Saturday, May 31, 2008

5th Anniversary

Yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary! I spent the morning doing a heart-walk with my mom, sister Kachina, and her kids Theo and Ellie. It was pretty fun! Then we went to our favorite windery (Pirtle winery: www. pirtlewinery.com) where we drank mead and fruit wine and ate a tasty cheese/bread/apple basket under the grape arbor. We also visited Daddy's house for a bit since we were in the area, ate some ice cream cake, and went to see the second Narnia movie - Prince Caspian. It was a fun day!!

We have been working hard on our homestudy documents - the autobiography is tough. Mine is probably going to end up being 10 pages long or something. We have to fill out a lot of forms for different clearances and request a lot of letters from people (reference letters from friends, verification of employment from our workplaces, etc). It is a lot of work (and takes a long time!) but we are anxious to get it all done so we can get on the first waiting list (the one with our agency to wait for the privilege of sending our homestudy to Taiwan - we are guessing it will be at least 1 1/2 to 2 years and possibly even more). It will all be worth it eventually :)

Friday, May 16, 2008

Ready...set...go!

Well, we've done it! For several reasons (primarily because of reports that Taiwan adoption wait times are growing rapidly), we decided to just go ahead and start our Taiwan adoption! I emailed Marci with ASIA, and she sent us the application form. The first big step.....!!

First we went out to dinner at Dragon Inn, a local Chinese restaurant, to celebrate. Then Chris painted in the first eye of our Daruma doll. Then we filled out the application! We are officially on our way!! I just got done emailing Nancy Bean, who is a local social worker I've communicated with before regarding doing a home study. I am a bit worried about the home study portion, just because it is going to be rather indepth (and means we will have to do a LOT of house cleaning soon!). So we will start working on that portion, as well.

Wish us luck!!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Getting closer....

We are now only 20 days from starting the adoption process! During a recent trip to Epcot we purchased a Daruma doll for our bio baby and one for our Taiwan baby. Daruma are Japanese wishing dolls--they have blank eyes, and one is supposed to fill in one of the eyes when one makes a wish (in our case, when we start paperwork for our Taiwan baby) and then fill in the second eye when the wish comes true (when we bring her home!). It is something I have wanted to do for a long time :) I'm glad they still had the Daruma dolls at the Japanese pavillion!
On a side note, I have been hearing rumors that some Taiwan agencies are switching to SN only. I am going to email ASIA to make sure we are still cool to move forward in just a couple of weeks!