DCFS Cleared

Today we were finally cleared from DCFS. We had been waiting on this background check for about 5 weeks. It took that long to say that we are absolutely fine and clear to proceed...geez. Oh well, I guess its better to be thorough. Our homestudy will be approved from AWAA by March 2nd. Then it needs to be approved by DCFS, which could take another month. And we are still waiting on our Homestudy to be sent in to USCIS, then our I-600A to come back to us as an approved I71H.
Several people have suggested to subscribe to a Ethiopia Adoption yahoo group. So a couple of days ago I joined one and there over 50 emails a day. After reading through all of these, I learned 2 new things, 1 encouraging and 1 discouraging. I found out that we can send a cover sheet and power of attorney (so someone can stand in our place at court in Ethiopia before we travel) to be state certified before we have all the documents. We thought we would have to drive this to Springfield once we had all the papers for our Dossier together. So this will save us one trip to Springfield, one day off of work, and maybe a week or so of time!!! So that was exciting. I also found out that about 1/2 of the court dates in Ethiopia don't go through. Usually some piece of paper is missing or the birth family doesn't show up. Some families were waiting for their 3rd court date. This court date happens after you have accepted your referral of a child and you are waiting to travel to meet him/her. That would be so hard. We have to continually rely on God's timing!
Also we are able to start applying for some grants now that our Homestudy is done. One friend told me that applying for grants was like getting another masters degree. There are a lot of forms to fill out and a lot of papers to write about our faith and testimony. Thank you to our friends who are continually filling out reference forms and letters too!!!

Still waiting, but a few more things done

We have had several people asking us whats going on with our adoption process. The answer is- not much. We are just waiting.... although today we completed our 8 hour Hague Adoption Training. It's nice to have that out of the way. We don't have the Internet at home so we had to leave our comfy couch for the day and get it done.

We also received a letter this week telling us that our FBI fingerprints are finally scheduled. We will be going to Chicago area to the FBI headquarters in a couple weeks. Then we will be waiting on getting those back.

We have also had several friends email us and ask if we decided on adopting one or two children yet. We have been going back and forth on this issue for some time now. We keep praying and talking to each other and other family, friends, other adoptive parents, and our social worker. For now we have decided to request a sibling pair under 4, or just one infant under 12 months. We don't care about gender. Ultimately we know that God has the perfect child or children picked out for our family. He trust in Him to work out all the details!!!

Wonderful Family and Friends

We have wonderful family and friends!!!

One fundraiser we have started is selling Handmade Greeting Cards. Since I'm a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, this was something I was excited about doing. I've been stamping cards and selling a few packs here and there for several years. It has been easy to keep up with in my free time. But since we decided to make these cards a fundraiser for our adoption expenses, I haven't been able to keep up with all the orders. So far we have only put them in our teachers lounges at our schools and a couple friends have taken them to their work too. (Thank you Jill, Kelly, Angie, Joe and Mom). I have had a few other people offer to take them to work with them too, but I haven't gotten enough made to send there yet.
Last weekend I had some family and friends come and help me stamp some cards. It was wonderful to have so much help and to hang out with some stampin friends and family.

My sister Amy and my niece Kylie

My sister-in-law Deidra, my sister Amy, me, and my mom Kim

Our cat MaggieFriends-Julie, Laura, Kristen

Sorry Mary, Katie, and Marie-I didn't get your picture yet...

Brad is 27!!

Today is Brad's 27th birthday. We had a fun filled weekend with lots of family at our house for the weekend. We are exhausted, but it was fun to have a full house. Last night we had almost as many kids as we did adults. It was so fun to play with all the nieces and nephews. I am hoping I can get some pictures uploaded maybe tomorrow. Most of Brad's birthday cards said something about maybe having our child with us next year for his birthday, we are hoping that is true!!!

