The Dreaded Needle

On Monday we finally got our physicals completed.  All four of us which was quite a shock seeing as the boys were just supposed to be "checked in" since they were new patients.  However the doctor was super awesome and did all of them that day because he said he wanted to be sure we all had our results at the same time so we wouldn't have to wait any longer.  I thought that was super nice of him, he really is a great doctor.

I totally hate needles, especially that darn TB test.  Being in the education profession I knew what I was getting myself into and this time around she jabbed me so hard it bruised me, and I don't bruise easy. :(

On May 1st my notary will be coming with me to the local police station to get our records notarized and then we will head over to the doctors office to notarize our physicals.  I hate that everything is only open during business hours since I work business hours.  Taking off work while trying to adopt is frustrating.  I get out for the summer the second week of June, but I hope to have my Dossier done by then so we can go to Chicago in June for authentication.

I'm excited to get our home study finished so I can file my I-800 and apply to the Waiting Child Program. So much rests on just having that done.  The hardest part is all the waiting!!

In the meantime I will just keep reading other people's blogs, pray, and rejoice with them.

So close I can see a little light

We have been working for quite some time now on pulling together our Dossier.  We have worked diligently on getting everything we need as quickly as possible so we can move onto the next step and get our baby girl here quicker.

A couple things we are waiting on:

• Two reference letters
• Jordan's Employment Verification letter written by a CPA
• List of our Month Bills / Financial statement
• Police Clearances 
• Our physicals
• And our picture pages
• Jordan's Passport
• Home Study to be completed
• File our I-800 and then complete that process (fingerprinting)

Looking at the list it seems like a lot but when I see that list I see the end drawing near and it excites me!  

I know one of the reference letters is already completed we are just waiting for it to be notarized. We actually found a CPA and will be talking to him on Monday and he has already agreed to write the letter for us. Jordan can just take an hour and compile all our finance stuff with no problem. The doctor did ALL of our Physicals today even when he wasn't originally going to.  Picture pages are a snap to put together.  Once our physicals and Jordan's passport comes in we can send them over to our Social worker and have our final meeting with her to close the study.  Once we close our study we can file our I-800 papers.  

I'm so stinking excited!  What started out as a dream, and casually talked about through the years is finally coming to fruition and I will have my baby girl with me.  

When I write this I know it will sound like we will bring her home soon, however this is just the end of the first BIG step.  We will still have a lot of wait time on the government and other agencies.  The referral process can take a long time too.  

Nevertheless it is still very exciting to be able to put a check mark next to this step in the process.  

We've all got Questions

Currently I am reading a book called "Cross-Cultural Adoption" How to Answer Questions from Family, Friends, and Community. It is such a good book and has given me many tools to be able to answer some of the most common questions about adoption.  

If any of you know me on a personal basis you know that I am a talker so I love to answer questions.  So should you ever have any please feel free to ask.  In the meantime I loved this book so much that I wanted to post some of it's contents on here to benefit others.  

This post is specifically for my friends/family who have young children.  I am asking you if you would please have a discussion with your children about adoption and about us adopting.  In the book it gave a real life story about a family who brought home their 3 year old daughter from China, Lily, while at a family gathering Lily's cousin was asked to go sit by her at the dinner table.  "Daniel go sit by your cousin at the dinner table."  Daniels response; "But she's not my real cousin!  She's Chinese!"  

Although his remark was innocent it was also painful for Lily's family and for Lily.  Even at 3 children can still understand and Lily was effected by it.  The error in this story was not so much the comment that Daniel made about Lily but rather that it happened because his parents did not prepare Daniel and explain to him what adoption is.  

So what does "adopted" mean?  Seeing as I'm asking you to talk to your children about this, I wanted to take an exert from the book that lays it out in a way for children to understand.

Adoption is one way of making a family.  Families are made in many different ways.  Most times, to have a child, a mom and a dad get together and make a baby.  Another way that a child joins a family is through adoption.  That means the child grew in one woman's  belly but another family raise the child.  The child is "adopted" by the family.  A child can be adopted at any age - from a newborn baby to a teenager!

Lots of people are adopted, and every family is different. Some families have one parent, and some have two.  Some children are raised by grandparents or step-parents.  What makes people a family is that they love and care for each other.

-Cross-Culture Adoption by Amy Coughlin and Caryn Abramowitz.  

Hands Across the Water

So today was our first visit with our Social worker.  Not sure what to expect we went it excited and a bit anxious.  Katie was super sweet and made the visit a pleasant one.  She asked us questions about ourselves and our families, explained a little bit about what's to come, and then gave us a test.  The test was rather hilarious because they should have just titled it the Spanking quiz since I think at least 75% of the questions were related to spanking a child.  The whole test was rather comical if you ask me, and personally I feel it was stupid.  It was direct answers with no room to explain your conclusion.  It was nice to hear that she felt the same way about the test.  Something I guess you just have to do.

Our next visit is scheduled for Saturday April 5th where she will come out to our home.  I had to ask her what she was looking for coming into the home seeing as I have no carpet in my front living room and the floor looks awful.  Or the basement full of stuff sorted into different piles.  To sell, to donate, to trash, to figure out a place for....  Ya, I have one of those basements.  I thought two weeks is just simply not enough time to figure that mess out.  But she assured me that she is just making sure there is no threat to a child and there are no creepy people hanging out in your home.  LOL

The cool thing is I thought the home study process took a long time to complete but she said that she could finish it quickly.  So all I need to do is get the rest of this paperwork done, find a CPA, get our police reports, physicals all taken care of, and Jordan's passport to finally come in the mail and I think we can move on to the next step.  She said we were way ahead of the game and was impressed.  To be completely honest, I'm a little impressed myself.  A Dossier is suppose to take 4-6 months to complete, or so they say, and I've got mine just about done and it's only been about a month.

