Fundraising

Ok, so adoption is a very expensive thing. I'm trying to find ways to raise some money.

If anyone wants a new magazine subscription or needs to renew an old subscription, buying them through www.magfundraising.com/ChristensenAdoption will save you money on the subscription, plus 40% of what you spend will go toward our adoption expenses.

Also if you go to www.currentfun.com , they have a lot of interesting things to buy (houshold items, magazines, cards, flowers, cookie mix, candies, snacks, and lots of other things). We will also recieve part of the profits from anything you buy from that website.
If you do choose to shop there, there are certain things that you have to enter in the check out process.

The Organization's state is North Carolina

On the next page you choose the organization. Scroll down until you find "Meredith and Eric Christensen."

Then you just proceed through the checkout like normal.

Our Adoption Timeline

Dec 14, 2007 - Mailed the homestudy application.

Dec 18, 2007 - Got a phone call from our social worker and set up our first appointment.

Dec 21, 2007 - Mailed I-600A to USCIS

Dec 22, 2007 - Met with Rose, our social worker. Really like her!

Dec 29, 2007 - Second meeting with Rose.

Dec 30, 2007 - Home visit with Rose. SO much easier than I had thought!

Jan 23, 2008 - I had my medical form filled out at the doctor's office.

Feb 7, 2008 - Got our fingerprints done in Charlotte.

Mar 11, 2008 - Sent My passport off to be renewed with the right last name.

Mar 21, 2008 - Am VERY impressed with the government. I got my passport back in just 10 days (without paying the extra fee for speedy processing).

March 27 - 28, 2008 - Eric went to medical to get his form filled out and the Navy insisted on doing a full physical and updating his shots.

March 28, 2008 - Faxed paperwork to Rose! We are DONE with home study stuff!!

April 3, 2008 - Applied for a grant through the National Adoption Foundation.

April 4, 2008 - Happy birthday to me! We recieved the draft of our homestudy. Everything looks good so far.

April 8, 2008 - Got the final copies of our homestudy, which means USCIS should have their copy too.

April 19, 2008 - Recieved our I-171H today. We're approved to adopt 1 child, of either sex, age 0-3 years :)

July 15, 2008 - Eric was transfered down to VMM-263. He'll be deploying in the Spring and won't be allowed leave after September '08. So we'll have to start the adoption process again when he gets home in Fall 2009.

I will be updating this as things move along...

Our Journey Thus Far

So as a lot of you already know, we are in the process of adopting a child from ukraine. We are still waiting for our homestudy report to be finished. Getting Eric to actually go to medical isn't the easiest thing, and we're still waiting for letters of reference from friends. Our next step is going to be to get my passport renewed with my married name on it and get one for Eric.

We had a pretty stressful situation a couple of weeks ago. We thought that Eric would not be able to get enough leave for us to travel to Ukraine, so we started looking into domestic adoption. While I would love to adopt a newborn, it just didn't feel like the right decision for us. We've gotten information together for the people in his squadron, so that they understand why and how we've made this decision. After talking to a few people, we know that Eric should be able to get 30 days of leave with no problem (assuming that his shop doesn't cause issues). That way he should be able to be there to meet the child and do the court hearing and then come home. I can stay to finish the process after that. I'm hoping that he'll be able to get more leave or get PTAD orders so that he can stay for the whole process.

I'm still hoping that we can have biological children, but right now I'm just going to focus on the adoption (If you don't want to know about my reproductive system now is the time to stop reading LOL). For the next 6 months biological children are out of the question anyway. In my laparoscopy, the doctor found endometriosis, so I'm now on a medication called Lupron to treat that, which also puts me into menopause (fun fun fun!). The doctor also found that one of my fallopian tubes is blocked. If that was caused by the endometriosis, it may open back up after the Lupron injections. I'm also still on medication to treat my polycystic ovaries. We're finally beginning to understand why it has been so hard for us to get pregnant.

That's about all i can think of to say for now.