Brad is also getting anxious that we aren't going to have any money left after paying all the adoption fees to buy stuff for the baby, so when his mom asked what he wanted for this birthday, he said he wanted a crib. We spent a couple different days looking for cribs in different cities. We couldn't find anything we really liked that was reasonably priced. So we looked on craigslist and found a matching set. So we got a crib, changing table, and dresser for an awesome price. The furniture is in great condition. Of course we had to set it all up when we got it. My sister Amy, Pete, niece Kylie, and my Mom came and stayed for the weekend. So my niece got to test the crib out already. That was fun to have something for Kylie, and Amy didn't have to bring everything this trip!! I hope I can take some pictures of the crib soon too. Thank you Mary and Randy!!

Meeting other families

We have had fun the last couple of weeks meeting other families around Galesburg that have adopted or will be adopting from Ethiopia too. We are excited our child will get to grow up with other children from Ethiopia close by. It was wonderful getting to know them and we look forward to getting to know them better in the future.
Not much has been happening with the adoption process, this week we finished the rest of our physical. We weren't able to get into our regular doctor quickly, so we went to the Health Dept and the walk in clinic and it ended up being over $1000 cheaper than we orginially were quoted. We were so happy walking out of there. That was a huge praise this week!!! God is good!!! We also got to see the rough draft of our homestudy. We have our last training session with our social worker on Monday, then we will just be waiting for one set of fingerprints to be cleared for our foster license. We are anxious to keep this process moving!

So Confused...

We are so confused...we are trying to decide if we are going to request one or two children from Ethiopia. We started out wanting two children for sure, then we didn't know, then we did, and now we are back to being unsure. We know that God has called us to adopt, and its on our hearts to adopt more than one child. But we don't know if that means right now, or later in life. Talking to most people that have adopted, they want to do it again. So that is encouraging to hear, and I'm sure if God will provide, we will adopt again. I guess we just need to continue to pray and talk to each other and other people, before we make a final decision. Good thing (yeah right) it takes so long to get all the paperwork back, so we have time to keep thinking!
As far as the paper work goes, we met again with our Social Worker for another training session and we have one more to go. We are waiting for our foster license to come in so the homestudy can be completed. We are also waiting for our FBI fingerprints to be scheduled. Once we get those taken and the I600A form is accepted, we should have the rest of our documents ready to send in our dossier documents. Then we will finally be on the waiting list!!!!!!!! We are really hoping we can have all of this done by the end of April or beginning of May. We'll see how fast we get everything back.

I600A sent in

We sent in our I600A application on Thursday. For those of you that don't know, this is an application to get pre-approval for a visa for our children. After they receive our application, they will schedule fingerprints with the FBI. Then after we get all the results back, we can send in our dossier documents and get on the waiting list!!!! Yesterday we also went the local police station and got our background clearance letters. This week we also got some shots and a couple tests done for our physical. We will finish our physical next week.
Last night Brad grabbed my hand and said "I can't wait until our children get here!" It melted me!! We both are so excited and anxious to meet our children and be the family that God has created for us!
Thank you so much to all the people that have been and will continue to pray for us. It really means alot to us that we aren't doing this alone. God is good!!!

Being Faithful

This process has already begun to show us how God will provide for our needs. There have been many new opportunities arise that will allow us to make a little extra money. We are so thankful that we have God looking out for us and meeting our needs. Last week we found out that we need to have a pretty detailed physical done with a lot of blood work. Since we both work in the school district we have the same insurance that doesn't cover any wellness or checkups, so it's going to be over $1200 each. This was not something we were expecting. But then last night Brad and a friend got the opportunity to start to help fix up a house for a little extra money. When we left our friends house, I told Brad, "isn't it amazing how God is opening all these doors for us?" He told me, "I have no problem trusting in God to provide for us. I know He will open all kinds of doors." I am so thankful to be married to such a faithful man and have such a faithful Lord!!
We have another meeting with the social worker tonight. We need to complete some more of the training. Hopefully she can make sure our I-600A looks good and we can send that off tomorrow. Then we can just wait to get that back and get all the papers ready for our dossier and send it to Ethiopia. We are hoping to have that all done by the beginning of May. We will see!! Yesterday we got an email from AWAA and the wait times have moved up a little, so there is a small chance that we could have our child or children by next winter!!! We are getting more and more excited with everything that is completed and can't wait to meet our children!!

