Summer so far

Wow where has the summer gone.  I can't believe it's almost August.

I started summer by falling in the lake on Memorial Day with my phone in my pocket. I hadn't gotten it into the waterproof case and into the Jet Ski compartment before the Jet Ski flipped sending Don and I into the lake.  Really was pretty funny, except for my cell phone. Accidents happen and thankfully I not only had insurance for a full replacement but I got upgraded as well so it worked out better than expected.

Google images

This summer our project has been gutting the master bath and redoing all the drywall, removing a build out and putting in a new shower/tub combo plus replacing the cabinets, counters, tile floor and toilet.  The plumbing was redone as well.  It looks great and took roughly 6 weeks to do.  We hired the plumber's, tiler's and drywall experts but did the rest ourselves.

We also tackled the garden boxes this year by not just weeding and planting but we also put down landscape fabric and mulch.  Everything is growing like crazy this year.  We have lots of tomatoes, peppers, and blueberries.  The grape plant is growing like crazy too but I'm not seeing any fruit yet. Soon it'll be time to make and can up salsa and homemade spaghetti sauce and roast up the peppers.

First harvest today

End of August we fly to Atlanta for Dragon Con.  I can't wait to see all our friends again. One of our friends who live in the area just finalized their adoption for their 2 boys.  I'm thrilled that when we see each other I can congratulate them all in person.  

There are a ton of celebrities and artists I'm excited to see this year so I'll be standing in a lot of lines for panels/photos this year and Stan Lee leading the parade is going to be awesome!

That’s our summer so far.

4th updates the Charm, right?

Where have I been after the disaster that befell us?

Well we took many months to look at ourselves and our goals introspectively. Adoption isn’t a certain; going to happen thing.  Yes, we do all we can to provide a glimpse into who we are and to put it “out there” but the fact remains you have to hope something resonates with someone to inquire because a  couple page brochure isn’t the whole of who you are. Then your agency goes under out of the blue so Stunned is an understatement. We had no clue what was about to happen.  After talking with multiple news outlets we got the story out there and so did so many other families affected.

Now, it’s June and we are into our 4^th update in our 4^th year. Updates are a redo of all your paperwork, medicals, fingerprints, and additional background checks. They are a pain to get done but we do it because we must if we want to adopt.  We have a new social worker, our other one has retired and while she’s reached out during our difficulties it does fall on our new Social workers shoulders.  We met last week for our current update and she is super sweet and wants to help anyway she can.  I was Super stoked she took some of our old printed IAC letters to alter and send to lawyers and hospitals to hold onto in case of an expectant mother wanting a placement.  I’m still worried it’ll never happen.  This is our last year and then I have to resign myself to be childless.  I keep hoping someone will see us and like us and contact us (who aren’t trying to scam us) but I’m honestly becoming deflated. The majority of my contacts are folks in Cameroon wanting VISAS and other such countries with the same expectations.

So I’m in the realm of independent adoption which means we are on the web, and we apply for situations through lawyers in our inbox.  I’m obviously still on Adoptimist and other websites for us such as our own website but it’s a scary place to be.

Besides that we have recently taken a trip to Miami and Key West with our friends and had a blast.  Now that may make you think of activity after activity but we just relaxed for once.  We walked, went to the beach, ate great food, and drove to the keys where we rented jet skies and shopped in town. It was the calmest vacation we’ve had in a while. We normally are a go see all the things but not this time.

The Golden Mammoth on the Boardwalk in Miami

Depression after failure - We need your help!

So With IAC going out of business it’s been a whirlwind of not only emotions but a WTF do we do now.

I can say we contacted our local news to bring to light the problems IAC had and while it wasn’t a perfect piece at least we had our voices heard.

http://komonews.com/news/local/i-just-want-to-be-a-mother-families-agonizing-after-adoption-agency-suddenly-closes

I had a hard weekend recently in light of the closure and then our Superbowl party where I met the 2 babies who should’ve been our babies BFFS as it were. If our placement hadn’t failed last August our boy would’ve been about 2 months older than our friend’s boys they had in November/December.  It was a gratifying day to hold the babies for 8 hours but at the same time it was devastating. I actually cried the whole way home in a snow storm meaning it took us 3 hours to get home.  Now I know it’s on me and my emotions, etc but seriously it’s been 4 years and I’m human.  The week leading up to this is what I think broke me.  I’ve not had issues when the others were born, except to be jubilant in their arrival. I love those kids as my own.  I watched their parents grow up and then have them so what’s not to love!

Today, I find we’re at cross-roads.  I’ve contacted, many lawyers and none have contacted us back.  There was a lawyer in our news piece that I left a message with and here we are 5 days later and no response to our message I left for her.  I had also contacted a lawyer in Seattle and he took my name and number but never called me back; even after our social worker emailed him so ya that doesn’t breed any confidence. These are AAAA Lawyers so how are we supposed to be confidant with them handling our potential situation.  The answer is we aren’t.  Thankfully the lawyer we had with our failed placement is available but I haven’t reached out yet. This is on my to do list.

We are lucky to have own website on top of other social media but so far the biggest issue we’ve had is no one shares our pages.  Everyone says oh hey grats! hope it happens soon but no one steps up and shares us. So please if you follow us or even just read our blog please for the love of all please share our journey because now without an agency we’re stuck on word of mouth/social media. 

Our personal website is http://www.dndadoption.org/

Of course we still have FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Adoptimist, and you tube.

WTF IAC - Time for a new direction

Today was not a good day because our agency of almost 4 years has shut down, blacked out, without reason. They have our documents that we need (and all the other families need and no word on how to obtain them!).

Ok sure they say it’s because of a changing climate that they can’t handle it but what of the 550+ people you took money from and aren’t following through with and I mean especially those families who just paid you a few days ago.  What of the Birth families who are supposed to have life time counseling that will no longer receive it?

I’m upset and so are all the other families.  This was done in a most shoddy way.  Of course no one employed by the agency can talk of it and neither can the board of director’s which 2 of them are my Facebook Friends so great but I’m not standing down.

This is complete bullshit in how it was handled and the CA AG will be hearing from me tomorrow along with whoever I can call.

I called an agency today and their response; I know we were completely taken by surprise – We’ve been working with IAC on a case we have and all was fine yesterday at 4pm when we spoke.  Now you might wonder why that is and the answer is the Board and those in charge of the IAC didn’t inform the staff that they’d be losing their jobs today and so for all IAC it was business as usual.

IAC handled this in the absolute worst fashion than they could have.  They really should have informed clients of the possibility, not taken on new clients or taken new fees towards PPC (google ads), and enlightened us who were waiting.  They could have sent the email before alerting everyone by disabling our community pages. They could have allowed us the time to request our records be returned to us.

Now we are all scrambling for new community pages, help, and just plain support! Our ACs are gone stuffed into a black out with the bankruptcy.  We can’t even thank them for their service and support.

The official press release said we were all notified and yet only about half of us were and after the fact.  I got the email about 12:30pm and some others never got it at all (like my husband and many friends’ waiting to finalize). Whatever is going on here isn’t normal and needs to be investigated.  I’m calling the DA in CA tomorrow. 

If you are a part of the IAC don’t stand by – make your voice heard.  Call the press, write the press, and make it public how all of us in the triad have been mistreated and our money and hope stolen from us!

I’m honestly appalled after 4 years and it’s going to take some time to sink in.

I now have to edit all our pages and websites to delete the now defunct IAC and as of now I have nothing to replace it with.  Ya I have a lawyer on speed dial but I had hoped for what IAC promised and it’s gone.  Time for more research!