Home study in hand!

It finally happened! We got our home study in the mail!  After several delays we finally have it in our hands, right in front of me actually.  Before there were any delays we had a lot of "you'll get it ... unless something weird happens and there are delays like..." Well it seems like all of those delays happened! Oy vey.  They gave us four copies and already two are claimed. One for the dossier and the other for the USCIS form.  We've been able to save up the $830 needed for the USCIS (customs) form and the fingerprinting fee that goes with it.  Now we need to get the $3,000 to go with the dossier.  We plan on applying for some financial aid since it will take us too long to save up all of that money on our own.  Starting February-ish we'll be getting an extra $1,000 per month due to Chris' deployment but we don't want to wait until the end of April to mail off the dossier.  We'd like to have it sent off by Christmas.  Well I say sent off but really just at the Holt office in OR, it will take a little longer for the USCIS form to come back approved and that has to go with the dossier to Ethiopia.  So a loan or grant would be great if we could get one to pay for the dossier.  There will be other, higher expenses later but we'll tackle those when we get there, hopefully the extra deployment pay will help a lot. 

About a month ago we went to St Louis for some parenting classes required by Holt and taught by our social worker.  It was quite an eye opener to hear some of the things that were taught.  Now when I say parenting classes I mean parenting an adopted child from a third world country, with a different background, culture, language, different everything classes.  There were times that I felt guilty for tearing the child(ren) from their native country and away from everything they have ever known.  But Chris had to keep reminding me that the children we adopt are either true orphans or their parents chose to give them a better life, one where they don't starve to death or die from a simple illness that would be no problem with Western medicine. 

I have also started really picking on things like children's books, programs, even commercials about being racially diverse.  In our packet for the classes there was an article called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.  I highly suggest you google it and read it.  A small example of how powerful this article is...she gives a list of "some of the daily effects of white privilege" in her life...."I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race" and "I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin", there are many many more, some of them with an "ouch" to them but she has a point.  We were just in a book store this week looking for children's books and the vast majority of them were portraying white children...or animals...or even purple or blue children.  Really the only one I saw with a black person was a book about Harriet Tubman.  We had a list of books that feature black children but they were out of stock on all of them, basically they carry them but don't purposefully stock them, "but we can order it for you".  OH and there was another with a little black baby titled "Pacifiers aren't for forever" or something like that.

LAME

And I'm not just complaining about the lack of "black" children's books, I didn't really see any with Asian or Hispanic children either.  Ok enough of my soap box.

After the classes were over on the Saturday, we went to a great Ethiopian restaurant.  Surprisingly, there are several to choose from in St Louis, we chose Meskerem (that means Spring, or it's the month Spring comes...something like that).  It was so stinking good! For an appetizer we got beef Sambosa

I could have eaten a whole meal of these suckers!
Then we got the Meskerem Combo platter for our meal since we couldn't decide on just one dish

The whole meal is served on a huge piece of injera, their flat sour dough bread, also used to pick up the food and eat with (you can see mine folded up on the bottom right corner).  In the middle is the ever popular Doro Wat (chicken stew) and yes, that's a hard boiled egg in it.  On the left is Tibs Wat (beef stew) and on the right is Miser Wat (supposed to be lamb stew but they were out of lamb so it was beef).  On the top and bottom are Yebeg Alecha and Miser Alecha (lentil somethings).  It was SO good. I didn't think I would like the lentil dishes but I loved them just as much as the meat ones! 
Here's an example of eating the food with the injera

And here's the damage we did

We decided not to eat the egg, the other food was just too good to waste stomach space with a hard boiled egg. :-P
Please pray with us that we will get the money needed and fast.  I know, all in God's timing but He can just have us wait while on the waiting list, money in hand. ;)  We need to get everything done for the dossier, including fingerprints (again) for the USCIS form before the end of the year.  Once we mail off the USCIS form, they send us a letter telling us when and where to get the fingerprints done. I've talked to others and they've said that you can go in earlier than your appointment.  On the website it says they take service members without appointments (but we still need the appointment letter).  We'll have to go to St Louis so we're praying we'll get the appointment for a good time or we can at least go beforehand.  Chris will be doing some traveling for deployment training and then we'll be doing a bit of travelling before Christmas.  Hopefully you get my stressing on the importance of these fingerprinting appointments.  I'm not trying to stress over this stuff but it's a little hard not to at times.  So please pray that I can let go and let God!!  I hate not being in control! Argh!  Ok this is a long enough blog.  I think I've updated ya'll on everything and given my soap box speech for the week.  Have a great weekend! Happy Veterans Day!