Here we go....Beginning our Home Study

It is so crazy because I feel like we have been on this journey for such a long time already and we have barely started.  We had our first required meeting for the home study on Sept. 12th.  It was a 3 hour meeting that walked us through the entire process.  It was a group meeting so there were about 6 other couples at this meeting.  We went home with so much information.  We came home with a 3 ring binder filled with information to take us through every step of the way!  This week, we will have our first meeting with our caseworker!  We are extremely excited for this step.  It makes it feel like we are finally getting somewhere!  Everyday feels like a week and every week feels like a month.  It is insane how slow time can feel sometimes.
We have been keeping busy with work and getting all our information together for the homestudy.  Recent events have helped give us a jump start, created excitement and tested us.  But, we have remained focused on what needs to be done.  We have remained grounded and continue to trust that what is suppose to be, will be.  God knows where and when our baby will arrive and we have to continue to remember that even when it gets tough.  It also helps that we are always here for each other and we have amazing family and friends that have jumped to our side to help us with whatever seems to happen!
We need to get working on our profile, so we are gonna set up a few photo sessions with a friend of ours!  We also have to start working on all the info that will be written in our profile!  The profile seems to be the scariest part.  We don't want to screw it up, this may be what helps us get chosen.  Of course the caseworker will help us with what we write but I just want to be 100% sure that it gets across how much love we have to offer a baby!  They have also given us many suggestions on how to market ourselves and find our own birthmother.  So, we will definitely be working on those things as well.  We have so many family and friends that can keep an ear open and maybe someone will know someone that knows someone and so on.  The more contacts we make with a birthmother the better!  We certainly have enough to keep us busy, but at the same time we need to take time to relax.  If we go go go without a break, we will go crazy!  It is hard for me, I feel like there is always something to do and I can't let it sit.  This seems to be the one time that I am not procrastinating.  Who would have thought...
Rick set up the garage sale again and made a little more money for the adoption fund!  We still have plenty of stuff to try to sell, so we will probably set up once or twice more.  So....thank you again to everyone that had donated items to the garage sale.
I will continue to keep you all posted!!!!

Application, Home Study, Homework

I have been absent from our blog for awhile, but I am back!  Everything is about to get rolling!  Some of you are probably wondering how our garage sale went.  We survived and we are here to say, IT WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!  We worked hard and had lots of help from family and friends!  We did get rained out on Saturday, but we bounced back with a very busy day on Sunday!  Thank you so much to everyone that made donations and helped out at the sale!  We appreciate your support more than you know.  We do still have a garage full of stuff so we may do a couple one day sales over the next few months.  Now that the garage sale is over, it has been pretty mellow around here.  Not much happening for the adoption for about 3 more weeks.  It gets pretty hard, the waiting.  But, I have been trying to gather some of the books and articles that we need to read as part of our home study.  That is right, we have homework for our adoption!  Which will probably only help us through the process, and keep me busy so that the waiting doesn't get the best of me.  Our home study will probably take about 6-10 weeks.  The first step of the home study is a meeting on Sept. 12th.  This meeting is going to talk about the home study process while really focusing on the profile that we will need to complete.  We will have to gather pictures and do a little writing about ourselves and our families.  The meeting will help us to know what kinds of pictures and information is needed to create a great profile.  This profile is what will introduce us to birth parents as potential adoptive parents!  So, you can imagine how important our profile will be!  At this meeting we will also be able to meet other adoptive parents, which will be great!  We will be able to have contacts that are going through the same process.  After this meeting we will than have our first meeting with our social worker and begin the actual home study!
For now, we have our formal application to complete and send into the adoption agency.  We also have lots of reading to do, and we need to get to work on finding pictures of us that we can use in our profile.  All of this and work should hopefully keep us busy so that the waiting parts don't get too unbearable.  Some days are of course harder than others, but hopefully I have enough to do right now to stay focused!

We chose our adoption agency!

We finally had our meeting with Adoption Associates yesterday!! It went great! She was very helpful and straight forward with everything. She answered all our questions honestly and didn't make us feel like she was hiding anything. The meeting really put us at ease that they are going to take very good care of us, but at the same time raised our awareness of some situations that could arise. She gave us a lot of information about how adoption has evolved over the last 30 or so years. We have an opportunity to really market ourselves and make sure that everyone knows our situation and that we are looking to adopt a baby! You never know who might know somebody, who knows somebody who wants to create an adoption plan for her baby. The agency will really help give us some direction on how to really market ourselves and possibly find our own birthmother. This is where all our work comes in, this is where we can hopefully help our process move quicker.
We of course had to talk about the tough subject of all the fees that go along with adoption. This of course is not our favorite topic. Domestic infant adoption can cost $21,000-$28,000. It really is crazy to me that this is what we have to pay to become parents. But, if that is what it takes to bring our son or daughter home, than that is what we are going to do.
Now that we have finished this meeting, we need to complete our formal application and gather up our funds. There is one more meeting that we need to attend before we begin our home study. The next meeting is Sept.12th. We will need to send in our formal application with the initial fees before this meeting. The meeting will focus on the homestudy and what will happen during this process. After our meeting on Sept.12th we will then schedule our first meeting with our social worker and our homestudy will begin!!!!!!! The home study will take 6-10 weeks and then we will be officially approved to be adoptive parents!!!! We will of course keep everyone updated as we go through this process. Please keep us in your prayers as we continue our journey.
The garage sale is coming up in a few weeks! We have so many donations for the garage sale, it is going to be huge! We will update you on how things are going and the results of our sale! Make sure if you stop by and check it out! Let everyone you know, know about our huge adoption garage sale! We have lots of great things to sell!!!!!

Adoption Application!!

Today, we sent in our prelminary application to the adoption agency! We have our initial consultation with an agency that we are interested in on Monday July 18th!! We are so excited to have taken this step!

We also recieved our garage sale permit in the mail today,so it is official!! We are so thankful for all of the support from family and friends! This is going to be quit the garage sale so let your friends and family know!!!!!

My first post! Our first steps to adoption.

Hello everyone!!!! So, I wanted to create this blog so that I could talk about everything that we go through as we take our journey through the adoption process. I wanted a way to be able to keep family and friends involved in what happens. I am not a writer so I apologize if my thoughts are hard to follow. I will try to keep myself organized!
Rick and I have been to several adoption agencies to talk to them and ask questions. We have done plenty of research online as well as talk to several couples that we know that have been through the process. We have one more agency that we will be meeting with in a few weeks. Once we have met with them we will be able to make a decision about which agency we want to work with. After that we will hopefully begin our home study!!! This will be a long but exciting process as we create a profile and do networking of our own to make sure everyone knows that we want to adopt a baby! Your thoughts, prayers and support are greatly appreciated as we navigate our way through this process!
I also created a link for people to "chip in" and help us jump start our process. We have had many discussions recently around the idea of fundraisers to help with the cost of adoption. We are not really into the idea of a big fundraiser, but we do acknowledge that we could use a little help. With that being said, we are working on a date for a garage sale! We are thinking of a weekend in August. Between the two of us we have enough stuff tucked away in this house to get us started! If any of you have anything you would like to donate to our garage sale to help us out we would really appreciate it! As soon as we decide on the dates for the garage sale, I will let you know!!