2/21/09 - Children's Books

One of the things we started doing last fall was researching children's books about adoption and stories containing African American characters. We want to add to our library of books at home, but wanted to read through them first and decide which ones we liked best. See Below!!



Peter's Chair and Whistle for Wilie by Ezra Jack Keats - We still need to get The Snowy Day by Keats, the first story book published with an African American main character and an adorable story! All the Colors of the Wind emphasizes many different wonderful shades of skin colors. And One Hen is a wonderfully encouraging story about an African village. All the members put money into a village savings and one family at a time takes money out to help with their business.



Over the Moon by Karen Kurtz - a beautiful story of international adoption and one of our favorites.



This one we found while shopping for Christmas presents at Walmart - the pictures of the children on the cover caught me (Amy) right away and then we noticed the title! It is such a cute book Mike agreed to buy it right away.



Two books with a white father and two African American sons - foreshadowing of what is to come, maybe?! Mike loves the dot point style pictures.




This one, Quickie Makes the Team by Donald Driver, way a Christmas gift from friends - and it's written by a Green Bay Packers player, what a bonus!!




Some of the second round of library books we looked through.

2/20/09 - No More Paperwork Updates!

I am no longer going to give paperwork updates as it seems as soon as we think we are done, we have to do something again! And God has laid on my heart to focus on what I can do for our Ethiopian children now, while waiting, not what are we still waiting for!

So the next paperwork update you will read about will be accompanied by pictures of us heading to our credit union to notarize our dossier cover sheet, driving to Chicago to certify two papers, and standing at the FedEx store ready to put ALL the COMPLETELY DONE paperwork in the mail!!

(But will still take prayers in regard to paperwork!)

2/09/09 - Home Study Sent to USCIS and Paperwork Update

We heard from our social worker Faith that our home study is on the way to the USCIS office in Chicago - this is the federal approval we need to adopt internationally. Yeah, we are on to the next stage of waiting!!

We have also started to redo some paperwork due to changes made with our international agency effective January 1st . The rundown is as follows:
Completed, Approved, and/or Notarized - Amy's Employment Letter, Power of Attorney form, 2 of our 3 References, Application Letter, Photo Pages
Waiting to be Redone, Approved, and/or Notarized - Financial Statement (one minor change needed), Amy and Mike's Physical Forms and Doctor's Letters, 1 Reference Letter

NEXT STEPS: Finish paperwork process and wait for the I171-H form to come in the mail from USCIS!

PRAISE AND PRAYER: Praise that it feels like things are moving again in the whole process! Prayer that our doctor's office would run into NO PROBLEMS in copying our information from one form to another and rewriting our letters. Prayer also that a friend of Amy's would be able to go to the doctor's office to notarize the forms as the office does not have a notary stamp.