Friends of Colombia Orphans can get Free Money!

Name Your Cause lets you and your friends vote to provide cash and prizes to your favorite charities (and our favorite is Friends of Colombia Orphans). Vote by December 10th and they could win a $2500 eBay gift card!

http://www.nameyourcause.com/view-charity/290/Friends-of-Colombian-Orphans.html

Publish Post

Please vote every four hours, help them stay on the top of the list!

Welcome home!

On October 10th 2009 a couple we meet during adoption training became a forever family in Russia. Even that we know this news for a while know, today we received an invitation for a welcome home party.

So I though it will be the perfect moment to congratulate the lucky parents from this corner in the web. I look forward to meet with the new members of their family!

Friends of Colombia Orphans

Have you heard of Friends of Colombian Orphans? If you are in the Colombian Adoption's world, I'm sure you know about them. But in case you don't, this is your opportunity!!! They are conducting auctions on Ebay to raise funds for their projects. They have beautiful handcrafts (I really want one of their Shawl!) and other items at great prices. The best? all the money collected will help orphans in Colombia. Check them out! http://shop.ebay.com/friendsofcolombianorphansinc/m.html

Friends of Colombian Orphans, Inc., is a grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for children in Colombian orphanages. Established in 2007 by parents who adopted Colombian children, the Friends focus on orphanages in need that are open to outside aid. They organize and supervise improvement projects using donated funds. 100% of donations go toward projects.

If you want to learn more about their organization, please visit their website: http://www.friendsofcolombianorphans.org/


Pass the world, this is totally worthed!

Five years ago :-)

Guess what?/ Adivina que?

We are approved for a child up to three years old!!!

We officially entered the waiting list in Colombia!!!! I'm beyond speechless..

Constanza sent us an email this morning at 3 am, and I didn't look at it until 8:30 am... I can't believe the email was sitting there for such a long time! When I started reading the preview of the message from work (thanks Gmail for that feature!), I had to call Talley and have him wait with me until the message finally opened (longest 45 seconds in my life...).

WE ARE APPROVED!!!

Next steps: In approximately three years, our paperwork will be send to a regional office, then child referral and then travel to pick him/her up! Long way to go, there may not be more adoption news for a while, but we are thinking about the prize at the end of this journey.

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Nos aprobaron en Colombia para adoptar un ninno o ninna hasta 3 annos de edad! (de 0 a 35 meses). Hoy recibimos un correo de nuestra agencia con tal noticia. Empece a leer el correo en la oficina, pero tuve que llamar a Talley de inmediato porque no podia tener la noticia yo sola.

FINALMENTE NOS APROBARON!!!

Que viene? En tres annos (o un poquito mas) enviaran nuestros papeles a la oficina regional, luego nos daran los detalles del ninno/a disponible para adopcion, nosotros confirmamos que le queremos, y luego iremos a recogerle!!!! Falta mucho tiempo para que todo esto suceda, pero no importa, igual estamos alegres que va a ocurrir!!!!

Calculations

From date: Friday, July 10, 2009
Added 4 weeks

Normalized to 28 days
Resulting date: Friday, August 7, 2009

Well, it is not like I'm counting... but tomorrow suppose to be 4 weeks since our addendum was submitted to ICBF, and we haven't hear a word from our placement agency. Should I call to ask for an update? I'm afraid to know that there are not news. But I also want to hear any piece of information. Does that make any sense?

So, to relief some stress, we are leaving on vacation on Saturday for a HUGE family reunion! Almost my entire family from Venezuela will be flying to Orlando, and we will spend a week together taking our oldest niece Isabella to Disney. My brother and his wife will be traveling with us from Austin. The only ones missing will be our youngest nieces (1.5 yo) and my brother-in-law.

I'm looking forward to this coming week!

Home Study Addendum - III

We got news! Not the one that we were expecting, but at least there is an update. Our addendum has been finally submitted to ICBF past Friday 07/10. Apparently, when our documents travel to Colombia, they don't go straight from the translator desk to ICBF, but they have to be legalize by the Miniterio de Relaciones Exteriores (Department of Foreign Affairs). Our agency estimate that we may have another update in 3-4 weeks (hopefully the approval!).

Thank you all for your positive thoughts! We know were are not alone in this journey; it is great to be able to share this with others who are exactly in the same path.

Home Study Addendum - II

So this is exciting... we have something new to do with the adoption process and it is not only to wait!

I picked the Addendum up just after two hours they notified it was ready (I took a break from work, their office is just 5 minutes away from mine!).

What are my plans for tomorrow??? Go to the Secretary of State to have the document Apostilled, then send it to Washington DC for Adopolis to send it to Colombia. Then back to work...

Then we will wait for translation, then it will go to ICBF... and finally get approval! Maybe another month or two before approval? We are soo close! Curious enough, it will be close to the year mark since we started the process.

What are we doing on the mean time? Simple, we are working like crazy. Talley is studying to complete his Linux certification and I'm starting classes to finish my bachelor degree. So that will keep us busy for a little bit. Hopefully at the time we finish our goals, we will be very close to get a child :-D

Home Study Addendum

So we though that everything was said, that whoever reads our home study and psych evaluation will know single detail about us (even more than we know ourselves). We were sooo wrong!!! It looks like there is more that can be said and that is what ICBF wants from us.

