Adoption Provision

Today Shane and I sat down to do some planning. We’re looking at the amount of money we need to raise before traveling to Colombia, and the possible time line. Which would mean raising about the amount we paid for our car between now and… oh… I don’t know… November? That is a little overwhelming!

We’ve put some things on the calendar in the most general way possible – like having a benefit concert/variety show in September, a dinner in October and some Open Studio time here at Studio B plus the Holiday Market in November.

We’re also toying with another idea. You’ve heard of Tupperware and Pampered Chef and products that are sold via home parties, right? Well, I’m giving some thought to seeing if some friends would be interested in having parties in their homes where they host and provide refreshments and I bring a bunch of inventory to offer for sale. The Host/Hostess would gain a gift certificate toward anything in my inventory or maybe a gift basket, something of that nature. We could do games with product prizes and such, a wide variety of ways this could be done. So… it’s an idea I’m processing. We’ve already given friends, family and church people the opportunity to make donations. Someone made the comment about needing to expand the pool of people we’re raising money from, so if our friends were willing to host parties and invite people beyond our circle, that might help. I don’t know, it feels a little weird but raising money always feels a little weird I suppose.

We are also looking into a variety of adoption grants and have started filling out paperwork for those. It’s amazing to me that some of those organizations ask for information and references not already provided in the home study and piles of other paperwork we’ve already completed. Filling out adoption paperwork is like having a second job, one that involves living with little or no remaining privacy. This process is extensive and invasive but clearly any time money is involved, there will be red tape. And so we’ll be doing some research and trying to work our way through a variety of grant organizations and see what God does.

Clearly every dollar we can raise or are granted is a precious investment in our children. And while we’d rather spend our time and resources on getting the house ready for them, providing for their needs or investing in their future, this is what it takes just to bring them home. And that is ok. And so we work and trust that God will provide. Please pray for us, this is pretty overwhelming. We are at His mercy.

Again.

Still.

Paper Pregnant!

Yes! We are FINALLY “paper pregnant” Our Dossier has been mailed to Colombia! That should take about a week to get there, then it goes into translation. The next step will be seeing if they will approve us. Families adopting siblings have been experiencing extra scrutiny at this time, so it seems likely that they will ask us to clarify some information that we’ve already provided in a slightly different format. We’ll see. If they approve us, then another season of waiting could be followed by either of two scenarios: Children will become available on the waiting list and we can ask for them. Or we can wait and be offered a referral and would be offered the chance to confirm or decline the offered children. Declining these children would mean significant delays. Shane believes that about the earliest possible time we could travel would possibly be Christmas. November 2009 will be the two year mark for us. We have asked for three children, two boys and a girl. We believe that this is the direction God has led us, we are aware that this won’t be the easy choice but we do feel that it is the right choice. (Please pray for us.) We need to start another round of fund raising as we’ve just sent off one of the biggest checks yet and they only get bigger from here. Please continue to pray for us. Thank you so much.

Mami & Papi Photographs

This always seemed like such an overwhelming task, to put together the photographs so that our children to get their first glimpse of us. How do you communicate your life in only a few pages, and what does a young child want to see, what do they NEED to see?
And since we are adopting three, we needed to create three identical sets of photographs. So we started with photographs of ourselves. Writing “Mami and Papi” on that cover page had me by the heart, I don’t mind tellin ya.

Then a page for each of our immediate families.
Outside and inside of our house. (the blue ink has apparently taken over our printer!!)
And photos of church, play and school areas. I popped these in the mail this morning to our adoption agency.
I recently dreamt of my children again. The three of them, two boys and a girl crawled into my auto and curled up in the back to sleep. They were vulnerable and needed care and my heart was instantly “all in” as I knew they were mine and worked to provide for their immediate needs. Those few precious fleeting moments made a big impact on me.

This week we’ll (actually, I think we are done but there is more for our social workers to complete) be finishing up the final paperwork for the Dossier to go to Colombia sometime next week. It feels momentous, and this Mami’s heart feels the wait. We welcome your prayers for us, but more importantly for our three children that are out there, for wisdom, protection and grace to be on their lives. Thank you so much.

A bit more progress…..

Well, another several weeks have gone by, and an update is in order. We now think that we have put all, that is right I said ALL, the paper work in the mail that should be needed for our agency to send to Colombia! There was some discussion on whether or not to actually put in our letter of introduction that our preference is 2 boys and a girl, or whether to just leave it up in the air. We finally decided that, while it may take longer to receive a referral, and/or Colombia may choose to ignore our request all together, that this is what we believe we are to end up with, so this is what we should request. We have been going down this road for many years now and believe that we have heard from God, through many different sources, that we will have 2 boys and a girl. So, if this is what we believe why not put it down in writing. If Colombia has other ideas, I’m sure God will work those details out as well. Anyway, All the reference letters, letter of introduction, home study, psychological report, financial statements, ………etc. etc. etc....... have all been sent to our agency. We still need to come up with some photos to send to the children, hopefully we can get that done & in the mail by the end of the weekend. I heard from our agency that IF they get everything in they’d like to try to get it sent to Colombia by the end of next week! WOW, how exciting! I guess now the “wait time” really begins. I guess it will be interesting to see what God does during this time and what happens from here. We’d certainly appreciate your prayers for us and our children during this time. Pray that we will be ready for them and they will be ready for us. And pray for protection for all. We certainly thank each of your for your prayers and support to date.

