National Adoption Day is November 15th!!!

So November 15th is National Adoption Day! I just found that out! How cool is that!!

I was reading up on it, and people around the country get together to raise awareness of adoptions, especially adoptions in the foster care system.

National Adoption Day 2008 – Goals

Finalize adoptions from foster care in all 50 states

Celebrate and honor families who adopt

Raise awareness about the 129,000 children in foster care waiting for adoption

Encourage others to adopt children from foster care

Build collaboration among local adoption agencies, courts and advocacy organizations

So congrats to all the folks out there who have completed their adoptions already! (Heather and Ryan!)

Why Adopt before we have a child naturally?

I have had a lot of people ask me why Brandon and we want to adopt a child before we have one of our own naturally.

This is something that Brandon and I talked a lot about when first thinking about adopting. We consulted a lot of books and advice from people about "child birth order" and how it would effect out children if we were to adopt first, or if we were to have a child first.

After all is said and done, Brandon and I know that we are "called" to adopt. I do think that adoption is not for everyone, and it is a calling. We feel very passionate about adopting. We feel that by choosing to adopt first, we are giving a gift to our little adopted daughter that no one else has given her. We are CHOOSING her. We are choosing her FIRST. Through some circumstances, so many of these abandoned children have never been chosen for anything other than death. We choose to give our little daughter LIFE and a family and love and joy. We pray for her every day, even though at this point we do not know who she is. (We know God has a plan)

So... enough about that for now... just wanted to share our passion... share our reason for doin what we are doin...

This is for Rick.... eat your carrots while you read :)

We are still in the homestudy phase.... yeah I know - we are taking a long time.

We have moved and therefor need to update our homestudy before we can proceed. We talk a lot about the adoption, and we are still very excited about it. But we know that God has perfect timing, and so we do not stress when bumps come in the road and when things take longer than what WE think they should.

So - anyways, we will have our homestudy update soon (in the next two weeks hopfully) and we will then be on to immigration paperwork!

If you have any great fundraising ideas, please let me know! We are going to be trying to do some fundraising for the immigration paperwork so that we can get that off and started ASAP as well as adoption fees.

Also - please keep South Africa in prayer. Keep the government in prayer. WE HAVE HEARD that they are not very easy to work with, and for that reason we are praying for perfect timing and for God assigned connections.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers... We love you guys and COULD NOT do this without the support of our family and our "family" :)

Blood Tests and More!

Well, we have been putting it off for a week, so I think that we will go to get our bloodwork done this week. It is just a few simple blood tests, but for some reason it is really easy to put off!

Thank you to everyone for your encouraging words and for your prayers! This is such a long and uncertain journey, and it is SO NICE to have such a wonderful family and support system around us - and we FEEL YOUR PRAYERS! The journey has not been without its bumps even so-far, but we have patience and peace and we are fully confident that God has his hand in every step of this process!

I went and got a Lakewood Library card on Thursday evening. I am now obsessed with checking out books! I dont know why anyone buys certain books without giving them a test drive from the library first! I know there are some books that you need to buy to reference back from time to time in life, but I am just in LOVE with being able to check them out. I have not done a lot of this since elementry and highschool (which is rapidly aproching the 10 year mark, might I add! AH!)

So please suggest any good adoption reads you may have run across!

When Love Takes You In - Steven Curtis Chapman

Our First Meeting Done!!!!

Well, thank you to everyone who was praying for us this past weekend - our first Home Study meeting went by like a breeze. Mike came right at 4:00pm on the dot and sat and talked with us asked us a lot of questions about our childhood, what our relationship was with our parents growing up - what it was like now. Both Brandon and I have been blessed with such great parents that it was a fairly easy effortless interview. He was very gracious with his time answering any questions that we had. Then we gave him a large wad of cash (we are on the cash envelope system right now!) and he left! It was over with before I even knew it. the funny part is preparing for a Home Study. My husband SCRUBBED our bathroom for 45 minutes to make sure it was spick-and-span clean, and Mike didnt even use the restroom! He came in, sat down on the couch, we talked, he left. No white glove test. (I had horror movies playing in my head of how we would be deemed unfit parents because he would find a pair of misplaced underware under the couch or something - lol)

So now we wait for our references to be sent back to him and for him to close out the Home Study process. Once we are approved we can file our paperwork with the immagration office and start to apply for international adoption grants. Anyone with bright fundraising ideas - please let me know!!!

Preparing for the Home Study

Brandon and I spent a few hours on Friday night filling out our autobiographies for the home study. They are 13 pages long and ask you very in depth questions about your childhood, your parents, how you view live and how you will raise your child. The questions were not hard, per say, but there are SO MANY of them and some of them really make you stop and think.

I honestly think that after going through the process of a HomeSudy, it should almost be a mandatory thing for any young couple who is interested in starting a family. Brandon and I have even had questions that, in answering them, found out we had never discussed them together!

We are enjoying the process and looking forward to our first home study meeting on the 25th. We are not really sure what to expect. We have done some reading on line, but if there is anyone who has info on what we are going to experience at our initial meeting, that would be great!

Finding our Agency - Faith International Adoptions

Going to an initial meeting at Faith International Adoptions, we were a little nervous. We didn't know them at all, and so there are a lot of initial questions being asked from both sides. We met with a guy named John, and he began to discuss the adoption process and he shared with us all of the great things that his agency does throughout the regions that they are involved with. They do a lot of relief work along with the adoptions, which was so important to us. We were still feeling a bit apprehensive when Brandon mentioned that my cousin and her husband (Heather and Ryan) had just adopted a beautiful little girl from Vietnam. John asked us what their names were and we replied that they lived in MN. He asked again what were their names, and when we told him, he put his finger up in the air and said "wait just one minute!" and ran out of the room. He quickly returned with a memory chip and put it into his computer. Up popped a picture of my cousin Heather and Ryan! "I was their adoption agent!" At this point we all just started to laugh and we could not believe the divine connection that we began at that moment to feel.

After the meeting I got a chance to call Heather and tell her the story, and she got to tell me all about how much she really had enjoyed working with John.

Brandon and I are so excited - this isnt just something that we just think would be fun or even "just want" to do. This adoption is something that we feel we are called to do. We have felt God's presence and his purposeful plan every step of the way so far, and we are looking forward to the day that we get to hold our daughter in our arms and give her a HUGE hug and kiss and let her know what it was a part of the plan that God had for all of us to be together!

My first blog - more to come

Hello!

I am just starting this blog and will add more soon. We are just beginning the process of adoption and have lots of little miracles to share already!

We have until April 25th to get ready for a our first Home Study meeting. Lots of paper work!

We will keep you updated!

Lindsay