dossier could be sent we needed to have our I600-a approved by USCIS. They provided a number to call to check your status (or maybe it was meant for other things but thats how I used it). I made it a thing to call every Tuesday to check where we were at. I slipped in a call the Friday before we were approved and found out we had been assigned an officer (a really promising sign we were almost done). I decided after weighing how annoying I was being to go ahead and call again on my regular Tuesday just in case. I happened to get our officer on the phone and I apologized for calling so soon again and asked how we were doing. She said “oh you just called a couple days ago!” But then went on to let us know she approved us but cautioned our approval hadn’t even left the building yet and not to expect it till that Friday or early the next week (probably more likely then). We couldn’t send the dossier without the actual letter approving us so even though we knew we were approved we couldn’t do anything more until the letter arrived.
Friday morning came and weirdly the mail carrier showed up hours earlier than normal, I thought “ha maybe they’re coming early to deliver our letter” I jumped up to check and one envelope fell under Kyle’s shoe and I thought “just watch it be that one”, I fished it out and sure enough it was from USCIS.
I called our agency right away to see what to do next and they told me if I could send a scanned copy right now they’re sending a package to Korea and our dossier could be included if I got it to them in time. I quickly figured out how to download a scanner app and sent it right over!
Within the hour I got a note that it was in the mail, then I got the DHL tracking number (much to my package stalking hearts delight) and was told it would be there Monday! Monday! For some reason I couldn’t have imagined it getting there so quickly.
On Monday in Korea (Sunday night in California) after watching my DHL updates like a hawk I saw it making it’s way to it’s destination. At that same time one of my first and best adoption buddies was also heading to that location to meet her son for the first time. We had both chosen Korea within a few days of each other and and right after we signed up with our agency we ended up going on vacation near by them and we met up to celebrate. We had talked about how fun it would have been if we were traveling together but I said I’d be there in spirit! I kept thinking how crazy would it be for our dossier to arrive at the agency in Korea at the same time they were there. Well crazy it was! I got the text it was delivered right when they were meeting their little boy! It was the coolest thing! We didn’t get to travel together in the traditional sense but our life story and a ton of photos traveled right along side them!
So now we wait. I thought I’d make a time line so it would be easier to visualize where we are in the process! Our agency anticipates we will wait 1-3 months for a referral to come. I’ve quizzed them exactly what that will be like and if we get any heads up. We don’t get any warning and they don’t even know who is getting a referral until “DHL walks through the door” (the referrals don’t come to them digitally, everything is a hard copy). Then when they get it they will call us and give us a description and ask if we’d like to see the file. Everything is then scanned and sent to us to look over.
I can hardly wait! I’ve heard of other families getting referrals faster than a month and even though I’m not expecting it, I’m being extra cautious to always be somewhere with good reception! I’ve never been so excited for a phone call in my life!
Hopefully we’ll have some exciting news soon!
It’s finally complete! We got our final copy to review and approve and now as soon as a couple small things are changed we get our official copy! I had hoped it would be finished by mid June but I knew I was asking for a lot in a short amount of time but our amazing social worker made it happen!
Whenever I thought about the home study I had a loose idea of what it would be like. I knew people talked about a ton of paperwork (which did eventually come!) and after attending foster care workshops I assumed most of it would be a big home inspection. After talking to other families and reading lots of blogs about it I learned the home visit really was a series of meetings where the social worker got to know us.Way before we met with anyone face to face though the homestudy required hours and hours of preparation. We did about 16 hours of education (plus homework), met with a psychologist and did testing (really long testing!), had physicals and blood tests, filled out a gigantic questionnaire about us as individuals, our marriage, each other, our families, our childhood, our parenting philosophy, adoption, our faith, and more, we got finger printed, and became very familiar with our banks notaries!
After we submitted all of the paperwork we were able to be assigned our social worker and schedule our home visit! After sitting in front of a computer filling out everything the idea of meeting someone from our homestudy agency in person suddenly made everything feel very real. Even though we had been working on this for months, this was the part that I’d been anticipating the most even though I really felt under prepared for what we’d be talking about during our first 4 hour meeting in our dining room! She was able to get us scheduled pretty quick so I cleaned house, bought new backyard furniture (although shockingly this was not what made us pass the home visit), made blueberry muffins the night before, turned on my favorite french pandora station and opened the door at 10 AM on memorial day to the woman who would be writing the document hopefully approving us for adoption.
We started with a really quick house tour and then it was down to talking at the dining table and getting to know each other (or I guess mostly her getting to know us). We talked about a lot of the same things as we’d talked to the psychologist about and that we’d written in our biographies. There is a lot of repetition in the beginning phases! We talked about our marriage, our family, our expectations, and so on. Somehow the time flew by and we were on to scheduling the next visit. After that we had our individual meetings the next week after we got back from vacation. Individual meetings sounded a lot more intimidating than they were. Again it was a lot of conversation about our childhoods, family members, and we had to fill out more questionnaires.Our sweet social worker knew we needed to speed this process along so she stayed the night in town and came back early the next morning for our 3rd required visit.
This visit was really the one I had been looking forward to the most. This one was the visit we got to discuss the profile of the child we were hoping for and the special needs we were comfortable with. Honestly, I was trying to dive in to this from the first meeting but all good things come in time! We already had filled out a medical needs check list for our placing agency and she went over that with us and clarified some questions we still had. In the end she approved us for a boy or girl or twins 0-3 years old and a list of special needs we felt comfortable with. After that we discussed our finances, did a quick walk through of the back yard and garage, and that was it! We waved goodbye and we were done with our final home visit!!A few days later she sent us the rough draft and we got a chance to review it and check for any errors. Then it was sent to our placing agency for review, then back to us for final review.
We did one last read through of the 15 page story of our lives, emailed our agency, and soon we will receive the official final copy and then it’ll be time to begin the I-600A process! One step closer!
I always like to make sure to set aside one day just for us to go play in the blooms and take photos and revel in the beauty all around us. This year we also had the opportunity to bring some of our family and their friends visiting from Minnesota along with us which is always so fun to share this unique Central Valley treat with those not from here. My grandmothers friend explained to us that the same bees that are here pollinating the almond blossoms are later brought to North Dakota (where they have a family farm) to pollinate there in the summer. I always love learning things like that, I had no idea we had traveling bees here working in our local orchards.
Spending so much time in the almond orchards always makes me in the mood to bake all things almond and this year I found and perfected a delicious almond flour pancake recipe. I don’t have any photos of them because I always devour them before I get a picture but trust me, they are amazing. They are thin but light and fluffy, with just the perfect hint of sweet almond flavor. Make these and imagine you’re here playing in the orchards!
