We are...wellll...the application is... Iowa Bound!

We're making some progress now! Today (12/10/10) I mailed the application to Abby's One True Gift! Katie and I were supposed to drive to Iowa this weekend to hand in our application in person. However, it has been forecasted that Mother Nature might pull a fast one on us and send Iowa a snow storm. We, along with Brenda (our Adoption Agent from Abby's One True Gift) decided it just wasn't worth risking the trip this weekend. So we did the next best thing and put the application and notarized copy of our homestudy in the capable hands of FedEx! They are more reliable drivers in the snow than I am.

I started my day sleeping in. I took today off to Christmas shop for Katie. I have to take a vacation day every year so I can adequately purchase and HIDE said gift(s). You'll learn, RedFisch...she likes to hunt for her gifts. Booo. :) As you probably just read, Katie and I experienced a miracle and got our state background checks in the mail just yesterday (12/11/10). So before I could go to any store, I was sent with the background checks to Doctor Heller's office. My only other instruction from Katie was that I text her statuses of my progress at every turn. She had to work today which meant she couldn't participate. Texts and pictures of the day's events would have to suffice. When I arrived at Dr. Heller's office, I handed them the documents, and Christina handed me the three notarized copies of the Home Study. They were already ready because we had previously worked out those details with Dr. Heller in preparation for our previously-planned trip to Iowa. Next stop - FedEx Kinkos! I had the home study documents bound with covers, and copies made of the application for us. We also had to send a picture of ourselves to Abby's One True Gift. Katie picked out a really good one of us (minus some scary red eyes) from our honeymoon to send. Prior to sending I fixed the red eyes! After that I placed all the required documents in a FedEx envelope, took a pic for Katie and sent it on its way to Iowa. Now we just wait I guess. I guess its only a matter of time before we start getting calls about a match. I hope its sooner than later!!

Mother Nature

Great news! The US Postal Service came through and our background checks were delivered Thursday afternoon...just in time! We were Iowa-bound AND our home study would be complete! Saturday, December 11th was our scheduled trip and we were very excited! I told Carlie that every step we took like this one, felt like one step away from the "yuckiness" of this past year. Each step closer to our Red Fisch, was one step away from the losses we've experienced. This trip felt like a BIG step.

The Missouri state government cooperated, but Mother Nature did not. On Thursday, Brenda (our adoption agent from Abby's One True Gift) emailed me and told me that she thought we needed to reschedule our trip to Waukee. She told me that they are predicting strong winds, ice, and snow for the whole state of Iowa and she felt that it wasn't safe for her to travel her 80 mile round trip to the office. We were very disappointed but also understood. Carlie luckily had the day off on Friday and he would take care of mailing the application. We may not be able to travel to Iowa to complete the application process, but we wouldn't let the snow storm hinder this final step.

An Angel

For anyone who has been through the adoption process, you know that the reason things take so long to complete the home study are because of the numerous pieces of paperwork that you must wait on to be returned from the government…FBI, Highway Patrol, Family Care Registry…the list goes on. No matter how you send in these forms you have a 6-8 week turn around for your paperwork to be processed and returned. We knew this going into the process and were not too anxious about it.

During the first week of November, the receptionist for Dr. Heller (Christina) told me that she had completed most of our paperwork for the home study and was only waiting for one piece of paperwork from the Family Care Registry of Missouri. This is a background check that we were told would take the longest to come in, apparently they are running weeks behind schedule. I asked Christina if she thought the paperwork would be in and the home study complete by early December. Carlie and I were planning a trip to Iowa to turn in our application, contract, and home study to Abby’s One True Gift, the adoption agency we have chosen to work with. She assured me that it would be and that it would be safe to go ahead and schedule our trip.  I talked to Brenda at Abby’s One True Gift and she agreed to meet with us on a Saturday so that we wouldn’t have to take any days off work. We set our trip for Saturday, December 11^th and we were very excited!

About a week and a half before our trip, Dr. Heller called us one evening to tell us that our home study was complete. She talked to Carlie and told him that she’d like to fax us a copy for our review before she has the final copies notarized.  The first thing I said to Carlie when he got off the phone was, “So…I guess that last piece of paperwork came in?” He responded with an “I guess so.” We were so relieved that it all was coming together on time!

