Birthday Adventures

For Doug's birthday, I came up with the most brilliant weekend!  Since I wouldn't be up for any hard core shenanigans, I needed to get creative.  For starters, I organized a camping trip at Shenandoah National Park.  Armed with all our camping gear, plus pretty much every pillow we own, we set off!  Apparently camping with two feet of pillows covering the tent floor is photo worthy.

The adventurous part would take place later.  The plan was for Doug to bring his road bike and then I would shuttle him and his bike up the mountain and he could bomb down, trying to break his goal of 50 mph.  Unfortunately mother nature was not on our side.  Not only were the mountain roads wet from constant rain over the weekend, but the morning Doug was supposed to go biking, visibility was about 10 feet due to fog. Since both of us want Doug alive for his next birthday, he decided to take a rain check (pun intended).  At least he still had his birthday apple pie!  It only took six matches for me to get all the way through the Happy Birthday song (thanks wind)!

87 Miles to Peru!

The "Athens 2 Atlanta" road skate in Georgia is the oldest (and I think longest) inline skating race in the U.S.  The 87 mile, hilly course will be more then double my current longest skate of 40 miles (Madison to Devil's Lake).  The parallels between a 2-3 year adoption journey and an 87 mile inline race are mind-boggling.  Both require an immense amount of time and energy, pain and sacrifice.  As we power through the race (and several long hills) we will imagine our child at the finish line, and realize just how much the end result outweighs all the struggles.

As we prepare for this race in October, Doug and I need your help!  Please consider sponsoring us through what will surely be a labor of love!  You can use the fundraising link on the right side of your screen, or contact us directly.  The race coordinator is amazing and is working with us to lower the entrance costs so that we can maximize our fundraising effort.  The goal is to have 87 sponsors, one for each mile!  All funds will be going to help offset a portion of the $25,000-$30,000 total cost of the adoption.

Please help us reach the ultimate goal of bringing our child home from Peru!  Doug is up for the challenge.  Are you?

Paperwork Free!

Yes, you heard that correctly: DOUG AND I ARE CURRENTLY PAPERWORK FREE!  When we started this process we received two large paperwork packets, one from each agency.  We completed the homestudy packet several weeks ago and revisions are currently being made to our official homestudy (12 page document that sums up our lives and motivation to adopt, written by our social worker).  The paperwork for our placement agency, Villa Hope, consisted of our formal application documents.  For any that are curious here is what was included:

Fee Schedule
Photos
Financial Statments
Statement of Motivation
Our Child Statement
Guardianship Letter
Proof of Health Insurance
Two forms of ID
Conviction Statements
USCIS Inquiries
Adoption Services Agreement
Online Education Certificates
Behavior Management Agreement
Grievance Policy
Disclosure of Information Policy
Supervised Provider Agreements
Post Placement Requirement Agreement
Reference Letters
Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificate

And since Doug is amazing and offered to make copies of everything and drive to the post office, all that paperwork is now on its way to Alabama along with the largest check we have ever written.  So for the foreseeable future (probably about a week) we don't have to run around getting anything filled out, signed, or notarized!  Huzzah for the small victories!  And we have moved a couple steps along in the overall adoption process!

Bake Sale Test Run

Since I'm planning on having the first bake sale in a couple weeks, I decided to do a test run.  Doug was all for it since he got to be the official taste tester! For the most part everything turned out.  I have a few filling recipes that I will be tweaking, but all the crusts came out amazing. Plus our house has been smelling like heaven since yesterday morning! 

On the bake sale list thus far we have challah, kolaczkis, and mazurek cake (a Polish Easter cake).  Sorry for all the dishes Doug!

All About Fundraising

As Doug and I get further along in the adoption process, the checks we are writing are getting larger and larger.  We saved up for several months beforehand and are currently budgeting carefully and putting everything we save into the adoption. To help offset some of the cost, we have starting bouncing around fundraising options.  Luckily there are other adoption blogs out there full of time-tested fundraising ideas that many adoptive families have utilized.  As most of our friends and family are not in Maryland, we will be relying on fundraisers that can be done mostly online.  Hopefully we can organize one or two of these in the next couple of months.

Please let us know what you think, if you have any other ideas, or if you would like to help with a particular fundraiser!