Hurry and Wait

I feel like this whole process is about hurrying up and waiting. We had another meeting with our social worker tonight and we were able to complete all the paperwork she needed, except turn in our physical. We can't get into our doctor until mid-Feb. But other things are being processed in the mean time. She also told us that it will take up to 8 weeks to get our foster care license back. So she is almost done with all her part of the homestudy, but we have to wait for the foster license to complete the process. Tonight we were able to give the tour of the house. We have heard horror stories about these, and it was no big deal at all. So we had to hurry up and fill out all the paperwork, collect documents, and get fingerprinted and now have to wait 8 weeks. Yuck. Also we have to wait to get our passports to be able to turn in the I-600 documents, so it could be up to 3 months to get our passports, and then up to 3 months to get the I-600 approval. Ugh.
Brad said this process is really going to test our patiences. For those of you that know us, you know that neither of us are really that patient. We like to get things done, not wait for them. God will really be working on us throughout this process. Please pray for patience for us!!

Shirts for Shoes

I found this link yesterday, and I thought I'd share it with you too! Here's a link to a Valentine's Day initiative called "Shirts for Shoes". Each shirt sold will provide a pair of shoes and a shirt for an orphan in Ethiopia.

Kari Gibson's "Simply Love" and HopeChest have gone in on this project together to share love in Ethiopia. These children simply need love and we can help by giving them a new pair of shoes and a new shirt.

Here's the link:
http://mycrazyadoption.org/hopechest-valentines-day-project-ethiopia-shirts-for-shoes

Let's make a difference together for the orphans in Ethiopia!!

Busy Week

I feel like we've had a busy, productive, and exciting week. This week we had our first meeting with our social worker to start the homestudy process, we got fingered printed for DCFS, listened in on a conference call from Ethiopia, got assigned a family coordinator at AWAA, filled out lots and lots of paperwork for the homestudy, and got all the paperwork to start on the dossier process. Tomorrow we are getting all the pets their shots to prove they are up-to-date.
It's so interesting to hear everyone's reaction to find out that we are adopting. Some people are so excited and treat it just as if we said we were pregnant and going to have a biological child, and others wonder why we are doing it. We've been asked many times why we haven't gone to a fertility clinic and then they say it's nice of us to adopt. It's so not about us. We truly feel God is wanting to start our family through the gift of adoption. Some people talk about adoption as their paper pregnancy. I can see what they mean, because this is an exciting time and there is always something to look forward to. Everyday we get to do something that gets us closer to our child. Some days we get to fill out papers, take a class, meet with someone, and somedays we get to pray for our child and pray for guidance and wisdom during this whole process and just get to dream about the future with our children. I feel that Brad and I are definitely growing closer to eachother and learning how to rely on eachother and God in a whole new way. This is an exciting journey that God is letting us take and leading us on and He is teaching us to trust in Him to provide for us through this. It's easy to have hundreds of reasons not to adopt- we don't have the money, it's going to be hard, it's going to take a long time. But there are better reasons for us to adopt-God has called us to and He will provide for all of our needs.

1st Meeting

We had our first meeting with our social worker tonight. She gave us the largest pile of papers to sign and fill out. We know what we will be doing for the next week. We are being optimistic and planned our next meeting for next Tuesday, so we have to get it all done by then! The first thing that has to be done is filling out papers to become licensed foster parents. This is a requirement to adopt. There are so many questions to fill out, but it's interesting to see what we will learn about ourselves and eachother during this process. Next we have to get copies made of all these different forms; birth certificates, marriage license, etc. We also have to make plans to go get fingerprinted soon. It's exciting to know we have something to work on and that we can accomplish something, even if its one paper at a time.
Thank you for all the continued prayers, there are a lot of things that need to fall into place during this process, and it won't be done without God's hand in it all!!!