Our dossier is off to Albany and I'm off to the beach. Ahhhh.

Our dossier is off to Albany and I'm off to the beach. Ahhhh.

It's here!!!!

I have our I171-H!!!! I can't tell you how incredibly excited I am and relieved that we can move ahead with the completion of our dossier. I'm just waiting for the bank to open right now so that I can go get it notarized and then stop at the county clerk's office to get it county certified. Originally, the plan was to drive to Albany to get everything state sealed, but with school starting in less than a week, I think we are going to opt for overnight Fedex instead.

Turtles and lions, oh my!

Saturday was Henry & Sidney's 2nd birthday, and as the super cool aunt and uncle that we are, Marc and I made them a turtle cake.

Trying to light the candles outside... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

And I think they like to eat turtles as much as they like to say "tur-tle"!

Then Sunday it was off to the Art Festival where Tucker got his face painted as a lion!

So ferocious!!

Can you see what kind of fun things Poppy has in store for her once she gets here?

Mr. Mailman, please bring me a treat

Sorry for the lack of posts, I was trying to wait until I had the very exciting news that my I171-H arrived, but unfortunately, it hasn't yet. I did talk to someone at the USCIS office last week and they said that our 1600-A has been approved, so that's good to hear! Now I just wish that mailman would deliver it to me so that we can get it county sealed and then bring everything to Albany already! I am going to be a very grumpy librarian if I have to start the school year without my dossier in the hands of the Vietnamese government!!

In other news, we had a garage sale this past weekend, which was a lot more work than I anticipated, but was worth it in the end - thanks to everyone who donated their goods for our sale! Tonight we are supposed to go on our annual catamaran boat ride with my co-workers, which is always a super good time, but the weather has been pretty crappy lately, so I wonder if we'll have to post-pone it. We'll see, but right now I'm off to hang with one of my favorite nephews, Tucker, who is sure to cheer me up.

Finally, some good news!

I got a call from our agency today and all is good with my passport! I'm so relieved that I don't have to wait for a new one to be processed! And as silly as it sounds, part of the reason I really didn't want to get a new passport is because of the sentimental value mine has - I have the stamps from all over Europe when I studied abroad in college, stamps from our trip to Italy when Marc and I just started dating and the stamp from our honeymoon in Mexico. And now I'm excited that my visa for Vietnam should be the next entry in my passport!

I am taking all of our documents for our dossier to get country sealed this week. And then as soon as we get that 171-H, our dossier is off to Vietnam!!

Fun weekend

Friday was my last day of teaching summer school and I was really looking forward to this weekend. We went to see "Othello" at Shakespeare in the Park on Friday night and we brought along a bottle of...

The "Tall Poppy" wine was really good and I'm sure the play was really good too, but I wouldn't know for sure because after a few glasses of wine, I managed to fall asleep for the last hour or so.

Marc and I went to the beach on Saturday, which is always a good time and then it was off to my 10 YEAR HIGH SCHOOL REUNION!! It was so much fun to see everyone, and the planning committee did a great job of finding everyone and pulling it all together.

That's Andrea, Sarah, Christa and me... still best friends after 10+ years!

Cooking - VN style

While I am waiting to hear about the whole passport issue, I decided to crack open one of my new Vietnamese cookbooks and try my first authentic Vietnamese meal. This involved a trip to my local grocery store to get some Vietnamese staples, such as oyster sauce and fish sauce and rice noodles. You gotta love Wegmans.

I ended up making "Wok-Seared Noodles with Chicken and Mushrooms" and a soy-lime dipping sauce.


Marc said it was the best asian dish I've ever made - I had to stop him from drinking the rest of the dipping sauce! So I guess we can say my first venture into VN cuisine was a success. Not bad for a girl who had to go get a rice cooker because I couldn't even make rice on my own!

*and just to let you know that our agency hasn't left us hanging, I did hear back from my case worker, but he still doesn't know if I'll have to update my passport. He should have a definite answer within a few days...

Some good news and some potentially bad news...

So let's start with the good news - I spoke to my case worker at our agency yesterday and asked what the current wait time would be if we were to get our dossier completed in the next 2 weeks. He said that as of right now there are about 7 families ahead of us, which means we still fall into the 2-4 month wait for a referral (which is really good news- I lose sleep every night imagining that by the time we submit our dossier, the wait will be more like 2-4 years!!!)

Now onto the potentially very bad news... so I'm reviewing the checklist for our dossier that I received from our agency on Saturday and one of the documents needed is a color photocopy of the signature page of your passport. Done. And then underneath that it says that all documents for your dossier must match the name and signature on your passport. Wait a minute, hold the phones, heart is beginning to palpitate - my passport still has my maiden name on it!!

I immediately grab my computer and start looking up passport renewals, name changes, amendments, etc. And I can't find a clear answer online, but I can find about 100 stories about how backed up the US passport dept. is and how everyone is super frustrated with how long the wait is. And of course it's Saturday morning and I am going to have to wait 48 agonizing hours before I can talk to anyone at my agency about what to do! Crap.

First thing Monday morning, I went to the post office to see if they could amend my passport and they said they stopped making amendments about 2 years ago and that I will have to apply for a new passport and she hasn't seen anyone get their new passport in less than 3 months. Crap. I call my agency and my case worker is speechless and says that he will contact our coordinator in VN and she will hopefully get back to him the next day. As of right now, I am waiting for him to call me with the answer.

And the reason this could be potentially very, very bad news is that if I indeed have to apply for a new passport and if the wait is indeed a minimum of 3 months, that would not only put our entire adoption progress on hold for those months, it would also mean that most of the paperwork we have collected for our dossier would expire by then and we would basically have to start over collecting documents.

In other news... both wedding this past weekend were fabulous! It was a much needed weekend filled with plenty of drinks, great food, dancing and laughing.

August, already?

I can't believe it's August already. By this time each year, a part of me feels sick knowing that my days of laziness and spontaneous trips to the beach are nearing an end, but then part of me is excited for a new school year to begin, getting back into a routine, etc. Most of all, I wonder what I'll be doing at this time next year. Will I have Poppy by next summer? I certainly hope so, but from living in the land of international adoption, I am fully aware that anything goes, including waiting months and months more than you originally anticipated.

We have 2 weddings this weekend, and it's actually been a while since we've been to a wedding, so I'm really excited about both of them. But right now it's so humid that my fingertips are practically sticking to the keyboard and the thought of ironing clothes, doing my hair and putting on makeup are making me feel ill. Ugh.

August, already?

I can't believe it's August already. By this time each year, a part of me feels sick knowing that my days of laziness and spontaneous trips to the beach are nearing an end, but then part of me is excited for a new school year to begin, getting back into a routine, etc. Most of all, I wonder what I'll be doing at this time next year. Will I have Poppy by next summer? I certainly hope so, but from living in the land of international adoption, I am fully aware that anything goes, including waiting months and months more than you originally anticipated.

We have 2 weddings this weekend, and it's actually been a while since we've been to a wedding, so I'm really excited about both of them. But right now it's so humid that my fingertips are practically sticking to the keyboard and the thought of ironing clothes, doing my hair and putting on makeup are making me feel ill. Ugh.