Where the McClellans do the family thing …
Originally posted July 20, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
Gladney sends us an E-newsletter about every month. In the news letter is a link to the Vietnam program and then the Vietnam blog. I enjoy reading the blog to see what other people have experienced. There is one post by a mother who recently adopted from Vietnam. If you would like to check it out visit http://gladneyvietnamadoption.blogspot.com/.
Originally posted July 6, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So they only asked us a few questions…
How did you decide to adopt?
How did you pick our agency?
What age do you want to adopt?
Do you want to adopt a boy or girl?
What were your families reactions?
Does everyone in your family know?
Are they all supportive?
How long have you known each other?
How did you get together?
What kind of marriage do you have?
What’s your role in the marriage?
What are the strengths of your marriage?
What do you think your discipline and parenting style will be?
Have you heard of attachment issues?
What will you do to work with attachment issues?
Do you have a will?
Have you talked about picking legal guardians should anything happen to you?
What’s your net monthly income?
What’s your gross monthly income?
What’s your gross yearly income?
What are your debts?
What are your assets?
Then it was time for our one – on – one interview. While one of us interviewed, the other went upstairs. I’m pretty sure Scott tried to not to listen and do his own thing; me, on the other hand, I’m an eavesdropper.
What are the names and ages of your siblings? (This took me awhile.)
Who are you closest, too?
What is a happy memory from your childhood?
What is a sad memory from your childhood?
How would you describe your dad?
How are you like your dad?
How are you not like your dad?
How would you describe your mom?
How are you like your mom?
How are you not like your mom?
What is your parents’ marriage like?
How did they discipline?
Is there anything you would change about your past?
What’s your personality?
What are your challenges?
What’s your spouse’s personality?
What are your spouse’s challenges?
Is there anything you would change about your spouse?
And, she randomly asked me – what was your first job after you graduated?
After that we were finished. It was a lot of questions and a long interview (three hours), but it was interesting. Some questions we hadn’t asked ourselves or even thought about. Now, we have a lot to discuss, and we can officially begin our foreign dossier paperwork. Now, if only we could our passports back…they’ll come eventually.
Originally posted June 26, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So just as I was beginning to think we were doomed and would probably never have a homestudy, our new social worker, Kristin, called. Last week, I emailed the social worker in charge of the Vietnam program to tell her about our homestudy scheduling issues. She emailed me on Monday to tell me the name of our social worker and that our homestudy was being made a priority. Then Kristin called today, Tuesday, the day after Monday which is pretty good turn around.
Our homestudy is scheduled for Friday, July 6 at 11 am. We were told that it would last about three hours. We picked Friday because Scott is going out of town tomorrow, and then we are going on vacation to Galveston on Friday. We will be coming back a day early, but it’s worth it to get our homestudy done. After this, comes the foreign dossier phase which includes a lot of paperwork and mailings. We’re just glad to be moving forward with the process.
Originally posted June 22, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So we are still waiting for our homestudy to be scheduled…our original case worker had to cancel because of a family illness. We were given the name of a social worker who does contract work for Gladney. After waiting a week and not hearing anything, I emailed the social worker in charge of the Vietnam program. She is now looking into the matter for us, so hopefully we will hear something soon.
We did hear about additional paperwork. Now, the International Adoption Department requires each family to submit two original applications for adoption with the dossier, so we’ll be working on that as soon as our homestudy is complete.
Originally posted June 12, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So, today I received a call from our homestudy case worker. She had to cancel our homestudy for this Friday, June 15. Her father is ill and being moved to a skilled nursing facility, so she’s traveling to help with the transition. She also told us that another case worker has been assigned to complete our homestudy. We are now waiting for the new caseworker to call us and schedule a new time for the homestudy. We’ll let you know we have a new date for our homestudy. I guess God does want me to learn patience (again) and practice singing karaoke. 🙂
Originally posted May 30, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So…right after I posted my last post, the Gladney Agency called to schedule our homestudy. I guess we didn’t have to wait that long.
