We are still here!
We are DONE with lots of paperwork!
And we lived to tell about it! :)
It's true. We are done with our home study. Actually we've been done since the end of November. We became "officially waiting" then but how our specific process works with domestic adoption is that once the home study is done, then you create a profile book. This profile book is all that birth mothers will have to go off of when choosing a family to place their child with. So no pressure at all to get this book PERFECT! I may or may not have *freaked* out a little about this whole profile book thing. It was just a lot of pressure to put the right things in there. Ya know? There were certain guidelines that our agency gave us. Including things like, making it mostly about Tyler and I to begin with - how we met, our love story, when we got married, things we like to do, then just one page per child telling a little about each of the boys (you don't want a whole book about your kids), making sure that Tyler's voice is heard in the book. A lot of the birth moms are looking for a family where the dad is very involved since that is something they most likely lacked growing up and want for their baby. Other things to include are what a typical day looks like for our family, some of our traditions, our families (grandparents, aunt's/uncles, cousins) and then also writing a page to the birth mom.
So to get all this into a book that looks appealing and and shows our family without coming off as overwhelming. Easy Peasy, right? I had to stop trying to guess what the birth mom is going to be looking for and just write about us. Our family. What we are all about. Needless to say it took me a LONG time to finish this book.
I got it done about 3 weeks ago, it took a little while to get it "approved" and then I got 3 books ordered from shutterfly and shipped to our agency. EEK!
So in other words we are officially, official! It's strange not knowing any kind of timeline. This could literally happen tomorrow or 2 years from now. We are assuming it'll be more of a longer wait since we have 3 kids and families with multiple kids usually don't get picked right away. So just preparing our hearts for a longer wait.
BUT since we have a current home study done, we can take that in almost any other direction if something comes up. Say a friend of a friend is unexpectedly pregnant and is wanting to place the child for adoption, we could pursue adopting that baby. Or any waiting children here in the US or international (if we meet that countries "rules") So our plan is to adoption through our agency BUT we are open to pursuing another route with our home study if something comes up that we feel is right for our family. :)
And where do we stand financially? The total for our adoption is $23,000 and we only have $9,500 left to go until we meet that goal! $9,500 is a LOT of money but compared to $23,000 it seems much more doable :)
If you are reading this and would like to partner with us to give a child a loving home, there are a couple ways you can help. :)
I've had a couple people ask if they could donate directly to our adoption fund and yes that is possible! We've set up an account at youcaring.com where people can donate through paypal. Here is the link:
http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/help-tyler-and-marie-give-a-child-a-loving-home/304118
*ANOTHER OPTION*
Are you a fan of both Coffee AND adoption? Well you can get your coffee and help us out with our adoption at the same time! How? Well there's this really cool site that sells coffee and then a part of the proceeds come straight back to us for our adoption! How awesome is that?!
Here is that link:
https://justlovecoffee.com/rfamilyadoption
AND as always if you want to give a gift that gives twice you can shop my Origami Owl website!
http://mariesdesigns.origamiowl.com/
It's so cool to have a front row seat to watch God working through this adoption so far. Adoption has been on our hearts for so long and we put our "yes" on the table without knowing how in the world we were going to come up with such a huge amount of money. And each step of the way He has provided and I know that He will continue to provide.
And right now I've traded in all the home study paperwork for Grant paperwork :)
No comments:
Post a Comment