Homestudy has arrived!!!

Finally! Our INTERNATIONAL Homestudy is now completed and is now at Families for Children! I finally feel like we are progressing! Now it will be sent to Taiwan for approval. I don't know what the next timeline is or even what the next step is but having the homestudy to the agency is huge. Merry Christmas to all!!!

Here was a photo of En Yang from Kid Save on the day they either left Taiwan or the day they left the US. He seems to really like ice cream. We are missing him a lot. It's taking a long, long time. I think I am thinking of him more now because it's close to the holidays and I wish we could spend the holidays with him here. Then I just think that next year will just be all the more wonderful!!!

No news yet!

Hi! We are still waiting for our child abuse clearance to come through, which clearly we already have being that we are newly certified foster parents, but the agency has to get it in order to give us the final homestudy. I am going to then have to pray for a miracle that we get it in to immigration and back to our agency, Families for Children, by the end of the month.



We are getting ready to send En Yang his November package, gifts from us. Jake has drawn and colored a picture for him, we are sending pictures from fall (pumpkin picking and Halloween) I assume they don't do Halloween in Taiwan and since they are close to the equator, there is no changing of the leaves or pumpkin picking, as far as I know. So, I am planning to "explain" some of our American, family traditions. In addition, we are sending a bunch of Diego toys, books, stickers, etc... I don't know what he thought of last months gifts yet. I am going to upload another photo (or more, if I can)! Enjoy!

The waiting is the hardest part

Hi! For those of you who don't already know us, I am Sue, my husband is Heath and we have three beautiful boys, Richie (15), Michael (13 ) and Jake (7). We also have a dog (Nikki), two cats (Jeter and A-Rod), a bearded dragon (Joba) and a large fish tank!!!! I am a Special Education Teacher and my husband is a Cable Technician! In addition to attending our children's sporting events, I love photography and scrapbooking!

Well, we are almost done with our dossier! We only need to get our fingerprints done (second time because we are already certified for a domestic homestudy but need new ones for international) and then our homestudy will be completed. Once we have the homestudy, our dossier will be sent in immediately. We must have everything to Families for Children by late November so I feel like we are racing to the finish line!

We met En-Yang at the Kid Save program (http://www.kidsave.org/) in the summer in Maryland. We fell in love with him immediately. My son, Jake (7) got along so well with him. On the long drive home, we decided he was perfect for our family!

So, here we are at the end of October. I am told that once Taiwan has all of our paperwork (end of November) we will have a 3-5 month wait to go and pick him up. Just Jake and I are going to Taiwan to get him but we were REALLY hoping it would be much sooner! It's going to be a long winter of waiting! I miss him! Terribly! And, I hope he doesn't forget him although I am sending him photographs every single month (copies of the photos of him and Jake together along with photos of our family doing things like pumpkin picking with a short explanation of what we are doing so it might help him understand some of the American traditions).