Our Adoption Journey: June 2012

Our approved home study came in the mail today!! We already knew we were approved and had read a rough draft, but it was so amazing to see the real thing. I honestly felt a little nervous just holding it. So now we are legally ready to adopt at any time! It is going to be strange now without having something specific to focus on. This entire journey we have been focusing on something that need to be completed, whether by us, our social worker, or someone with the adoption agency, and now there really isn't anything to fill our time (other than just waiting and praying of course). Well I take that back, I guess now we can turn our focus to fundraising. As I'm sure I've said before, adoption isn't cheap. We are trying very hard to do as much as we can without creating any debt. Some people have been saving their change for us, and you would be surprised at how quickly that adds up. The change is actually the main reason we put the donate button on the blog. I felt weird doing it, like I was begging for money, but please understand that is not our intention at all. It just seemed to be the easiest way for people who don't live close to send the money they have collected. We are working on several other ways to raise money. In fact, a friend of a friend is a 31 consultant and has offered to do a party as a fundraiser for me! It is going to be on July 14th, and if anyone is interested in attending, please just let me know. Thanks again for all of your support!

Here it is!! The most beautiful paper I have ever seen!

I can't believe it has been an entire month since my last post, it feels like just a few days. As you know I am a teacher, which for me means May is the craziest, busiest month of the year. I read somewhere that the last week of school alone is enough to make a person appreciate summer break, and as all my teacher friends know, this is so true! Anyway, on to the real reason I blog. Even though we have been waiting the entire last month, it has been incredibly fun, and there is a lot to update everyone on. First off, we finished our scrapbook!! It took a lot of time and help from a friend, but we got it done. It was a lot of fun to create it, and look back at all of our memories. It was also emotional creating the letter to the birth family. It's a lot to think about when trying to tell them about us and our lives, all while making sure they know we are thinking about them, their bravery, and how difficult this decision must be. We also got the nursery painted! Mike did an excellent job and it looks awesome! I'm adding pictures to the blog of everything we have done. We went ahead and purchased some of the big items (crib, dresser, bookshelf, and car seat), because of an excellent deal that we couldn't pass up. Next thing is we hired an attorney! Mike's attorney with work recommended a guy to us, and he seems like a great guy. He has done a lot of work with Harmony in the past, and we are really excited. It feels really good already having a contract with someone. In case something happens quickly, that is one less thing for us to worry about. Now, on to the most exciting part! Even though our home study stuff was finished up a month ago, we knew it wasn't actually legally written out. Our social worker had told us it would take her a while, but everything was there and together so if something were to come up and we needed immediately, she could have it to us within a day. So, we were waiting patiently until Wednesday when we just couldn't handle it anymore (I mean seriously it had been a month, that was a long time to me), and so we emailed to see how it was going. She said ours was the next one to be written, and she would have a draft for us within a week or so! Well, skip to Thursday night, we were going to sleep when my phone beeped notifying me of an email. As always, Mike started complaining about me having the phone upstairs when it should stay downstairs so it doesn't bother him. I usually just ignore the beep, but for whatever reason this time I checked it. It was an email from our social worker with a draft of our home study attached for us to read over and approve!!! I jumped up to download it and attempt to proofread it, but realized I was too sleepy to catch any mistakes. So first thing Friday morning Mike and I both read it separately, and emailed her back the changes that needed to be made (a couple of dates were incorrect, but that was it). Now she signs it, our agency representative signs it, and everything is completely official!! I'm sorry this post has been so incredibly long, but I have one more thing. We wanted to say THANK YOU to all of our family and friends who have been saving change for us. If anyone has been saving change for us, let us know when you are ready and we will be more than happy to come pick it up! Also, if you are saving but don't have a baby bottle to put it in and would like one, we will get you one. It's a good way (for us anyway) to remember what we are saving for. We are also going to put a paypal donate button on the blog so that the people who are helping, but don't live close can just send it that way. Thanks again for all of your love and support! Please continue to pray for us, baby Gray, and his or her birth family as we continue our journey!