Our homestudy will be on June 15 at 9 am, so no prank calls during that time, please. The lady I spoke with said that the homestudy will take about four hours. I don’t know a whole lot about what takes place during those four hours. They check out our house, ask us some questions, and hopefully survive meeting Shiner. We’ll see. But don’t worry, I’ll let you know how everything goes or if I learn anything else about the process. 🙂
Originally posted May 25, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
We received a packet of information this week from Carolina Adoption Services (CAS). CAS is partnering with Gladney for Vietnam adoptions. Here’s their website http://www.carolinaadoption.org/programs.asp, and this is the page that goes straight to the Vietnam program http://www.carolinaadoption.org/vietnam.asp.
CAS accepted our application and sent us some papers for our homestudy. We also had a packet of papers describing CAS’s services that we had to sign and send in. Now, we are waiting on Gladney to schedule a homestudy with us. Maybe sending in our sheet to do a background check on us is the final step before the homestudy. We’ll just have to hope that Gladney doesn’t make the same mistake another company did – find an Anne McClellan in Pennsylvania who failed to contain her dog on the premises. It wasn’t me. I’ve never lived there.
Originally posted May 11, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
We get a monthly newsletter from Gladney, and they included the following fun fact in this month’s newsletter. I thought you might enjoy reading it.
Fun Fact about Vietnam
Legend says that the people of Vietnam are descended from Lac Long Quan (Lac Dragon Lord) and Au Co (a mountain fairy). According to traditional legends, Viet Nam was formed when King Lac Long Quan (also known as the “Dragon Lord of Lac” or the “Dragon Lord of the Seas”) married Princess Au Co (a Chinese immortal and descended from the High Mountains). She bore him 100 eggs, out of which 100 sons were born. They soon established a nation that stretched from southern China to northern Indonesia.
However, the King and the Princess became convinced that their different origins would ultimately make them unhappy, so they separated. Princess Au Co took 50 of the sons with her back into the mountains while King Lac Long Quan took the other 50 sons and ruled over the lowlands. After the King died in 2879 B.C., his eldest son, Hung Vuong established the Hung dynasty, and he is regarded as the real founder of the Vietnamese nation and of the first Vietnamese dynasty.
Originally posted May 8, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
So many people keep asking us how things are going, as Scott said we turned in the first part of our application. We sent our application to Gladney who then sent it to Carolina Adoption Services. Gladney is partnering with Carolina Adoption Services for Vietnam adoptions. I emailed our Gladney contact to see if there was anything else we should be doing, and I thought I would include her response.
Hi Annie,
To be honest, there is not all that much that you can be working on at this point other than the rest of Gladney application (medicals, agreements, etc.). You will also need to complete the attached criminal clearances if you have not already done so. I have forwarded your information to CAS, so they should be sending you service/fee agreements in the next few weeks. Someone from Gladney should also be contacting in the next few weeks to schedule the homestudy. Please let me know if you don’t hear from anyone or have any questions. Talk soon.
So that’s where we are in the process. I know many of you are wondering what we do to keep ourselves busy. First of all, we have plenty of time to pose for pictures.
When we’re not posing for photos, I can paint pottery. I painted the lovely hippo below and a friend painted the worm. We decided it would be best to put them in the baby’s room. Woohoo, our first decorations. 🙂
Originally posted May 6, 2007 on our old Vox blog.
Are you adopting a boy or a girl?
We don’t know. When you adopt from Vietnam and are a childless couple, you cannot specify the sex of the baby. We’ll just have to wait and see. But don’t worry, we already have a boy name and a girl name, and I’m already planning colors for the nursery that could be for a boy or a girl.
Where will the baby’s room be?
When we first moved into our townhome, we used our bedrooms for an office, a guest bedroom, and a master bedroom. We are converting our office into the nursery. We already gave away a lot of the office furniture, and we were given a crib and a changing table (but those are in the closet). Right now the room has two bookshelves, a cardio glide, and plenty of space for me to do Pilates.