It's been a couple weeks since I last posted. It's also been kind of quiet on the adoption front. We were finishing up our home study and collecting some final documents. One of the forms that's still missing is our report from the Ohio Child Abuse Registry; they have to say we're not on it. We had to get one from every state we've lived in. So far, every other state has responded. For those of you keeping score, that means we got answers from as far away as Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Texas and Hawaii, and yet, somehow, Columbus which is only about 90 minutes away from us, has yet to respond.
So, we're finishing our forms for the US Customs and Immigration Service to get something called an I171H, which is required to travel to Ethiopia. But we can't submit for that without our home study, which requires those stupid abuse registry responses. So, you can see, we're a bit frustrated by our state government, but don't get me started on THAT rant.
In the meantime, we took the family on a vacation. It was the first real vacation in 5 or 6 years; at least one that didn't involve visiting family. We went to Seacrest Florida for a week; it was fun. The kids and Jen really like the beach and the house had a nice pool. We ate and drank too much and basically relaxed. It was a well-deserved break. The last couple years have been kind of a treadmill for us; between running for re-election, starting a new company, and getting the whole adoption thing off the ground, it's been non-stop. The only issue we had was justifying the cost and spending money on recreation when we're trying to save up for all the adoption costs. It may sound like rationalizing, but I figured it's been so long since the kids (and Jenny) were away, and it's probably going to be a while before we can do it again. In the end, I think it was worth it. Besides, we took advantage of the downtime to finish Tommy's America Book and his family album. Can't wait to send them over. More paperwork this week, then we move to serious fundraising.
