Announcments, clothing, and a very cool blog

What else is there for a waiting mother to do but spend time surfing the net. There will come a time when I am sleep deprived and will long for a few hours of time to myself.

Among my many web activities I am a member of a board for mostly women, but some dad's as well, that have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Korean. This board is hosted by my adoption agency, but not all members are using our agency. I am not an very active poster, I find the shear number of posts and members a bit overwhelming, but I do go there daily to read through the posts. I have a lot of suggested reading material to start on in November, when my masters is complete, which I have found this way.

Yesterday there was a post inquiring on announcements made by a fellow Texan and member of the board. I decided to check her products out and was very impressed. She has two different websites. The first one that I visited focused on items such a shirts, mugs, and aprons for mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma. This is one of the items I really liked. I know it is difficult to read what the shirt says: I'm expecting a baby from South Korea. There are many items on this website I would buy today where I a less fiscally responsible person. To be able to see this shirt better, or look at more of the items, you can go to the ladies CafePress website.

As I said before, she also does custom announcements. Even with all of my years in the invitation business I had never seen an adoption announcement done so thoughtfully. Here is one of the examples that really caught my eye. Well scratch that. Understandable her website is copyrighted. You will just have to take a visit to TheFirstGlimpse yourself if you are so inclined. The link I provided goes directly to the gallery.

The very cool blog I found, Ask a Korean, is also a product of research on the board. The post was on the top of Korean names. I have already read several of "The Korean's" posts and find them not only informative, but also enjoy them because of the humor he interjects. I will add this blog to my regular web haunts for sure!

Finger Prints Done

Frig and I went to the processing office for the USCIS today and had our finger prints completed. There are two locations in Houston and we got very lucky that one of them was less than 10 minutes from our house. I figure it took us less than 30 minutes.

The office was neat and the people that worked there were all very friendly. While we were waiting our turn I was entertained watching a family who I assumed was there for a second adoption. Their daughter was so CUTE!

The machine they used did not require ink, but used water to lightly dampen the fingers. I was fascinated with the finger printing process as it was done on this machine.

So we are one more step down and about googleplex left to go!

We also received a letter from our International agencey letting us know that our HS had been received, approved, and we are now officially on the wait list. It is not yet in Korea, but the date it is logged at the Oregon office reserves our spot in line.

Finger Prints

On Friday we received notice from USCIS regarding getting our finger prints completed. I had been concerned that the "appointment" would be a specific date and time requiring that Frig and/or I would have to take time off of work to get the finger prints completed. As it turned out there are several days we are able to go and no specific date. One of those days is Saturday. We would have loved to be able to go this past weekend, but both of us had obligations. I had tutoring and he had a class on classroom managment. So we will be going this coming Saturday to get our finger printing taken care of. We can't wait to have one more step behind us on this long journey.

Waiting for Initial US Approval

I have received a lot of questions about what's next and how long so I thought I would try to explain as best I can. Honestly, it is all so confusing I wish I had someone to sit down and explain it all to me step by step.

The next step in the process of international adoption is approval of the I-600A form (Application for the Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition). We sent the form to our local USCIS office (Citizenship and Immigration Services) back in December because it must arrive at the office prior to the HS. Once the HS arrives at our local USCIS office we will receive notice of an appointment for finger printing. Then the government will use the HS and the results of our finger printing to decide if we can adopt a child born in another country.

How long will this take? I wish I could give a exact answer to that question. The USCIS website does have a chart to show processing times. Currently they are not meeting their processing timelines. The website is updated monthly and at last update they were processing applications received on July 27, 2008. Not exactly what I was hoping to find out. At that rate we can hope to hear something in Septmeber. This is sad.