Halloween is near!!!

Boo! Halloween has long been my favorite holiday. I have fond memories of running through the neighborhood for hours with my friend, Helen Paterson, carrying loaded down pillowcases of treats! Candy was allowed in our house 3 times a year - Christmas, Easter and Halloween! And of course, as a kids, you only control the candy load at Halloween! Helen and I would go back to her house, dump out the goods and endlessly offer trades for what each of us considered the best candy combinations. Perhaps why she and I are good negotiators to this day? I can't imagine letting my kids run from house to house, unsupervised for hours gathering candy from strangers. Maybe its why they don't get into it like I do. Helen now lives in New Zealand where she has been a one woman organizer of all things Halloween. After many years of pushing, her neighbors and their kids have gotten into the spirit! A special thank you to my old neighbor from Memphis, Ed, who helps me get in the spirit each year with a series of great Halloween cards and little treats! I love those orange envelopes.

Perhaps my favorite Halloween was last year. We trick or treated with the Spotts whose son, Jacob, had just come home from China in August. He was 6 and already understanding much of what was said to him and communicating very well in English. After 1 house, Jacob fully understood the concept of knock on the door, shout with glee and get handfuls of candy! He ran ahead of us all and when people didn't open the door immediately, he charged in on his own in a few houses! His exuberance was exactly what Halloween is supposed to be - a magical night of friendship, make believe and fun. Tummy aches and sugar rushes may come later but this year - its on a Friday night! So what?! We all survived it, right?

So, please don't sit home, bah humbug the day with moans of "commercialism" or worse yet "paganism." Lighten up. Go buy a few bags of chocolate (no one likes the healthy snacks!), turn on the front porch light, enjoy the parade of little ones and help them make some memories! Happy Halloween! (p.s. - Mom, thank you for the home made Betsy Ross and gypsy costumes! They were my favorites!)

Sweet victory!

What is hope? Buying season tickets for the Rays when 9 out of the last 10 seasons (including last year) they have finished as the worst team in baseball!

Happy fan!

Yes - my sweetheart took me to the game!

Go Rays!!!!

Some of our favorite players - Carlos Pena and Aki Iwamura

Beautiful October weekend

What a spectacular weekend in Florida. The weather actually got a touch cooler. We took a trip to Ft. Myers to see Edison's home and lab and spent an afternoon at a nearby park. How 'bout them Rays?!

A Giant Step - Backwards

When is Hunter coming home? That is the big question in this house. This week we took a giant step in the wrong direction - backwards. I have been pushing our agency to give us a more realistic timetable for travel. I had an offer to teach again at a local law school, Jim has vacation he will lose if not taken by February. When Holt told us they were talking to VN and wanted to have a conference call Wednesday, I was a little nervous. It couldn't be bad news could it?

Yes - very bad. We were told that VN will not provide a timeline to complete the adoption. Holt's "best guess" is that the earlier "paperwork issues" (when the province erroneously assumed a law requiring new paperwork was retroactive) has de-railed us and another family by about 6 months from the "normal" process. They are "hopeful" we will travel in 6 months but it could be a year. Devastated - yes. Lots of tears, lots of anger, lots of despair. How do we continue to get close and every time we are within 2 months of anticipating travel we are told it will be longer and longer and longer?!! How do you continue to believe and hope and wait? It has made me physically sick (as evidenced by 3 ER visits this summer and about 6k in hospital bills). It is completely stressing Jim and Marshall out. What must the wait be doing to poor Hung who has heard for a year and a half we are coming for him?

Of course we are grateful we have a referral when so many waiting families are shut out by the closure of the program. Why does every other province seem to be able to get their kids home within 6-7 months of match? We are coming up on a year this week since the province has had our files. What has taken so long? There are no answers, not even excuses.

So how do we cope? Day by day. This weekend we saw Tony Bennett at on outdoor free concert. We took in the tour at the Edison museum. Jim and Marsh are on their way to watch the Rays hopefully win the AL pennant against the Sox tonight. Lily and I are going to watch talking chihuahuas. We have planned brief vacations for December and June. Continue to pray for our family, especially Hunter. Please don't stop asking us about the process as if it will never happen. Bear with us if we cry when we answer that we don't know. He will come home. He has to.

Hoarding Fritos

About six months ago, one of my best girlfriends, Connie P., told me she was getting a hive of honey bees. She lives in the country but even for her this unusual acquisition seems extreme. "Why on earth would you want a hive of bees?" I asked. She very seriously told me she thought the economy was going to hell fast and that we will soon be reduced to a barter system. She is going to be prepared! She is buying chickens, planting vegetables and getting some bees.

