About Day Four into my DTC wait, I discovered my paperwork was still sitting on my Social Worker's desk. There was a miscommunication, and it's nobody's fault. It is what it is. It had to be delayed ANOTHER day because I was out of town and two hours away from the document I needed to email to her, and Aaron was in Nashville on business.
and when I say 'on business' I mean attending a conference with clients at the Grand Ole Opry Resort and eating a steak dinner that is almost equivalent to our monthly eat-out budget of our family of four. and I wasn't a little jealous at all.
After our dossier was finally sent off for county and state authentication, we had a three day weekend... so we had to wait some more. Yesterday, we got an email from our social worker that our dossier is on its way to the Chinese consulate! It usually takes about a week to get it signed and back to the agency where they will send it off to China. Dossier to China by the end of next week??? Could be possible!
We are also waiting on word of the three grants we have applied for since our home study has been complete . We know we have a slim chance of receiving them because there are so few grants, and so many people applying to them. We are praying though! We knew going in our chances were slim, but we had to at least try. Try we did, and I'm proud of all of that work, grant approvals or not.
While we are waiting on the grants...
We are also waiting to see what our elected officials in Washington are going to decide what to do with the Adoption Tax Credit. When we began looking into the adoption process, adopting families received approx. $12,000 tax credit after their adoption was complete. This is a HUGE deal because it let families adopt who couldn't have afforded to adopt otherwise. Most families use that money to pay any adoption debt, use it for medical care for their new child, and bless other adopting families trying to bring their children home. As of right now from what I understand, if you complete an adoption in 2012, it's around that amount but it is non-refundable... which means few people will be eligible. If you finalize your adoption in 2013 and it's not a U.S. special needs foster case, you get nothing. If the adoption is a U.S. special needs foster care, you only get $5000. If we stay on the average timeline, we will be traveling in the winter of 2013, so we would get nothing. I'm not even sure what we would get even if we had a super speedy process and got to China in December 2012. The Making Adoption Affordable Act is being looked at right now by the House of Representatives. Goodness knows the government pays for some pretty ridiculous things with our tax dollars, but I wouldn't call helping provide families for orphans ridiculous. Please pray for this to pass!
And while we are waiting on the adoption front...
We are also waiting on the relocation front. We still don't know if we are moving back to Houston or staying here. We have been told we will know 'in the next six months'. I finally went ahead and registered Caroline here for pre-school, and Camden is signed up for Classical Conversations in the Fall. At least we know now that if we moved, we would get to live in Katy again, and this makes my heart happy. I've also stopped worrying about moving during the adoption process because I'm obviously not running this show.
I'm thankful that He has a plan, and it's not mine. I'm also thankful that when I revert back to my 'freaking out because this year is just a bit too much for me' mode, I have friends who text or email me encouraging words and 'talk me down' from all of this waiting!
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