Bracelet Sale 
The Apparent Project - Items are handmade by Haitians as a means of providing for their families. Half of the cost goes to the person who made the bracelet, half to our adoption.
http://www.apparentproject.org/  & http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/favorite-adoption-fundraiser-ever/

T-Shirt Fundraiser
Chrome Buffalo - Half of the proceeds goes to our adoption.
http://chromebuffalo.com/

Bake Sales
We will be selling cookies, kolaczkis, challah, and any other goodies we think of!

Sponsored Inline Marathon
Athens to Atlanta - Doug and I are planning on participating in the longest inline race in America, 87 miles!
http://www.a2a.net/

Homestudy Interview

After arriving at work early to get caught up from the snow days last week, I headed to our homestudy agency for my individual interview.  Helene asked about my family and school life growing up, friends and interests, and my relationship with Doug.  Lots of fun memories that I haven't thought about in years!  Afterwards, we signed a few papers, I dropped off some more documents with the coordinator, and headed back to the office.  Helene will take all of the documents we've submitted and her notes from the interviews to write up our homestudy.  We should have the first draft in 3 weeks to review.  I'm kind of curious to see what a condensed yet exhaustive interpretation of our lives looks like!

Taking Nashville by (Ice) Storm!

This weekend, Doug and I traveled with my hockey team to Nashville for district playoffs.  There are four teams in the Southeast district, and the winner goes to Nationals in Green Bay.  We ended up winning all of the round-robin games and moved on to the championship game Sunday morning!  My original flight was scheduled to leave before the game, so a couple of my teammates worked to get me on a different flight.  While Doug left Sunday morning on our original flight, I geared up for the game that would decide if we moved on to Green Bay or if our season would be over.  The game was crazy awesome!  Crazy in that the refs were horrible using a 3-man system (all season they run a 2-man crew) so the game became dangerous very quickly.  Awesome because that meant since the other team could get away with hitting my teammates, and especially my goalie, I could get away with hitting them right back!  Now for those of you who aren't as familiar with hockey, when I say "Hit" I don't mean throwing punches (I know I'm aggressive, but I'm not violent!).  I mean some body-checking, and becoming a brick wall in front of my goalie when she had the puck.  90 minutes later, we were crowned the Southeast District Champions!  Instant flashbacks to being 12-years-old and having an award ceremony with medals and parents taking team pictures on the ice!

The celebrating was short lived when I found out my afternoon flight had been cancelled due to freezing rain in the DC area. All flights in and out had been grounded.  Having to spend the next 36 hours trying to get back to Maryland and taking a day off of work was not ideal.  On the other hand, our team played well, both goalies were AMAZING!  Best of all, WE'RE GOING TO NATIONALS IN GREEN BAY!  (Did I already mention that? . . .)

Homestudy Update

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  Doug and I met with the social worker at the house a couple of weeks ago.  Her name is Helene and she was very nice and full of helpful information.  Doug and our local reference each had their individual interviews on Monday.  Both went well (or so I've been told).  I still need to have my interview and Doug and I have a few hours of online classes to finish up.  And then hopefully the homestudy report will be ready to go sometime in March!

Welcome to Our Non-Child-Proofed House!

I received a phone call from our social worker today to introduce herself and set up a time for her to meet us and see the house.  We scheduled the appointment for next Monday, since I have that day off (President's Day!).  I am super excited to meet her and find out what happens next!  Not to mention being able to pick her brain.  Since the house has already been inspected twice in the last 3 weeks, it's not really messy, but I will still be trying to clean every surface between now and Monday!

How Much Paper is in One Tree?

Well, I don't know the answer to that, but Google does.  According to the all-knowing tech company, one tree equates roughly to 90,000 sheets of paper.  While we didn't use THAT much paper to complete our homestudy paperwork, we may have come close.  So for those of you who are wondering: Just what exactly is all this paperwork? Here is your answer!