We are already in conversation with our Home Study agency to have the Addendum done; it may involve a couple of more visits to our house or interviews. When it is ready, we will have to send it to our agency in Washington DC and then it will need to be translated and then be submitted to ICBF. So I'm estimating that it may take another three months before we are approved, which will be after year year since we started this process. Anyway, I think that we may get a child at the end of 2013! (unless I convince Talley that we need to have a sibling group!).

News :-(

Well, that day came. ICBF is requesting more information about us, info that is already in the homestudy and in the psych report!!! So... why? Why?? WHY???

I guess this is our welcome to the real process of adoption, delays can happen anytime!

Our lovely agency will ask for specifics, what do they exactly need from us that is not included in our dossier. Then we will provide whatever they ask and hopefully we will be approved.

Good news? Well, at least somebody is looking at our paperwork and it is not sitting in a big pile! So we are closer to approval than what we tought!!!

Are no-news good news?

Well, if you have follow our timeline and previous posts, on May 17th it will be three months since our dossier made it to ICBF. Adopolis mentioned that it should be approve between 2-3 months, or maybe more.
I coudn't wait until the 3-months mark to ask for a status update so I emailed them on Monday. I received the reply today: "No news". She will check with her contact in Bogota to see if there is anything new.

Well, I have to look at the possitive side of this: At least we are not rejected! (no yet ;-)

Federal adoption tax credit

Email received from our Home Study agency:

The Federal adoption tax credit has enabled thousands of families to be able to adopt a child/children. However, the current adoption tax credit is set to expire in December 2010, unless Congress acts to vote to continue it.

Action is needed!  Please take the time to read the following article on the Rainbow Kids website to understand more about this legislation. 

http://www.rainbowkids.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=639 

Feel free to pass this information on to any adoptive families, families in the process of adoption, your friends, and your family members and have them contact their representative as outlined on the website.  It is critical that this legislation be approved to continue!

 

P.S.  Yea for Texas for having such a large number of co-sponsors!!!

Meet Bogota, the capital of Colombia

I'm trying to learn everyday more and more of the country where our child will come from, and I found this very cool documentary by PBS

$$$$

Even that we are far from getting our child, we are budgeting our future expenses thinking about how much cost to raise a child.   It is just amazing how much daycare costs!!!!  Anyway, that wasn't the reason of this post.  

Today we went to sign the papers to refinance our house!  Yes!!!!  Even that we own the same amount of money than yesterday, now our interest rate is low (4.6% against the 6% we were paying before), and we also reduce the amount of years to pay for it!  So after all, we are going to be paying the same amount monthly, but it is still a win-win situation!  Now Talley's job is to get our Homeowner association to build a playground in our neighborhood :-D

Life is good, less debt makes it better :-)

NEWS!!!

We got this email today from our agency:

"Le informo que su solicitud y documentos fueron presentados al ICBF el martes. Espero que podamos tener noticias de aprobación a su solicitud en unos 2-3 meses"

OMG! Can you believe that??? Wait.. I guess I have to translate that:

"Your application and documents were introduced to the ICBF on Tuesday. I hope we can have news about the approval of your document in around 2-3 months"

Kiva

 

I wanted to let you know about Kiva (www.kiva.org), a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

It is beautiful to be part of a project like this, and to know that so little can make a HUGE impact in others life.

Think about it ;-)

Lucky number: 69

It took only 69 days to get the permission from the government to bring a child to the country!!! (from the time they received our forms until the approval). YES!!!!

Small update

Things got a little bit busy around the Spiller's house, but we are going back to normal now. My mom came to visit us last week and it was soooo good to have her here to spoil us!!! I think Talley really wants her to come here more often to see if I get by osmosis any housewife skills. Also my little brother got married to the beautiful woman who is in our Christmas photo. It was a very small ceremony and we are looking forward to plan the BIG wedding in Venezuela soon!


Anyway, back to the adoption topic. On January 16th our dossier was sent to Colombia for translation. On January 20th we were told that the private orphanage haven't decide if they are going to take new families, so Talley and I agree to have our papers send to ICBF. I keep believing that God is pointing us out to the right place where our child is at.


Well, that is it for now ;-)

What is going on?

That may be a question that I ask myself everyday, what is going on?  Specially on the adoption topic.  Our agency requested a name affidavit from Talley as well, because in some documents he shows with his middle name and not in others.   Fine, this document received its apostille past Monday and it was mail out the same day.  It arrived to the agency yesterday.  I also sent a new collage of pictures to put in our dossier, those includes the ones that I posted here previously.   She says that all our documents look good [:-)]  Happy dance!  

I don't know when the agency will send the documents to Colombia to have them translate, but it should be very very soon, the sooner the better.  Not only because we want our child soon, but because some documents may expire!!!  

On a different note, there is a very small chance for our application to go to a private orphanage.  If they accept us, our waiting time may be smaller and they are more chances to have an infant.  I'm very sure it is on God's hand to decide where our child is at, so He will put us in the right place at the right time.   But lets keep our fingers crossed :D

Our family!

These pictures were taken on Christmas Day. We spent time with Talley's mom for lunch and dinner with Talley's dad in Marble Falls. My brother Max and Jessica joined us for dinner!

And this picture is my dad and our three nieces in Venezuela. The twolittle ones are twins! They are also our goddaughters :-) And becauseI don't want to discriminate anybody in this post, here are pictureswith my mom and my sister and brother-in-law.

If you noticed, we only have nieces! No little boys around! Lets see
what comes to us :-)

On a side note, our agency already got our dossier and they are
reviewing it. We have to send something else on the mail on Monday.
Hopefully nothing else is needed.