**Mailed our Fingerprint cards and Marriage Certificate in** May 28, 2008

 

Sample fingerprint card – ours has different info listed

 

On Tuesday we mailed in our Fingerprint cards and a copy of our Marriage Certificate to CHSFS.

The fingerprint cards are for the Adam Walsh Background Study – which is a requirement for all potential adoptive and foster care parents.

I spoke with Janina at CHSFS last week and all we are waiting on after those is our Reference Letters to be received.   We asked three people to write personal references for us and they require them to be mailed directly to CHSFS. 

My understanding is once those are received they can sign us up for our PAC (Adoption) classes.  We are hoping to get into the June classes on 6/19 – 6/20 otherwise we will go in July  7/17 – 7/18.  These are all day classes that we will have to take off of work to go to.  These classes are required for all potential adoptive parents.

***We were on Twin Cities Live Yesterday!*** May 22, 2008

Thanks to my wonderfully resourceful sister Heather, we had the opportunity to be on Twin Cities Live on 5/21/08 at 3pm cst.   They had a story on couples that met and fell in love online.   Well that’s our story.

Everyone at Twin Cities Live was wonderful!

From Melissa that set everything up before the show, Mark that checked us in, Christian that walked us downstairs and explained the details.  The woman that got us each a bottle of water (sorry, I didn’t catch her name) and the man that helped us with our Mic’s (I didn’t get his either) – everyone was friendly and helpful. 

Rebekah and John were charming and fun to talk to before, after and during the show.  We couldn’t have been interviewed by nicer people.

Thank you Twin Cities Live for telling our story and getting the word out about our adoption journey.

 

All the guests that were on the show were also great people.  We all huddled together in the green room, talked about our stories, watched the live link on TV in the green room, and cheered each other on. 

 

**Application has been received!** May 15, 2008

We got a letter in the mail yesterday saying Children’s Home Society and Family Services received and is processing our application.  They sent us our fingerprint cards so now we have to arrange to take a morning off work and go to the jailhouse and be fingerprinted like criminals!  SWEET! 

Maybe we will get to be in the background on cops or something?  hehehe..

CHSFS (Children’s Home Society and Family Services) also advised us they will be sending us an invite to attend PAC classes which are required, in the next couple weeks.  At that time we need to pay in $2300.00.

I’m so excited!

**Application has been mailed!!!** May 7, 2008

I put our completed application in the mail with the $500 certified funds check this morning to Children’s Home Society and Family Services.  

I am waiting to hear back from Town Hall in Newtown CT to get a copy of our marriage certificate which I will forward to Children’s Home Once received. 

We took dozens of pictures trying to find the right one to include with our application.  We kept looking at one then another and didn’t love any of them but settled up on a close up head shot where Jason and I both had huge smiles on our faces.  I kept wondering if we chose a bad photo of us would they not give us a child?  Stupid I know!!!! Each picture made me wonder if I would get a different child depending on the picture we sent in.   My thought was even if the picture of us wasn’t perfect we looked happy, so that should count for something. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

Now we wait 4-6 weeks for processing…

So, I can focus on getting the copy of our marriage certificate. 

Then we pay $2300 and the fun continues with our homestudy and classes. 

Contact information May 4, 2008

If you would like to contact us feel free to email us at the addresses below:

We have a Public Relations/Marketing Representative who has donated countless hours.  She is also my sister Heather.  Her email address is heatherjamison@q.com

You can email me (Amy) at Amalena77@gmail.com

To those wonderful people that want to use and abuse these email address…  see below…

Please do not send spam or advertisements to these addresses.  I will 100% guarantee that any solitations or ads that are sent to either email address will not be opened and the company included in them will not be used in any way shape or form.  We are trying saving to adopt a child and will not be wasting our money to buy your service. 

The Amy and Jason Story May 4, 2008

  I realized today that not everyone that reads this will know us personally.  So, this post is for all those people (or maybe just 2 or 3 people that clicked on this in error) that would like to know us a little better.

We met on-line at resort.org (telnet chatter) in about 1998 and talked about nothing more then the weather and how was your day off and on for years.  Amy was known as Amalena and Jason was Brimstone.  Fast forward a couple years – Jason was talking on the phone to my old roommate and I spoke with him briefly once or twice…  one crazy night around March 2000 we were chatting on-line and Brimstone said he wanted to get to know Amalena better because he thought she was “neat”.

So fast forward to August 2001 and I moved from Minnesota to Connecticut to advance our long distance relationship and save us on the costly airline flights to visit each other. 

We moved to Philly  about 6-8 months later and both worked for the same Investment advisor.  Fast forward to October 2003 - we were engaged and planning our wedding for August 28, 2004 in Connecticut.  The investment advisor did layoffs and knew we were a package deal.    So December 2003 we moved back to Minnesota (where I am from).    We got married as planned.

Tried to conceive for 2.5 long years before deciding to adopt.

We live in a suburb about an hour south of Minneapolis.  We love our townhouse but hate the long drive.   We are both working on our first novels and hope to someday have successful published series.   Jason writes Sci-fi and Amy writes Supernatural Chic-lit (or at least thats what I call it).

Jason is in I.T and Amy is in mortgage

We have a snuggly 80lb Sheprador (Austrailan Sheppard/Lab mix) named Emma who will be 2 in June and a old tabby cat named Wyatt that turns 10 in August. 

There’s our basic story…

 

May 2, 2008

Cost Breakdown for adoption in Peru May 1, 2008

Everyone has been asking us how the cost to adopt a child is so high and are curious about the fee breakdown.    Here is my spreadsheet with the breakdown.  A lot of these figures are estimates and can change at any time.

 

Registration	$46.00	Paid
Application	$500.00	Paid
Homestudy (sliding scale)	$2,300.00
Processing/Placement (once homestudy completed)	$4,600.00
amount needed prior to dossier	$7,446.00
Peru adoption fee	$5,000.00
divided as follows:
$2,000 with dossier (paid after processing/placement)
$1,000 at referral
(1-2 weeks before travel – once child selected for us)
$2,000 paid in Peru.
Airfare
2 adult roundtrip to Peru (est) $1000/person	$2,000.00
1 child – 1 way from Peru to US $1000	$1,000.00
Hotel 25 days (estimate)	$2,500.00
$75-125/Night  20-25 days
USCIS filing	$670.00
Fingerprinting	$160.00
Dossier Doc processing (estimate)	$400.00
Transportation in Peru for legal appts (est)	$300.00
misc fees notary birth cert	$50.00
Passport and photo for baby	$50.00
Medical Exam (est)	$60.00
Visa for baby	$380.00
Departure Tax	$72.00
Finalization/readoption through local courts	$500.00
Estimated total	$20,588.00
plus living expenses in Peru for 25 days