Adam & Crystal's Adoption Weblog

Thursday, April 29th

office


Well the ceiling is painted! Tomorrow we go to pick up the flooring and start on that. We should have that done saturday sometime, then we can go and get the trim, we have to do trim along the floor and the windows (and box in the windows) and some crown molding. Should have the electrical all hooked up tonight except for putting in the actual circuit breakers, I want to do that during the day when it's easier to flip off the main power (daylight). We should be able to have all the trim done by sometime during next week!

Then of course we have to do the big move of the office upstairs to this room.

Which then means we have to paint again razz (painting gets old) but it should be fun since it will be to make the nursery smile
Adam on 04.29.04 @ 08:56 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Tuesday, April 27th

First coat!


Well, the first coat is finally on the walls downstairs in the new office. YAY! We will have to do one more coat, paint the ceiling, do the flooring/trim, and finish connecting the electrical and it will be DONE! YAY... The reason that is important is because we need to get our appraisal done for our loan, which we wanted to make sure we did after the room was finished....

Anyway, nothing new other than that.... *yawn* all this work is making me tired....


Once this room is freed up then, we can paint it for baby.... then comes the fun choosing of colors again....


Crystal on 04.27.04 @ 11:12 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Monday, April 26th

Passports

music: Bicycle (Queen)
mood: happy

We got our passports today! That's one big one off our list of important documents.

I've made a few more changes to the website as well. I added forums to the site after realizing the blog doesn't work very well for having actual conversations. We can respond to questions easier in the forum format than the blog. So the blog will be our chronicle of the adoption and the forums for communications with everyone else smile

If you are a friend of family and register on the forums we'll get you setup so you can see an addition forum just for friends and family.

Well back to work, pretty busy day today trying to get a bunch of projects to completion.
Adam on 04.26.04 @ 03:59 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Sunday, April 25th

Okay, so we couldn't wait to register....

music: Oye Como Va (Santana)
mood: Happy

We ended up going to Target last night and registering...it was so much fun! hehe It is early yet, but it passed some time. We couldn't add clothes or anything on there as we really don't have size ideas yet, but it was fun adding all the other things. Same with diapers...just don't know how big she'll be yet. Anyway, we'll add more as we think of things. We went most crazy in the toy department big grin Adam, of course, had the start her out early and register for a set of Lego Duplos (the bigger legos for little kids)... The big things we registered for there are the carseat and the monitor... They just don't have a stroller I like there. I have a feeling we'll end up buying the stroller ourselves since they only have the one I want at one store and it's here in Madison. (It's a newer company that makes them so they are not widely available yet). If only we were rolling in dough!!! Today we should be putting primer on the walls in the office, so once tomorrow even we should be able to paint the first coat of regular paint..and maybe by the end of the week we can do the flooring (YAY) so..the HELOC is getting closer... it will be nice to just know the money is available so we can pay everyone smile I have a feeling our homestudy money will be due before our loan is complete, but we will make due smile I am really not even worried that we can't do this, which is a nice feeling. There's no reason we shouldn't get approved for the loan, so it's all good.


Crystal on 04.25.04 @ 11:12 AM CDT [link] [2 Comments]


Saturday, April 24th

We have our information packet!

music: Tomorrow (from Annie)
mood: Excited

Well, today I was very excited to open up the mail box and see a large manilla envelope! It contained the package from AIA that essentially tells us what papers and such we need next. So now we will be trying to get those together.

We are getting closer to finishing our office downstairs so we can turn this computer room into the nursery, as it was meant to be! I need to pick out a color for the wall, also.

I'm excited to register for things, because it is so much fun! But we haven't really taken the time to do much of that yet. I have added a couple things to the registries online. We have basically chosen Burlington Coat Factory (Baby Depot) because it's pretty much the only decent baby store here in Madison, and Target so people long distance can get things off the registry if they want... It's so hard for me not to just run out and buy all these fun things now! (Well, the lack of money thing is a big damper on that LOL ) But, I'm sure I'll be able to buy a few things once we have some money to work with again! The hard part is not having a date... not knowing when we need the stuff...and deciding which stuff we will need BEFORE and which can wait until after.... I just put Sept. 1 on the registries (they aren't adoption friendly and ask for dates razz ) just as a hopeful estimate... I doubt we would have a child that soon, but I sure wouldn't complain if we did....