Such a weird perspective, I thought, for my usually very upbeat friend. Connie is not psychic but I never would have thought our economy would be at the point that it is today and all the news is doom and gloom.

The other night on Jon Stewart (yes, that is about the only place I can tolerate the "news" these days!), he asked his fake economist for recommendations for investments. He said, "food and guns!" I turned to my half asleep husband and said, "Jim, I told you - we need to go to Home Depot or Lowes and get some seeds!"

He very peacefully replied, "Honey, if it will make you feel better, I will get us some seeds. But... they don't have seeds for Fritos!" Such a comedian, my Jim.

OK - so what will be the point of living if the economy completely collapses and there are no Fritos?! :) Which candidate is guaranteeing my right to Fritos?!

Angels everywhere

I re-fingerprinted this morning (they were lousy) and then went straight to another USCIS office to meet the head of the adoption unit to sign the affidavit. Guess what? She has a huge bulletin board of about 300 photos of kids who she has helped bring home. Guess whose picture was in the bottom right corner, right next to her telephone? You got it - SWEET LILY!!! I could not believe it. I said - "that is my girl! She has been home about 2 years." Mrs Dwyer, the officer, said "June 26, 2006 right?" I about fell on the floor!! I gave her a photo of Hunter and she said "Well, he needs to be right by his sister!" and promptly tacked his photo next to Lily's. Truly amazing. Angels everywhere.

Virtual baby shower!

When you wait for your child for over a year, you can get fairly desperate for motivation, inspiration and sources of good humor and hope about the process. We are very blessed to be waiting with an amazing group of families. A few weeks ago, several us decided we needed a monthly gift exchange for the next few months to keep us going. We scheduled our first opening of small gifts for 10 PM EST - just about the time we expected our friends to be receiving their children in Dong Nai. A nice way to celebrate together. 3 moms got on Instant Messaging and we opened together. We took a break to thank God for the uniting of 3 forever families on the other side of the world and to say a special prayer that the hearts of the Dong Nai officials will be opened to see that our waiting children are home before the end of this year. We hope the newly larger families felt our prayers, congratulations and good wishes from half a world away! We hope Hung will soon get the presents, including a new teddy bear with a special heart from his sister Lily who was very serious about getting it just right!

Saying Thanks

Last night I made turkey enchiladas for Marshall - his new favorite food (in his very limited repertoire!). Lily likes spicy things but has not shown any interest in enchiladas. I made her a dish of baked brown rice and heated up some left over honey bar-b-q chicken. Apparently she thought it was over the top wonderful and got out of her seat twice to come over, hug me and tell me 'Mommy, I love you SO much. I LOVE when you cook for me!" Keep in mind, I cook for all of us most nights so I don't know what evoked this outpouring of gratitude but it was simple, sweet and made me feel great.

Saying thanks is something we sometimes don't do often enough. Near the end of his life I asked my Dad if he had any regrets. He told me his only regret was not telling people who helped him along the way how much they meant to him. My Dad was a generous, loving, gentle man who never missed an opportunity to give praise or a compliment so this really surprised me. I know he made an effort to find long lost colleagues and friends to send them little notes of thanks and gratitude.

I took this lesson to heart and have made a conscious effort to do better. Three years ago when we were waiting on a form from USCIS to submit our dossier to China, my fingerprints failed twice, my name was misspelled and ultimately I had to fill out an affidavit that I was not a criminal and supply a local background check. When this finally occurred (after getting our local Congressman involved), the local USCIS head of the adoption unit, Mrs. Dwyer, invited me in her office to complete the affidavit and she handed me the needed form, already complete. To say I was grateful was an understatement. I promptly sent her a thank you card and a mother's day card when we received Lily's referral, including Lily's photo. When we applied on 2007 for this same form for Hunter's adoption, I enclosed an updated photo of Lily and thanked her again for the work she does uniting children with forever families.

Well - guess whose prints were once again unreadable? Nothing in this adoption seems to go smoothly. I got a call from Mrs. Dwyer's office yesterday morning telling me my prints are unreadable. I talked to her lovely assistant Sara who directed me to go back to USCIS next week, reprint and then immediately come to Mrs. Dwyer's office to fill out the form and get our updated clearance. I asked whether they planned to wait and see if the prints were clear or unreadable this time and she said "no - we are not going to take a chance. Let's just get this done!" Music to a momma's ears! Any parent adopting internationally knows the angst created by dealing with USCIS and these needed forms. This type of back and forth on the prints can take weeks. Heck - it took 5 weeks just to get the first re-print appointment. Mrs. Dwyer's gracious invitation has saved me weeks of stress and worry, particularly since our clearance expires early November without my updated clearance.