On the Monday before our trip (five days after Dr. Heller’s phone call), I got a call at work from Christina. She had a few last minute questions for me about childhood memories for the home study and then at the end of our phone conversation she said to me, “Oh, and we are still waiting on the background check from the Family Care Registry.” I was confused! Hadn’t Dr. Heller told us it was all ready?!?! Apparently not so much. She told me that she was faxing the final copy of the home study for us to review but could not notarize the final copy until the background check came in. She told me she would call them for me and find out about the status of our paperwork.

About an hour later she called me back with the words “I have some bad news.” She told me that apparently Carlie and I were one dollar short on each application fee and our paperwork had been sitting on someone’s desk and was not processed. In fact, it would be returned for us to fill out again and submit with the correct payment. What!?!?! I was not happy. I had turned in that paperwork eight weeks earlier! That payment had been short eight weeks earlier! Why had no one contacted me or mailed it all back to me EIGHT WEEKS AGO?!?!

My heart just sank. What were we going to do? A normal turn around was six to eight weeks and I still had to wait for our applications to be mailed back, resubmit them, and wait again. I immediately asked Christina for the number to the Family Care Registry. She suggested maybe I could pay the extra $2 over the phone.  When I called, the lady that answered the phone was a typical government operator – not rude, but definitely not kind, kind of gruff and in no way seemed interested in helping me! I found out pretty quickly that they were not set up to take credit card payments over the phone. Eventually I got a little desperate and I said to her, “We need this background check to complete an adoption application. It is the last piece of paperwork we need and we have a tripped planned on Saturday to go to Iowa and turn it all in. Is there anything I can do??” She said, “Well, hold on a minute.” I heard her typing, then I was on hold. I’m sitting in a little closet in the hallway at work, tapping my fingers on the table, knowing that there is nothing I can do and trying to figure out just how disappointed I’m going to let myself get. She came back on the phone and this is how our conversation went:

Her: Ma’am, did you and your husband both submit an application?

Me: Yes, but I mailed them in separately.

Her: And what is his social security number?

Me: (I told her.)

Her: Ok, I see both of your applications here. You filled out the old forms which is why your payment was a dollar short. (Since I like Dr. Heller so much, this didn’t make me as mad as you might think it would have!) This is what I can do. I can take one dollar from your application fee and put it towards your husband’s application and processh is application now. Then if you get online and fill out the registration form, it can be processed in 24 hours.

Me: What can be processed in 24 hours? The actual background check?

Her: Yes, we now have it online. It only takes 24 hours when you do it this way.

Me: Seriously? So if I go online and complete it, how long will it take for our adoption agent to get the paperwork for both of us.

Her: Well, do you think you can get online in the next ten minutes and fill it out?

Me: Yes, I can go in my classroom now and do it.

Her: If you can do that, I’ll wait here at my computer and watch for it to come through. When it does I’ll process it immediately and the letters will be mailed to you from Jeff City tomorrow morning.

Me: Are you serious? Thank you so much!

Her: I’ll call you back when I have your application.  (At this point, I really did not believe that a state worker would ACTUALLY call me back about this! So I say…)

Me: Can I have your name so if I don’t hear from you, I can call back and check on the status of all of this?

Her: We don’t give out our names. You can ask for Operator 11.

Me: I really can’t thank you enough!

I ran back to my classroom, effectually ignoring my class, and submitted the online application. You should know that the paper applications took filling out, copying for our records, addressing envelopes, postage, and getting two money orders from the bank. This online application took me two minutes and one extra dollar!!! Ah!  Within ten minutes, my cell phone rang. It was Operator 11 and our conversation went like this:

Me: Hello?

Operator 11: Katie, this is Operator 11 from the Family Care Registry. I have both of your processed background checks here. They have been processed and completed. They are both good background checks with a “no findings” result. The letters have been submitted and will leave through the US Mail tomorrow morning from Jeff City.

Me: (in tears) Operator 11, You. Are. An Angel! I can’t thank you enough!

Her: No problem.

Carlie was obviously aware of all of this going on. As soon as I hung up the phone, I called him and said….well, I screamed, “An angel just answered the phone at the Family Care Registry!” And I truly believe it. Operator 11 was an answer to prayer in a way that she may never truly understand. Because of her our home study would be completed on time and we could go to Iowa and complete this application process. She did not have to do that. She could have pointed me in the right direction and let me wait6-8 weeks like everyone else. I am truly grateful for that little act of kindness.

Maybe if you’ve never completed the home study process or if you’ve never dealt with trying to get paperwork completed from the government, you don’t really understand why this was such a big deal. But it is a big deal. It’s our own little miracle….government paperwork processed and mailed in a half of an hour. Now I just had to hope the US Postal Service cooperated as well!