Sunday, February 20, 2011

home study almost done!


We received the first draft of our home-study by email today! Hooray! We just need to sign and return the form saying that it's correct, and then it will be sent to WACAP for review. Once the home-study is accepted, we'll be officially accepted into the China program and submitted for approval. Our social worker, Sue, has to come visit us again on March 18th, and then we're done seeing her for a little while. In the meantime, we wonder if Logan will like skiing, taekwondo, basketball, running, swimming and boating. We are such an active family, always on the go, that we hope Logan likes to be busy too. We skied with Ben all day today, and we are looking forward to teaching Logan how to ski too! This week we are buying a new (and bigger) van. Now that we know that we really will have five boys, we decided that we needed an even larger car. Most vans and SUV's fit seven passengers, but we always seem to take at least one friend with us where-ever we go. This weekend, John's friend Tyler is over for the entire weekend. We went skiing today, and we'll go skiing again tomorrow. So yes, we need a van that is almost as large as a school bus!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Almost two months now!


Already it's been almost two months since we put in the application to adopt Logan. Today I emailed our social worker to ask if she received all the documents she needs. She has, but she's out of town. She promises to finish up our home-study by the end of next week. So, in case someone is reading this and is wondering about the time-frame to adopt, a home-study takes at least two months. Things could go faster, but not much. We already had a previous home-study from which to work, and we had all the documents completed. When we adopted Ben and John, it took us about five months to complete the home-study phase. On another note, this past weekend we took the kids on a ski trip to Holiday Valley. David and I had to stay with Ben on the beginner hills, and the other three big kids went off on their own to tear up the mountain. It reminded us again of why we decided to adopt Logan. The teens are all growing up so quickly, and Ben is going to need a brother his own age. We hope that we are able to go get Logan before next ski season! We wonder if Logan has ever even seen snow, since he is in a province about 5 hours south of Beijing. Ben and John had both seen a little snow before, but nothing like the amount of snow that we receive here in the winter. Ben was just enraptured the first time we had a significant snowfall. We hope Logan likes to ski too!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

OUR NEW SON!

Here is a photo of our new son, Logan!! John and I watched a bunch of videos of boys 4-6 years old, and John immediately liked Fu, Kang Chao. He seems spirited, and I think he looks a lot like John! We're working hard to get all the papers completed so that we can bring him home soon.


One of the most important things when adopting is to get everyone involved in the adoption to communicate with each other. Today, our social worker (the one who visited our home) sent an email to our home-study coordinator at WACAP asking for copies of our home-study documents. Over a week ago I emailed WACAP just to make certain that they have everything they need for the home-study, and now it appears that they never sent the documents on to the social worker so that she can finish the home-study report. For the home-study, we had to fill out a financial disclosure (and get it notarized), medical reports for each of us (and get them notarized), child abuse clearance forms (sent to the child abuse registry), police clearance reports, finger-prints, and letters of reference. We can re-use our dossier for the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs, but US immigration requires all new documents for the home-study. Now if only I can get WACAP to get the documents to the social worker in Buffalo, we'll be all set. Until the next stack of documents anyway!