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!

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!

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!

Chinese lessons

Everyday, I spend at least 2-3 hours in the car driving children to and from their activities. No lie. I fill up the gas tank several times each week, and I only drive the kids back and forth to school and sports. The upside of all this driving, is that I am able to listen to my Chinese lessons, uninterrupted, for several hours a day. Boring? Absolutely. But, I am slowly, slowly beginning to understand a little Chinese. I also think it's good for Ben to hear Mandarin everyday. He is forgetting so much of his language so fast, that we have to make a concentrated effort to help him remember. I hope that Ben will be able to speak to Logan when he comes!!!

homestudy visit

Yesterday was our first home-study visit. It was great to see Sue again and fill her in on all the boys' activities. I wasn't stressed out about the home-study at all, although David was a little tense. He doesn't like the feeling of being put under a microscope. The only preparation I did for the home-study visit was to quickly mop the kitchen floor. The last time Sue came for our post-placement visit I was a nervous wreck, and cleaned the entire house, top to bottom. After all my stress and fuss, Sue didn't even step out of the kitchen! This time I was much more relaxed. Actually, it was nice to openly talk about our pending adoption with Sue. We haven't told very many people that we are adopting again, simply because we don't want to hear their criticism. We heard enough of it the first time we adopted, and we already know people don't understand our motivation to adopt. People often wonder why we'd want a large family; they can't fathom taking care of 4 boys, let alone 5!! After dinner last night, we all sat and watched the video of Fu, KangChao (Logan) again. Did I mention that we already refer to him by his future American name? It took us months and months to name John, and this time it was so easy. David has always liked the name Logan, and Ben likes it too.

Homestudy!

Today I spent the morning getting ready for our home-study visit, which is on Sunday. I had to gather six photos of our family and finish up the online coursework. We take a million photos, but I had a hard time finding six photos that had all six of us in it, and all of us smiling. At Christmas, I asked Aunt Shan to take some photos of all of us, and of the ten pictures she took, not one of them is very good. I ended up just picking the best of the photos available, which I posted above. I also filled out another financial form, and printed certificates proving that we completed ten hours of online training. Tonight we have the 90 minute webinar to attend, entitled: Coming Home, adopting an older child. The webinar will be broadcast over the internet, from 8:30pm until 10pm. That will complete our training for the home-study.

Paperwork again

Today I'm working on the pre-approval paperwork. This paperwork overlaps (and is often duplicate of) the home-study paperwork. Since I have copies of the paperwork we did in 2008, I am getting this round of paperwork done quite easily. Hooray!! We have been listing to Chinese tapes everyday in the car on the way to and from school. I keep telling Ben that he has to relearn Chinese so that he can talk to Logan when he comes home. I'm slowly, slowly, slowly making progress with the language myself. I'll probably never be fluent, but I'd like to become at least conversational. I also found an online language program that is offered through the public library. I wish I had more time to devote to studying Chinese. Instead, I spend half my time driving kids around. Yesterday, I was four hours in the car driving kids, and tonight I have to drive 90 min. each way to pick up Austin from a track meet! I wonder if Logan will like to run races, play basketball, or take Taekwondo?