Here is what we've turned in so far:

Authorization for Release of Protective Services (Basically checking to see if we are child abusers)
Maryland Background Check
Wisconsin Background Check
Minnesota Background Check
Peru Background Check (me only)
General Release of Information
FBI Background Clearance
DMV Records Request
Home Health Inspection
3 Reference Letters (Thank you for writing them for us!)
Medical Forms and Tuberculosis Tests
Autobiography Essays
Corporal Punishment Form
Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificate
Copies of Pay Stubs
Copies of 2013 Taxes
Education Certificates (Stating that we took 10 hours of adoption parenting courses)
State Subsidy Form
ICPC Requirements Form
Confidentiality Statement
Transracial Adoption Reflection Essays
Proof of Life Insurance
Reference Form

What we are still working on:

Guardianship Forms
County Fire Marshal Home Inspection (It's a long story, but we are having issues getting all the documentation needed in order for the house to be approved)

For some of the forms, we just needed to sign it in front of a notary.  Others took longer and had us running all around Maryland.  I think the hardest part was getting Doug to write his essays!  For those of you who know him, it probably won't come as a surprise that he was still working on the essays this morning before I dropped them off at the agency!

Normally the homestudy wouldn't progress to the next stage, which is meeting with the social worker assigned to our case, until ALL of the forms are submitted.  Our agency (and especially the homestudy coordinator) however, are awesome and are letting us proceed while the home inspection gets sorted out.

I am excited to have that stack of paper out of my hands and another step completed in the adoption process.  Plus, I can't wait to see who our social worker will be!

I Promise Our House Won't Explode!

Yesterday I called the Prince George's County Fire Marshal to see when we could get the house inspected for the homestudy and was told that they could send someone the next day.  Surprise!  So yesterday, after getting a bubble of TB shot under our skin, Doug and I started frantically cleaning and getting our house ready for the inspection.  Doug installed a carbon monoxide detector and another smoke detector.  I cleaned up all the fire hazards (mainly all the clothes on my side of the bedroom) and cleaned both bathrooms.  Doug completely transformed the basement so that we don't have to step over kayaks, bikes, and hockey gear to get to the laundry room.  I vacuumed every inch of floor space!  We made sure our address numbers were at least 5 inches tall, and any window that is higher than 44 inches off the ground was given a step stool.  Last but not least, Doug took time off to be home for the inspection.  And then we didn't pass . . .  Apparently since there is grease on our stove vent, our house could explode at any moment.

Another tricky moment happened when the inspector wanted to see the circuit box, which is in the mother-in-law apartment that is rented out separately.  The family that lives there is very nice, but only the husband speaks English, so we couldn't get access to the circuit breaker because he was at work.  And to top it off, we may need to get a land line in order to be approved.  I'm working with our homestudy agency to see if we can get around that last bit.

We are going to fix the vent and talk to our neighbors, then hopefully the inspector can come back later this week.  If we don't pass next time, I'm installing one of these:

Homestudy Medical Exams

Today Doug and I went to the doctor for our homestudy medical exams.  We ended up waiting an extra 45 minutes because it's snowing . . . For those who are curious, the medical exam is basically the same as your yearly physical (height, weight, blood pressure, temperature, etc.), but the doctor also has to fill out a form saying that we are expected to have a normal lifespan.  We had to be tested for Tuberculosis as well.  The test is a bit different.  We got an injection of the PPD tuberculin protein just under the skin (it stung!), and it makes a large bubble on your forearm.  We have to go back in 48-72 hours to have the "bubble" read.

Q&A: Why Peru?

So as Doug and I have been telling people about our plans to adopt from Peru, one of the more common questions we are asked is "Why Peru?"  How did we come to chose that particular country?  To start out, Doug and I looked at adoption programs in several countries, including Peru, and were able to narrow down the list based on each country's requirements (the main one is length of marriage: many countries require applicants to be married 3,5,10 years before applying).  Originally, we thought that Peru had a 2 year marriage requirement, until we found Villa Hope, and realized that the 2 year requirement was implemented by the individual agencies and not Peru!  Once Peru was open to us again, it was a no brainer.  I am half-Peruvian after all, just ask my Peruvian family!

So Much Paperwork!

Doug and I are still in the early stages of the adoption process, and things are going pretty smoothly.  However, reading through the adoption experiences of others I have been told that in about a year or so our feelings will be pretty much summed up like this:

Like I said, we are currently tackling all the paperwork like champs, but I haven't decided if the joke is funny or if it fills me with a creeping sense of foreboding.  Anyways, Happy Monday to all!  I'll return to the mountainous stack of paper now.