the long and winding road...

Its official! We have a new tax deduction!

So, I've been putting off getting G a social security card because, well, I just really didn't feel like facing the hassle I was sure the social security office would be. The last time I was in a social security office was when Casey was about a year old. It was in downtown Ontario in kind of a seedy section of town in a dilapidated building. It kinda sucked.

With my previous experience not being that great and my concern that the workers were going to look at my chinese documents and go "huh???" it was easy to ignore. But, April 15th is coming and we got our taxes done last month. The CPA is just waiting on G's social security number to get the return mailed out to us so the time was NOW.

I have found that most people try to complete official business first thing in the morning. Sort of an early bird gets the worm kind of thinking. This usually leads to crowds in the am. So, I chose what I thought would be the slowest time for the SS office, Wednesday afternoon, about an hour before they closed. We pulled into the parking lot of the SS office (a new one in Fontana located in a modern, air conditioned building) and found it EMPTY. I almost thought it was closed. We walked in and, got a number and were called within 3 mins. Up to the window we went where we were met by a clerk who was not only helpful but also as happy as could be to respond to G's multiple greetings of "Hi!" --its new, she does it with just about everyone now, so cute. Ten minutes later, after being congratulated on our adoption by the clerk and his supervisor, we were outta there!!!

We should have her card in about 1-2 weeks! So, so easy. The only thing we have left to do now is the readoption which we can't start on until we have our 6 month post placement report from our social worker. For anyone who doesn't know, the adoption is complete in the eyes of China and the US but a readoption in California will give G a certificate called a "Delayed Registration of Birth" which apparantly looks just like a regular birth certificate. This will avoid us (and her someday) the necessity of dragging out her Chinese documents every time we want to sign her up for soccer or something.

Yeah!! One more task scratched off the list!