Notarizing finished

Well, we were finally able to get our medical letters notarized! Thank you very much to our church secretary for going out of her way to help us get this done! Hopefully it will all be in the mail to be apostilled by tomorrow morning and then off the CHI very shortly after that. Another step closer! Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement.

No apostilling today!

Just an update….Unfortunately I was not able to get everything notarized and apostilled today. We are still working with/battling the doctor’s office to get the med. letters notarized. I finally found a person who is a notary who is willing to go to the doctor’s office to notarize the letters for us. I tried to get a hold of the doctor’s office, but was never able to make contact with the doctor’s nurse to determine when the person can stop by. I hope to hear from them Tuesday so that we can get this finished. Because I was not able to get it all done today, we will now have to send the documents to Richmond and wait on them to be sent back and forth, instead of being able to drive them over, have them all apostilled in one day. Oh, well, we will get there, just not as quick as I’d hoped. Thank you all for your support.

Getting Closer Now...

We’re working at finishing up the last bits of paperwork for our Dossier for Colombia. Tonight I wrote the letter of introduction and we’ve completed the application.

We have certified copies of our marriage license and birth certificates and our passports.

We’re hoping to have letters written by our Doctor certifying that we are in good health printed and notarized sometime during the day Monday. That’s been a challenge because the Doc doesn’t have a notary on staff any more, and our original papers were only good for a year so we had to have them re-done. And the staff isn’t crazy about taking the Doctor’s time for little annoying things like this, what a hassle we are to them. So basically we need to find a notary and orchestrate a signing ceremony at the reluctantly helpful Doctor’s office. Our doctor just copied the letter from last year while I was in there the last time, so it’s ready to go. We just need to make the dots connect. We’re hoping that we can get this accomplished Monday.

Shane has letters from his employer and I’ll be typing up something for Hugh to sign in the morning regarding the work I do at the Professional Building.

If Shane can get the printer to co-operate we will have a copy of our most recent 1040.

Our Home Study is finished, that’s been the most amazing document describing our lives and family that I’ve ever seen. It’s like reading the Wikipedia entry on a celeb, only considerably bigger and it's not a persona, it's real. It includes some duplicate information from the Dossier. It also includes a Child Abuse Check, and a Criminal records check. Somewhere in there they checked our DMV records as well, looking for DUI’s. The Home Study process included a series of interviews and a thorough inspection of our home.

The Social Worker who wrote our Home Study is a sweet woman, we loved working with her. She very gently told us that we couldn’t adopt three children in the old house, it was too small. I think we called our realtor the same evening that we heard that and did the final renovations to prep that house for selling. So after we bought the second house and started moving we invited her for another home inspection. It was fun to see her react to this house, four times the size of the old one and so much better for children. I love this house, can’t believe how perfect it is for us and our children.

Our mail order Psyc Evals are back from California, Notarized and Apostilled. That took forever. That just certifies that we are crazy enough to adopt three at once but not sooo crazy that they won’t let us have them.

Our FBI clearance has come in, we sent that off in January of this year. We've been fingerprinted four times (each for something different, but I think one of those was done on the wrong cards so it had to be redone) and now we are approved for 1-3 children by Homeland Security.

We have a paper that says that we are who we are, it’s called the “Affidavit of Names.” No, I didn’t make that up. Could I even make that up?!

We have a copy of our 1-171H form, and I don’t remember what that is anymore. But it’s based on our I-600A petition, if that helps. It’s an Immigration thing.

Three personal reference letters. Even a reference from a friend who thought we should reconsider...

There are a bunch of photographs that are needed to go along with the paper work, I’ll spend some time with that when I can. Can’t believe they don’t want those notarized and Apostilled, everything else needs to be.

And there is some other stuff, an agreement for Post Adoption stuff, release form and a fee schedule. Yeah, let’s not forget the fees!

Shane is hoping to drive to Richmond Monday (oh wait, it is Monday) to have things Apostilled with the Virginia Secretary of State. We’ll get a bunch of things Notarized in the (later) morning then the Apostilled dealy-who just certifies that the Notary is indeed a Notary. Because we all know what a menace to society a fake Notary Public would be. At this point his trip depends on whether or not we can get the last of the medical paperwork finished and notarized as well as the other stack of papers. If he can’t do it Monday then we’ll need to do it by mail, which just takes more time and neither of us are thrilled with that idea.

I’ve met my children in my dreams and held them tight. And through our 15 year journey with infertility we’ve learned some secrets about them whispered from the heart of God in the darkest hours of the night. I don’t know how this will all go from here, won’t pretend to tell the future. I do know that we are very close to a huge milestone in the process. And that is good. Yes indeed, that is very good.