Don't ever paint in red

Somehow I got the bright idea to paint our bathroom what I call "barn red", you know after all those great old barns you see when driving along the highway. We love old barns. One of our favorite wedding pics has us in front of a barn.

Plus red is considered a lucky color in Chinese culture. We need luck with our adoption taking so much longer than we expected.

Sounds like a great idea, right? I didn't like any of the available colors at Home Depot, so spent a fortune at our local paint store agonizing between two choices but eventually decided on "heartthrob". Shoulda known it was a bad choice from the name alone.

Turns out this was a bad idea because it was really a primary red color - the starter red on the color wheel, think of the red from kindergarten or the color of a fire truck. Plus we've had to do three coats already and it still shows every single painting flaw and it just looks terrible. Honestly. Greg says it's growing on him but really what he means is that he doesn't want to paint it again in a different color.

Kind of looks like the Amityville Horror with the blood red walls. All we need is piggy's red eyes in the back yard...I'm not sure I'm cut out for this DIY lifestyle.

Fixin' our house

Just thought I post some pics of what we are doing to occupy our time...

This is our dining room...we got a new table with chairs as well as a hutch from Larry and Kathe in Cincinnati. Rick noted that we needed some artwork, so we got this picture from a yard sale for $10. The bikes we got from a catalog.

It's a long story but lots of changes

Hi there,

For the five of you that read this blog - you probably already know. Our Vietnam adoption did not work out - we were third on the list from our agency, but the country will be closing for adoptions without referrals on September 1st. BTW, this closure is only for Americans. On September 1st all dossiers without referrals will be sent back to the agencies.

So we decided to go another route - by way of a special needs child from China, a precious little boy. He is as cute as he can be, I'll be sure to post photos when we have our official referral. We were hoping to bring him home as soon as July, but it's not in the cards. We now hope we be able to travel by September.

Life has been extremely busy. I started working and actually like it. We just bought a new house and moved in on May 17th. We've had families from both sides visiting. We've painted two rooms - one orange - the dining room and it looks fabulous as a matter of fact! We also painted our wood-paneled addition to "barrister white" making it a much brighter and more tolerable place to be and less of the dumping ground it had become...

Next room up - perhaps a baby room? I've been putting off buying anything for this room but maybe it's now time to start. We have the idea of an "aquarium theme" - what do you think? Of course, then we have to actually paint it when Greg's dad Larry painted our other rooms.

I hope to post some positive news soon! Hope all are doing well.

Our new house!

Isn't it too cute? It's similar to the last house we put a bid on - but closer to DC. Our home is located in Arlington. We need to put in a new tub upstairs and hope to move in May. The kitchen is from the eighties, no joke and is smaller than the kitchen we have now but bigger than the one we had at Argonne place. We have a cute little backyard and are looking forward to planting a garden. The addition (in the picture to the right) is covered with 70's wood paneling. The living room is pretty large as well as the dining room and two of the bedrooms upstairs. Now, of course, I want all new furniture, a new kitchen and bathroom in the basement. I've already spent all of our money when we don't have any left after buying the house in this still very expensive place to live! I've already priced composters and solar paneling so we can try to be environmental (uhh...the paneling is gonna have to wait awhile). I gotta admit I've been scared about this - did we buy the right house - in the right neighborhood?

Now I'm just excited and ready to move in!

An adoption update

It has been hard to provide adoption updates for the blog for two reasons - one is that we haven't had any or much news to share and two any news we have hasn't been hopeful. I've been so depressed and discouraged especially after our adoption agency had a call with all families currently planning adoption from Vietnam. Her words were not optimistic and she suggested that all of us consider other places from which to adopt including Russia and China. We already have our dossier in China and expect that to go through in two to three years. Our agency director promised to get back to each one of us to let us know where our dossier is in the Vietnam process and to let us know where we were in the agency queue. Currently 20 families have their dossiers in VN awaiting a child. We finally got the news of our status today.

Last time we checked (about two months ago) our dossier was at the Ministry of Justice and it is now at the Thu Doc Youth Village orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon). There are four families from our agency ahead of us in line for children. Although this sounds positive, keep in mind that other agencies from all over the world also work with this same orphanage, and we don't know how many folks are waiting from these other agencies. Supposedly, two of the families waiting from our agency should receive their referrals soon and then we would be third in line.

The problem is this: the agreement for adoptions between VN and the United States expires on September 1st. We don't know if VN will be shut down completely or if they will continue to process adoptions already begun or with referrals or with paperwork at a certain place in the queue. It is our hope, obviously, that we will receive our referral prior to September 1st or if we haven't that they will still process our adoption since our dossier is already at the orphanage.

So think good thoughts for us and send us your prayers. Hopefully this will all work out and we'll receive our little guy soon.

Some updates but not really

Here's a summary of an email from our agency executive director, Jennifer Kelman...

Press Release From US State Department:

For those not familiar, the Memorandum of Understanding on Intercountry Adoptions was signed by the US and Vietnam on June 21, 2005 as a beginning step towards an intercountry adoption program that would meet international standards such as those established by the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. The convention contains a number of protections and safeguards for the ethical placement of children. The agreement entered into force on September 1, 2005. There is a deadline of March 1, 2008 for the US and Department of Intercountry Adoptions in Vietnam to reach an agreement regarding the renewal of the MOU. It is evident that the US Department of State and Vietnam Department of Intercountry Adoptions are negotiating this agreement now. We hope that the expected press release will shed some more light on the status of these negotiations.

