You're not seeing things...

that little thermometer on the side.... Yeah, it appears to be stuck. Our chip-in account, also stuck. But no - we are pretty much just hanging around.

Unfortunately, a good amount of the money we had been saving the last few weeks just went out the door to our homestudy agency to finish up our homestudy and pay the travel expenses for our social worker. A mere $500 more than we had estimated. So we are back to needing $5000 to have our money to submit our dossier when the timing is ready.

And that's kind of been stuck too. We 'thought' we were done with our homestudy. Finally. But it needed a small wording change. So then we 'thought' we were done with our homestudy. But then they found out our background checks had expired after only 6 months. So we again submitted the permission forms and an extra fee and are now in a holding pattern again. Until we 'think' we have a finalized homestudy that we can submit to Charleston to try to get our government permission paper - that coveted i-171h form that I think can take from 30-90 days to receive.

And by then, we are hoping, no - praying, no - trusting - that God will have provided our needs for the remaining $5000 to submit our dossier. Cause it stinks being stuck.

**as an aside, in case you were wondering: since we didn't sell the house, why not a home equity loan? We checked into that too - with our $20,000 equity. They could only approve a loan of $5000. Which is too low for a home equity loan to be drawn up. Go figure, and here we 'thought' home equity loan meant the equity on your home?

** as another aside, I can completely see how pork projects get through Congress. A.K.A. bribes for votes. With this health care bill that may truly bankrupt our country and increase all our taxes, and increase our insurance rates to the astronomic proportions - also came an extension on the Adoption Tax Credit which was set to expire in 2010. It also increased the amount refunded to a little over $13,000. Which is awesome!! I just hate the $3,546,035 I'll have to pay in taxes/insurance to be able to get that $13,000 refund.

** and as if 2 asides were just not enough - Ethiopia courts just posted a sign saying the 'two-trip' rule for parents to attend court was suspended indefinitely. But our agency is still recommending planning for 2 trips just in case they change back. And thaaaaaat's all folks!