Yesterday when I got home from work, the phone was ringing from an "unavailable" number. I almost didn't pick up. Glad I did - it was Mrs. Dwyer herself calling to remind me that when I come next week, I need a local police report. I had already gotten it yesterday morning immediately after talking to her assistant. Why did this exceptionally busy professional who works for this humongous bureaucracy take the time to personally call me to remind me of this detail so things would go smoothly next week? I'd like to think because I have taken the time to say "thank you."

So - take the time today to say "thank you" to someone who has shown you some small kindness. And thanks Dad - I miss you.

Then and Now - a shout out to the Dong Nai families about to travel!

We have been very fortunate to be on this journey to adopt a child in Dong Nai, Vietnam with 11 other families. Three traveled earlier this year to bring home their beautiful children. Their stories give us much hope and encouragement that it will happen for us too. 5 of us still wait for "the call" to be invited to Vietnam to adopt our kids. Three will meet their children for the first time in 5 days!!!

Rob and Christel, Cheri and David, Mark and Carol - we are so very excited for you. None of us should have had to wait this long. Thank you for carrying over our larger gifts for Hunter. We know if you could bring him back for us, you would.

Your impending travel makes us think back to that very special time a little over 2 years ago when we traveled for Lily. What an amazing gift from God is the experience of adoption. The anticipation, the excitement, the nervousness is everything child birth is and more. As someone told me, the stretch marks are on your heart.

Your "paper pregnancies" will soon be over and you will have your beautiful children safe in your arms! Josiah, Jacob and Honour Anh - may you one day understand the immense love your family had for you long before they ever held you. New big brothers and sisters - what a special time for you - new siblings, new responsibilities, new fun! Our hope for you is that you love every minute of the journey, you make new friends along the way and the transition into a larger family is easy.

Wendi, Annette, Valorie and Elisabeth - glad we will continue to be "expecting" together!

USCIS day - at last!

Woo Hoooo!! Yesterday was USCIS day.

What is USCIS? It is what used to be known as "Immigration" and now known as "Homeland Security." Among its many and varied functions, this federal agency makes sure that adoptive families meet US and foreign requirements to adopt internationally and verify that prospective adoptees are in fact, considered "orphans" as defined by international law. This agency is the gatekeeper that permits us to (eventually) get a visa for our son to enter the US. Families wanting to adopt must complete a form I-600A, attach relevant documents including a home study, pay a large sum, fill out the form and pay to be fingerprinted. These prints are checked by the FBI. We completed this step of the process September 2007 and once we were cleared, we were able to submit our family dossier to Vietnam. We were then directed to complete the form I-600 specifically asking for Hung to be preliminarily approved as an orphan to be adopted by our family. We sent our papers to our agency in January, 2008 where they have sat for 10 long months waiting for his province to issue a needed document for his dossier to be complete.

Yesterday one of the best messages was in my e-mail in box - "Dear Mr/Mrs. Duda - This is your receipt of your I-600 application....Processing will usually take less than 60 days." No - this does not mean that if everything goes OK, we can go for Hung in 60 days or less. It means we will have initial approval of his orphan status. He will be issued a visa to enter the US only after we are interviewed in person at the Embassy in Hanoi.

It was also USCIS day yesterday because Jim and I were "invited" upon our request to re-print because our fingerprint clearance expires after 15 months. We never thought we would have to worry about this but we are looking now at travel sometime between January and March 2009. Jim and I spent a half hour under the watchful eyes of Pres. Bush and Michael Chertoff's pictures while we waited to print. I must say the technician in Tampa was more than sympathetic to our long process and understood the need to get a clean set of prints. Hopefully they will not need to be re-done and we will be one step closer. This whole fingerprinting thing was a major point of stress and delay for Lily's adoption so we do not need a repeat.

What is taking so long and why do we seem to be setting a record for length of time from referral to travel for our son? We wish we knew. We were told last week there is more back and forth to go of Hung's dossier between the federal government and the local government before we will be invited for the "Giving and Receiving" ceremony that formalizes our adoption. Our patience is wearing thin but the friendship, support and good humor of our families, friends and our Holt Dong Nai adoption families group is getting us through day by day.

Please continue to keep our family, including Hung (who we will likely name John Hunter and call "Hunter") in your prayers.