Hi. We are Reena Shaw and Wim Chase. The picture to the right is of us at a wedding for Wim's cousin, Jon. The kind of wierd looking guy behind Wim's head is our brother-in-law Bob. He doesn't ussually look so funny. I think he got a bubble in his eye.
Also in our family are Wim's children from his first marriage, Gabrielle (10) and Xavier (8).
We have one kitty, Anita. She came with Wim and his kids, so I affectionately refer to her as my step-cat, need-a-kitty. Not to be forgotten is Xavier's leopard gecko, Dave.
We began our adoption journey well over a year ago with our homestudy. We managed to navigate through all the paperwork using a homestudy agency, Red Thread Adoption, located here in New England and an adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoption (GWCA), located in Texas.
We completed our paperchase on December 9, 2005 and our dossier was sent to China. Our log-in-date (LID) is December 20, 2005.
It has been very tumultuous waiting this past year. When we began the process the wait time to referral was 6-8 months. When our paperwork was sent to China, our agency told us the wait time had increased to 8 to 10 months.
The referral wait time is currently 14 to 15 months and growing. Right now, Wim and I are hopeful that we will get our referral this summer in June or July, meaning we will have waited 18 months from our LID and nearly 2 years since we began the paperchase . The last batch of referrals arrived from China on November 30th and covered log-in-dates from August 25th through September 8th of 2005. We are slowly getting closer.
Right now we have contact our local Center for Immigration Services because our fingerprints will expire this month and we need to have them re-done. Here is an example of how screwed-up our government is-- how exactly does one's fingerprints expire? The cost of re-doing the fingerprints is $70 each for Wim and I. Why can't they just run our prints through the system to see if we have committed any felonies. It's crazy!
Although, we may as well get use to it. With this wait getting so long, we will have to re-do all of our paperwork for the US government--not China-- USA. Can anybody say cha-ching? For those wondering, the biggest part of the cost of adopting goes to our very own Uncle Sam and we all know what he is doing with it these days.
I am keeping busy decorating the nursery. I am painting stencils of flowers, birds, a tree. Those who know me well are surprised to see how much Michelangelo I have in me, LOL. I also purchased a sewing machine and a friend is going to teach me how to sew so I can make a 100-wish quilt for our little Josie. We already have the 100+ quilt squares, I just need to sew them together. A somewhat daunting task for someone who has never sewed more than buttons on a shirt.
We will try to get some pictures posted soon.
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