that pesky education meeting on 11/13

In all the excitement over getting on the "list" I forgot to talk about the parent education meeting that we went to. The guest speaker was a doctor who likes helping families with adopted children. He is in Liberty, so not too too far away from us. He talked about suggested immunizations and what things to bring with you for your baby and yourself while traveling in your foreign country. He was down to earth and he wasn't there to advertise his business. He was pretty funny too.
We talked with a couple who were leaving for Vietnam to pick up their little girl on the 20th. I've been following their blog during their travels. Also another family is going to leaving to pick up their son on December 2nd. Everyone else at the meeting was farther along than us, which is slightly discouraging, but it is still exciting to see families getting closer to being parents to their little ones across the world.
There isn't an education meeting for December, just a Christmas party this Sunday, and then starting next year they are going to be down south. I am not sure we will go as often as it is more of a drive and with Shawn we have to get dinner in before we leave, but we'll try to keep attending regularly.

we have been approved! 11/14

Yay, in the mail today we got our I-171H which is the USCIS approval to bring one child from Vietnam home with us! Tomorrow I will fax it over to our agency and we will get on the waiting list for a little girl. It seems like forever and we have a long wait to go, but we're that much closer. We've been told the wait is 18-24 months which means in 15 months we will have to pay to have our homestudy updated and get new fingerprints with CIS, unless things change drastically and it doesn't take that long, but atleast we'll be on the list. Hurray!

please support this bill!

As most of you know, the cost of adopting is very high. Currently the Federal Tax laws allow a credit of $10,000. There is currently a proposal to increase the federaladoption tax credit to $15,000 (which still doesn't cover the cost of the adoption, but it comes closer). I would like to ask you to contact your representatives asking them to support the bill.

The proposed bill is H.R. 1561. In May, 2006, the bill was referred to the House of Representatives' subcommittee on education reform. A related bill for the tax credit increase is H.R. 4866, which makes the needed changes to the internal revenue code. When contacting your congress person, you can mention both bills or just H.R. 1561.

To find out who your congressperson is, go to http://www.congress.org. You will need to enter your zip code in the "write your officials" box along the leftside of the page.

To learn more about the proposed bill for the increased tax credit,you can go to: http://thomas.loc.gov or http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bill.xc?billnum=H.R.1561&congress=109.

Thanks!

We've decided

We still haven't gotten our CIS approval, but we have decided. We're going to wait for a little girl. Shawn gets to be an only child for a little longer and we'll have one of each. I am excited even though I know the waiting time will seem like forever, it will be worth the wait.