Crystal on 04.24.04 @ 05:54 PM CDT [link] [2 Comments]


Tuesday, April 20th

Registering

music: Dreamweaver
mood: Happy

I think we'll be doing more registering soon too, it sounds like there are people anxious to start buying gifts. It's happy to think so many other people are happy and anxious for this happen. Puts a good feeling in you.
Adam on 04.20.04 @ 10:24 AM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Homestudy

music: Dreamweaver
mood: Happy

Well we had the home visit part of our homestudy last night. I think it went very well, she ended up only being there for about 20-25 minutes! We just gave her a tour of the house, showed which room would be the baby room and just talked for a bit. I spose with a pretty new home there aren't a lot of issues which helps a lot. All we need now are the reference letters back (most of which are already done and sent in) and my medical report. I have a physical scheduled for 4/28 so we'll have that part after that. We should have the completed homestudy report sometime in the first or second week of may!

We should be getting our passports in another week or so too.

It's so nice to keep being able to check things off our todo list. Progress makes for hapiness!

My parents sent us a copy of the reference letter they sent in for our homestudy and I'm not quite sure what to say about it. I guess first I was just very impressed with the letter, but also very happy that they feel so proud of me and how I've done in my life. It's kind of weird to read reference letters about yourself, especially these ones. It's not like it's a job reference, this is someone telling exactly what kind of person you are and why you'd make a good parent.
Adam on 04.20.04 @ 10:24 AM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Monday, April 12th

Updates

mood: Tired (it's monday blah :P)

Well we had our first "real" homestudy meeting. We got a bunch of paperwork to fill out and some packets of info to read and some video's to watch. Doesn't look like anything to bad so far. We already have our next homestudy meeting for this next wednesday day 4/14 and will only have 1 more after that which is the home visit (wow). They it will take about 2 weeks for the homestudy report to be completed.

We've also sent in the application to our agency (Alaska International Adoptions). We're hoping we'll be able to have our dossier submitted to russia by the end of june.

We got some news from the agency that our wait might not be anywhere near as long as we thought. We were thinking about 6 months from dossier submission to child referal for an infant female, but they said more like 2 months is what they are seeing (wow). So it could be as soon as september or october that we would get a referal.

So of course that speeds things up alot smile

We are going to go register for baby stuff this week probably, my parents and others are excited and want to start buying stuff.

Crystal will probably post more on that, but wow is there alot of pick from out there, we are doing a ton of research on the "safety" type items (carseats, strollers, etc).

Well back to work for me.
Adam on 04.12.04 @ 08:32 AM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Tuesday, April 6th

Agencies

music: cake (but i'm listening to the cd so go figure)
mood: Tired

Well we are trying to decide on an agency. Wow there are alot of adoption agencies out there. Every time we start to like one we seem to find something wrong with it, either a bad recomendation (horror story), or just something we don't like. We are looking at 2 now and will probably end up with one of them, in reality we are really just looking at 1 of the 2 as realistic but continuing to research the other one as a comparison. Alaska Internation Adoptions is the one we are most likely to pick right now. International Assistance Group is the second but they require an in person interview (they are in pittsburgh) and some "homework". They are also a few thousand dollars more expensive. So for now we'll keep digging at both, we haven't found any bad reviews for either yet, the closest was someone complaining that IAG refused them becuase of the husbands medical issues. Without really knowing what was going on in that situation it's hard to consider that a bad review (we just have the person's side with little detail). But becuase of the travel and extra costs for IAG that will probably rule them out. So as of now it's looking like AIA but we need to make sure we cover all the bases in researching them.

Wednesday 4/7 we go for our first real homestudy appointment (yay!) and we should have our passports in about 3 or 4 weeks. We'll soon have our birth and marriage certificates so we can send out our I600A to the CIS (new name for INS) to get started on getting our I171H that allows us to adopt a foreign child.

So the process is starting to move smile

Now I just need to get to sleep earlier tonight.
Adam on 04.06.04 @ 10:08 AM CDT [link] [No Comments]


Thursday, April 1st

My mind is a blur...

music: Daytripper
mood: sleepy

My brain is so busy!!! So much to think about... We are still trying to decide on an agency. Once that is done, I will be happy to have one less thing to think about. satisfied
Right now I'm totally preoccupied with finishing the "office" downstairs so we can turn this computer room into a Nursery!!! We should be able to paint on Saturday (YAY!)
Crystal on 04.01.04 @ 11:04 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


First Post

music: new york, new york
mood: sort of sick

Well I just got this running, no I have no clue why new york, new york is running through my head. I've hopefully got this setup correctly so Crystal and myself can use this is a journal to track our adoption journey. I didn't feel like sleeping anymore (i'm home sick) and i've wanted to set up a blog so I finally did.

Adam
Adam on 04.01.04 @ 02:39 PM CDT [link] [No Comments]


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