A copy of the agreement can be found here:
http://travel.state.gov/pdf/vn_final_agreement.pdf

Adopted Children Immigrant Visa Unit at U.S. Embassy in Hanoi revamps website

The Embassy recently launched a newly revised version of their website for the Adopted Children Immigrant Visa Unit (ACIVU). The ACIVU is responsible for processing all the adoption cases that pass through the Embassy. You can visit their new site here - http://hanoi.usembassy.gov/orphan_visas.html. They have added a great deal of information about the process, the requirements, and updates on the status of the program.

Meeting at Embassy for Adoption Service Providers on Thursday, January 24^th

On Thursday, January 24^th the staff at the U.S. Embassy held their quarterly meeting with Adoption Service Providers. The meeting was hosted by Mary Ann Russell of USCIS and Eric Alexander of the Department of State. The majority of the discussion focused around the new I-600 process. USCIS is continuing to streamline their process for handling the I-600s. Here are the highlights from the discussion:

· The estimated time frame for processing the I-600 applications is still 60 days. However, CIS warned that it could be longer due to the high number of applications. In additions, CIS is doing an increasing number of investigations, which is time-consuming and takes their staff out of the office for a time.

· When determining if a child meets CIS’ legal definition as an orphan, CIS staff must complete a form called the I-604. (This is a standard part of adoptions from any country in the world. You can find the form here - http://guangzhou.usembassy-china.org.cn/uploads/images/Oq45THmvcwMSU0Ntx_Hf-w/i-604_pdf__for_visas_37.pdf.) The I-604 can be completed based on the paperwork submitted with the I-600, through telephone interviews with relevant parties, or through on-site visits within Vietnam. If CIS is not able to gather the information needed then they cannot complete the I-604 and, as a result, cannot issue the preapproval.

· CIS is changing slightly the process for notifying families when the preapproval is issued. Thus far, CIS in HCMC has been notifying families directly. From this time forward, CIS will notify the Adopted Children Immigrant Visa Unit (ACIVU) of the Embassy in Hanoi. Embassy staff will then send one email to the family notifying the family of the approval. The email will include the letter of approval from USCIS, as well as an invitation to travel from the Embassy. The Embassy is strongly recommending that families do not travel to Vietnam before receiving this email.

· CIS clarified that when the I-600 is submitted, the family’s CIS approval and fingerprints should be valid for at least another 60 days.

· The USCIS office in HCMC has been receiving a tremendous number of phone calls from adoptive families. Many families have urgent issues and personal concerns and are requesting special consideration. This has been taking them away from their work of processing the I-600 applications. The ACIVU’s new website has additional information about the I-600 processing and it can be found here - http://hanoi.usembassy.gov/preadoption.html. It is important to note that the website says, “For security reasons, USCIS is not able to inform petitioners of the status of their case between the time the receipt e-mail is issued and the time that a decision is made on the case.” The Embassy has also indicated that, “In the rare event that a case requires more than 60 days to process, petitioners will receive an e-mail apprising them of the outstanding issues in their case.”

JCICS Standards of Practice (SOPs)

The timeline for the release of the Standards of Practice from the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) has been updated. For those not familiar with JCICS, their website is http://www.jcics.org/. ICA is an active member organization of JCICS. They now expect to release the SOPs on January 27^th. JCICS staff have been actively advocating with DIA, USCIS, and the Department of State regarding the state of the bilateral agreement or MOU and the contents of the Standards of Practice from JCICS.

Log in date for China!

We are now officially logged in as a couple waiting for adoption from China. Our date is December 12, 2007. Which still means we are three years away from adopting our little girl, but at least the process is in place. People are still waiting for little girls with log in dates from as long ago as 2005!

No new news on the Vietnam front, it looks to be a long process of waiting and waiting ahead. So we are focusing our efforts on house hunting, starting in Arlington, Va, where cheap homes start at half a million dollars. Our lease runs until July, so we hope to find something by then. So our weekends are filled with home searches. I think we found our real estate agent, a helpful man that is giving us advice on what to look for on the outside as well as in the basement.

Homes are wicked expensive, even the ones near busy roads but some of the houses we've looked at have reduced their prices further. It's an overwhelming process and feels like much more of a commitment than marriage, plastic surgery or a tattoo. We've just started and a friend of mine looked at more than 100 houses before she found her cute little bungalow. Every house seems to have something wrong with it, like a weirdly configured kitchen, or one with a refrigerator that was literally on an angle (interesting). Tiny, tiny rooms or major roads next door, really right outside your front door or as it says in the listing...."convenient to major highways". I'm a sucker for a cute front porch. The house I've liked the best is still a breath-taking $605,000 with need for a major kitchen renovation. And I'm not just talking granite counter tops, it means pulling out walls. All of this, to take our minds off of the fact that we don't have a little one yet. But if we can find a house, we can fix it up and be ready when we finally get Milo.