So onto working at getting the rest of the file complete so we can move onto the next step.  It would be cool to take a trip to the Chinese Consulate once we get out of school for the year. :)

Making Progress

Last week was a very productive week.  On Wednesday we had a Snow Day here in Michigan leaving a whole day full of adoption progress.  We were able to talk to our family coordinator, talk to the home study agency, both Jordan and I finished our autobiographies, did some more rounds of training, turned in all the required paperwork to get our home study up and running and paid another big bill.  The boys originally had the day off of school on Friday for record day but because of our lovely unexpected snow day they had to make it up so Friday was back in session.  We were suppose to go to Ohio on Friday but because of school being back in we had to stay home.  I already had the day planned off of work so Jordan and I took the boys to school and then headed downtown where we were able to get our certified copies of our birth certificates, and marriage license.  We then headed to the post office and got Jordan's passport ordered and went to the police station to get our criminal record checked, too bad they were closed.

                                                 Being Silly Downtown

I feel like we are making record time collecting all the necessary paperwork.   I like feeling a head of the game, but I don't like the feeling of my home study agency not on the same page.  They are slow, and I want them to be fast.  *Insert temper tantrum here.*  I guess it's not so bad since we have to wait on our references to write our letters of recommendation and our employers/CPA to write up our employment verification.  We still have yet had time to talk to the CPA to see if and how much she will be charging us to write one up.  And I still have yet one more person to ask to write a letter for us.  Plus every single document has to be notarized.  My goal is to have ALL paperwork collected, notarized, and state certified so we can head to Chicago in the early summer to have it all authenticated by the Chinese Consulate.  

Until then I will just keep working my butt off selling Origami Owl and work on finishing up the rest of the adoption training and other documents.  

We already had some people donate to us through the Eternal Fund program, we are SO thankful for each and everyone who helps us along this way, we truly feel so blessed and loved. xoxo

Update & Eternal Family Program

Hello friends and family!

We are so thankful for all of your encouragement, prayer and support in this process so far.

 A quick update for you: We have our home study agency selected and are at a point in the process where we have a LOT of information coming in. This is both exciting and a little overwhelming-there is so much to go through!

We are also taking online courses and both Jordan and I have passed all of our exams so far!

Many of you have asked if there is anything you can do, and here is a way you can help us. Through our adoption agency, we are automatically enrolled in the "Eternal Family Program". What is that you ask? It is designed to help families going through the adoption process, like us, get financial help from friends, family, co-workers, church family or even someone who just happens to be following our story that we haven't met yet.

So far, we have been able to pay for every bill that's been attached to this adventure, but we also know that adoption is an expensive adventure.

I have continued selling Origami Owl which has helped a lot, but we have also had a few people simply give us donations, stating that jewelry is not their thing, but they wanted to help. These acts of generosity are so kind and we are extraordinarily grateful to all who have helped us along the way!

If you would like to help our family during this process, we recently found out that you can! It would be an enormous blessing to our family, and would help alleviate some of the costs of the adoption process.

Here's how you do it. Click on the link below or copy/paste into your address bar. From there, scroll down and on the right you should see "Support a Family. Donate today." Underneath that, you fill in your information and the family you are supporting. We ask that you enter: "Jordan & Dusty Duncan" into that section. After that, it will ask you to enter payment information. Here's the link!

https://www.awaa.org/give/eternal_family_program.aspx

We have actually known about this program for a while now, but honestly feel a bit odd asking for people to just give us money. Please know you don't have to give anything, but if you want to, we will gladly accept! Thank you so much to all who do! If you cannot afford to give us anything, please give us your prayers!

The Process

I have 3 goals with this blog, 

1. Memories
2. Keep friends and loved ones informed
3. Information for others who are adopting

When Jordan and I decided to adopt I spent hours online looking up blogs from people who adopted from China and spoke about the process.  I wanted to know as much information as I could and learn before I had even filed any paperwork.  So this post is mostly for those who are like me and really want some good information to go on.

So far the process has gone like this...

In November we decided that we were going to make our dreams come true and adopt.  We prayed and decided that China was where God was drawing us to.  We researched Adoptions, Adoption agencies, home study agencies, and of course looked for others who had gone through the process already. 

In December we filed a pre-application.  Not really knowing what we were doing we just guessed on a lot of our answers.  NOT a good idea, especially if you are trying to adopt from China.  Luckily the pre-app cost nothing and didn't mean a whole lot.  In fact it was a great learning tool on what and what not to do.  We underestimated our net worth by ALOT!   

We decided to wait until we received our tax money to file our actual application.  A lot of up front costs are involved once you file so we wanted to make sure we had money on hand.  We are trying to do this as debt free as possible.

January we compiled all our tax documents and filed ASAP.  We received our money in February.

February we filed our official application with America World Adoption Agency.  (I highly recommend them if you are a Christian and want a GREAT agency. )

Feb. 20th - Got a phone call congratulating us on being accepted to the China Program and received an email with legal paperwork to be filled out and sent in with another payment to the agency.  

Feb. 21st - Mailed in the legal documents with first payment.

Feb. 22nd - Checked into financial options, loans, fundraising, etc. 

Feb. 26th - Was assigned our Family Coordinator and received an email with all our documents to get started on selecting a home study agency, compiling our dossier, and information on the Child in Waiting program.

Feb. 27th - Called Home Study Agency to ask questions and get the application.

Feb. 28th - Filled out the Home Study (17 page) application and wrote the check

March 1 - Mailed the Home Study Application/Check, and signed up and paid for our Adoption Training

Going to the Lego movie now with the hubby and the kids.  Then later tonight I will be sitting down to make a check list of things we need to do.  

Hope that helps and you find this blog informational.  :)