Today is 31st October, my self-imposed deadline for having all documentation back for establishing our eligibility. I knew the only thing that the Dept of Child Safety didn't have was one reference so I sent a text message reminder to my lovely friend Lisa yesterday and she was on the phone this morning telling me that she was completing the form as we spoke, and she was happy to ring the Dept and get their fax number so that they would receive everything today.

Now to wait and see what happens next...

We are planning to be in China for holidays from about 3-18 December so hopefully we will make our next move prior to that.

In the meantime, I am comfortable with several words of Mandarin. The most useful ones include:

Me, I, my, mine
You, yours
He/she, his/hers
Like
don't like
am, is
friend
mother
Thank you
hello
how are you? Well, thank you or Not so good.
and the numbers up to 7.

I like Mandarin. It's a practical, sensible language. So long as you are only trying to speak it, that is, not write it.

Quick update - I had my medical on Wednesday and Scott had his yesterday. I just have to get my chest x-rays on Monday and assuming all is okay then our medical part will be all done.

Jeannie from the EOI Team called me to say that we can't use Damien as a referee because he doesn't live in Queensland so our friend Cahrol has come to the party instead. Very impressively, Jeannie received our paperwork on Wednesday and sent the referee's forms out the same day. Cahrol received hers on Thursday and sent it back the same day. yay! Thank goodness, because I forgot she was going to Peru for a month leaving Friday.

So all is going swimmingly at this point. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

It's Gemma's 11th birthday today and Ben's 6th birthday on Monday. Hopefully by the time they turn 13 and 8, they will have a Mei Mei (little sister.)

Yesterday we got the letter. THE letter. The "we invite you to establish your eligibility" letter. The letter that means we are officially in the process. Woohoo! There are 3 parts to this next step.
1. Health Assessment - We need a complete medical check by our family doctor as well as chest x-rays. I've made appointments for Scott & I to see Dr Julie next week to have this done. I have to confess to how much alcohol I drink. Oh thank god I don't smoke any more. Smoking is a big no-no. They ask about genetic diseases. My mother has MND - I wonder if I have to tell them that? It's not proven to be genetic - it's only a theory, and we are not aware of anyone else in the family having it. I will ask Dr Julie. I have to tell them about the health of my parents anyway so I'll need to admit to it there, but I don't want to write it in the box next to "are you aware of any... genetic predispostion to any medical condition which may affect your life expectancy?" Oh, and I have to have a pap smear. Can't hardly wait.

2. References about your suitability - I have already spoken to two good friends of ours who are prepared to lie... er... I mean... tell them what wonderful people we are. Truth is, there are so many people we could have chosen as referees but we chose two who we think are reliable enough to write back considering we don't know how much paperwork is involved. So thank you to Lisa & Damien who love us and want to help us in The Quest for the Holy Girl. If you read this in a few years time, you can say "hey, look - we were part of that!"

3. Criminal history checks - We will piss this in. Scott has a few speeding fines (which he hates me mentioning) but otherwise we are squeaky clean. Good boys and girls. Consider this children - if you do naughty, silly things when you are little, when you are a grown-up it can affect you in ways you never dreamed of. Like you might not be able to adopt. So be good. Thus endeth the lesson.

I am aiming to have all of this paperwork done and back to them by the end of October. If we pass this stage I think we are assigned a social worker and then have to pay another $2000. Ooh, I am getting excited!