Fingerprint Update and More

Here's B after his football game on Saturday. His team won 25-0. They won the championship last year so I'm predicting an undefeated season for them again this year. I tried to get a picture of him playing, but all I could get was the ref's butt so this pic will have to do.

Last Monday, Sept 13th we walked in to get fingerprinted. We were printed, went home, scanned the stamped letter and sent it off to our agency. The adoption agency had a Consulate Appointment for us by Tuesday morning. Our appointment is on October 19th, so we were excited and relieved that everything worked out. J has been working on getting our airline tix. Can you say EXPENSIVE!?! It's almost $1500 per person. That's the best we could do. Oh well, I'm just happy it all worked out. Now we only have one more potential hang-up. Our new prints have to be at the Consulate prior to our appointment. As of Friday, Sept 17th, our I800A extension was on our USCIS officer's desk, but had not yet been approved. This paperwork needs to be approved, sent to the National Visa Center, and cabled to Guangzhou before our appointment, which is one month from today. It seems like a lot of people's paperwork has been bogged down in the system lately, so while one month should be sufficient time, it's still a situation that needs to be monitored closely.

We have my sister lined up to house sit while we're gone, so we should have someone at home pretty much 24/7. Next weekend I think we'll start to pack. We still need to get some baby things. We don't have baby wash, lotion, diapers, children's medicine, bottles, etc. Stuff that's pretty essential. Oh well, it will all come together in time, I'm sure of it!

Resolution, Maybe?

So after trying to get our agency to help us and basically being told by both our agency and USCIS officer that fingerprints are issued out of a queue and no one can control it, I turned to our Senators and US Representative. I emailed Doc Hastings' office Thursday night and faxed both Senator Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell's offices Friday morning. Doc Hastings' office had a fingerprint appointment scheduled for me by 3:oo pm on Friday. How's that for service??!? Still haven't heard from either Senator's office. I did, however, email both offices again today and let them know I had a fingerprint appointment scheduled so they didn't spend time working on it when it's already done. I also stated in my emails that I may be contacting them later this week about a Consulate Appointment. My trust with the agency is pretty weak at this point and I'm not sure I can trust them to get me a Consulate Appointment within the time frame they gave me last Thursday. We'll see. When my husband spoke with the agency last Wednesday, they told him all we needed was the fingerprint letter stamped by the Dept. of Homeland Security saying our biometrics had been taken. That letter along with our current fingerprint approval should be sufficient to schedule a Consulate Appointment. We will have prints done tomorrow morning. I will scan and send the letter to our agency and hopefully they will immediately fax the Consulate to get us an appointment. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Bittersweet TA

TA came today, but I'm having a hard time enjoying it. One of the travel ladies emailed today that our TA came and gave us 2 options for travel. I emailed back quickly that either option would be fine, but of course, we would prefer the earlier option.

She then emailed back that she was unable to request a consulate appointment because our fingerprints will expire on 10/13/10 and asked if we had been reprinted. I told her no, not yet, but that our paperwork to get reprinted was in the system. Her response was along the lines of, well sorry, try to get a quick appointment, I'll check back tomorrow.

Here's my frustration (also see previous post): I asked my agency back in June what we needed to do to get fingerprint renewal. I got transferred to the waiting child department, who told me they didn't know what I should do and that I should talk to travel. I asked travel and they said I should wait until I got I800 approval and ask our USCIS officer. Our officer said we needed a homestudy update plus a supplement 3 and 2 supplement 2's to get a reprint appointment. Fine, got that done and all of our stuff was sent to immigration on 8/24/10.

Bottom line, if our agency would have just answered my question and told me what to do on June 21st when I asked, I would have been reprinted by now. Instead, I can't get my agency to request a consualte appointment for me because my prints will expire soon. So I ask you, whose fault is this?

I just want to cry when I should be celebrating. Let's hope tomorrow is a better day.

TA, Please!

We are still waiting on travel approval. I hope it comes sometime this week. I love 3 day weekends, don't get me wrong, but in this particular case when you're waiting for something it's torture! I sent off everything for our I800A renewal. It was confusing because none of the boxes to check fit our exact situation so I wasn't quite sure what to put. I emailed our USCIS officer and asked our questions. She got back to me quickly and told me exactly what to mark. When I sent in our paperwork, I included a copy of our email exchange. My husband sent it FedEx and it arrived at the lockbox on August 29th. I'm crossing my fingers for a quick fingerprint appointment so we can get approved quickly. I do not want our travel delayed due to lack of immigration approval.

Meanwhile, as a family we've done 5 canners of tomatoes, 2 canners of peaches, and this morning we will do a canner of pears. There should be plenty in this house to feed a 3 year old this fall and winter! A and B don't like canned fruit. I usually just do 1 canner of peaches for B, but there's still a jar left over from last year. I was out of practice for doing extensive canning.

I will post again once we get travel approval, until then I will keep on impatiently waiting.

First Day of School

Here are A and B on the first day of school last Thursday. A will be a sophomore and B will be a 7th grader. They were both being jerks right before I took the ceremonial first day of school picture, so they do look a little sheepish. It was an exciting day, because not only was it the first day of school, but our Article 5 was also picked up at the US Consualte in Guangzhou. This means we are waiting to receive travel approval from the CCAA. This last week people were receiving their travel approval in 9 days. 9 days! That's crazy fast! We also got our home study update on Friday, which means I need to send it in for fingerprint renewal. However, I need time to read through the I800 stuff to make sure I mark everything correctly. The problem is, if I have questions I can't ask them until people are in at the office; either USCIS or with our agency. When they are at work, I'm at work and it is REALLY difficult to make any sort of personal phone call at work. School just started and I'm SWAMPED with all sorts of little things. I guess I'll try to figure it out as best I can tomorrow and try to find time to call and ask questions if I need to on Monday. What I would really like is a super-fast TA and consulate appointment. That way I wouldn't have to worry about fingerprint renewal. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

Status Update

So, here's the status on our adoption as of Friday. We were "cabled" on Friday, which means our information has been sent to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. We need a pdf verification of being cabled before Cara's visa stuff can be turned in over in China, and China only accepts paperwork on Mondays and Thursdays. I asked for the pdf, but was told that I could not have it emailed to me. This means I will hopefully have the info I need for Cara's stuff to be turned in on Thursday rather than Monday, which kinda sucks. Then we wait for article 5 and travel approval. I just really, really want to travel before November, but I have a sinking feeling that it might not happen due to all of the holidays in China during the month of October.

Meanwhile, on the I800A renewal front: yes, both fingerprints and I800A expire on 10/13/10. This means we need a homestudy update, 2-supplement 2's, and a supplement 3 filed with USICS. Our social worker is coming on Tuesday and I'm hoping for a super-quick homestudy update so we can get all of this turned in ASAP. It shouldn't be that hard; especially since NOTHING has changed for us in the last 15 months. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Weekend Fun

I love, love, LOVE, summer Sundays on the Snake River. We launch the boat at Levey Park around noon and stay on the river until about 5:30. It is one of my absolute favorite things to do. This past weekend the kids were able to kneeboard and tube. A's BF had never kneeboarded before so he got to learn how. He was a pretty quick study. It looks like we only have a few weekends left on the Snake this summer since June was so cold in our area; we've only been 6 times so far this summer, and in my opinion, that's WEAK!!!! I have definately not gotten enough river time this summer.

This next weekend we'll go out in the boat, but we'll go Friday on the Columbia River. I don't like it as much, but hardly anyone is out there on Fridays and the houses along the river are awesome to look at. We will spend some time there, then go have appetizers and wine at Anthony's.