Federal Fingerprinting and Fire Ladders

Yet another productive weekend: We went for our fingerprinting for the Feds on Saturday (this is all related to the application we submitted, an I-600A, asking for permission to escort an orphan from another country to the U.S.--as you may remember, we will only be considered "guardians" of our child until a couple of months after we bring him/her home--the adoption is finalized in the U.S., whereas for other countries, it's finalized while you're over there.) We were able to go to this "Application Service Center (ASC)" in Wheaton, MD (only a 5-min drive from our house). It wasn't even that busy. We got there at 8:00, were out of there by about 8:40.

Yay! Yet another thing to check off our list. But I just realized that we won't hear back from the Feds until our agency submits our home study; so it'll be a while, as I don't expect we'll be able to turn in our home study until the end of May or even early June.

Now the next main focus is getting ready for this county health inspection, which is scheduled for the week of May 5. This weekend, we did a lot (actually, Jeff did most of it) to ready the house. We updated and/or installed all of the required smoke detectors. We began some general cleaning and "decluttering." Our friend Neal is going to help hang the house numbers next weekend (our house only ever had house numbers on the mailbox!), which have to be a certain size as stipulated by either the county or the fire dept (can't remember which, but we'll need the house numbers for both inspections).

I talked to my friend Pam, who recently went through all of this (she and her husband Michael have a beautiful 4-year-old daughter, Emily, whom they adopted from China). She encouraged me to try to relax about it...they were terrified by this inspection and everything turned out OK for them and they passed (they live in a much older house that was in the middle of renovations at the time of their inspection). So she said she suspects we'll be just fine.

One tip: She said "Make sure you have the fire ladders!" Here I was, kind of making fun of the fact that we spent $90 on two fold-out fire ladders; glad we got them! She said this is something they definitely check!

So that's the scoop for this very soggy Monday morning. Keep on checking in! I especially enjoy reading people's comments. I love it when you guys post comments!

Huge hugs to all,
Kathleen