Step one question - (Thanks for asking Nikki)

A Home Study - (at least my broad knowledge of it) is exactly what it says. A person (in our case, probably a woman) will come to our house and check it out. She will also visit with us. Basically we pay her a sum of money to come and say whether or not we are fit to be parents and whether or not our house is good enough to raise a child in. (not stressful at all)

And yes I have conflicting views on this as if we could conceive a child on our own we wouldn't have to have a home study. At the same time, this gives the lawyer/agency the ability to say to the birth moms that yes, we have met the couple and their house has been checked out and they are good people with a nice home.

THANKS for asking a question, I hope I explained it well.

STEP 1) meeting with the lawyer

Well, we met with Doug Keeling today - he is the adoption lawyer that our aunts and uncles recommended to us. We had a nice meeting and were very glad he agreed to sit and visit with us.

I wish I had more to share, but it was all basic questions that have no direct answers. How long do we have to wait? Um well is all depends on X, Y, & Z. How much will this all cost? Um, well that all depends on X, Y, & Z. blah blah. He did a nice job of giving us general ideas and we appreciated that greatly.

He is going to be sending us the 'paper work' soon (which, by the sounds of it, if you thought buying a house had a lot of paper work you were wrong) We will also need to get going on our home study and he gave us a recommendation as to who we should call for that.

AND ....... We need to get working on our portfolio - I am NOT excited about this part. I just can't imagine trying to put a portfolio together to make someone think we are good enough to raise their child for them. If you have any good suggestions, please let me know when you leave a comment.

That is it for now. We will let you know when we get our home study scheduled. That way you can help pray for that too.

THANKS - (oh and I will be posting soon about a suggestion the lawyer gave us - to put it shortly please feel free to share our website and or just let everyone you know, know that we are looking to adopt, you just never know who is going to know someone) More later...

THANKS

We want to say THANKS to everyone who has said such wonderful things to us and are extended prayers for our journey. We are getting excited about how our lives may change in the next few years and can't wait to make some progress.

Speaking of that - we have set up a meeting with a local adoption lawyer. We meet with him on Friday the 27th early in the a.m. We have spoken to him on the phone already and have gotten some literature from him so already know some basics about how he handles things, but wanted to meet with him in person to get a few more questions answered.

We want to say a special thanks to Joe & Mary and Scot & Deb. Mark and I are blessed to each have an aunt and uncle to lean on for advice and words of encouragment. Both of them actually HIGHLY recommended the lawyer we are going to see next Friday as well, which gives Mark and I some comfort in his character. Neither couple could say enough nice things about him.

We will let you know how that goes.

Thanks again for all your encouragment and prayers.

WELCOME

Hello everyone - I'm glad you found the site. I hope this works as well as I think it will to let everyone know how this journey goes for us.

I, obviously, hope that I can be posting exciting news on here soon.

Enjoy!

just the beginning

The reason for this blog as I'm sure you know if you are here and reading it is that Mark and I have decided that it is time for us to look into adoption to start our family. This is not an easy topic to discuss so we have decided this blog is the best way for us to inform everyone of our journey without having to make a million phone calls and or talk about it when we may or may not be comfortable doing so. You may leave comments/questions here on this blog and that would be a much easier way for us to answer your questions and we may only then have to answer the same question once instead of 100 times.

We are just at the beginning of the road, and have a lot of work ahead of us. We are just now contacting differant agencies to find out about them and their process. We are also looking at other avenues and are feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the choices. It is hard to know what is going to be right for us, but we have faith that through prayer and research we will make the right choice. We appricate all the prayers that have already been sent our way and would greatly appriciate your continued prayers for us as we go through this journey. This is not the path we had in mind for ourselves but know that God's plan is running it's course and that there is a baby out there needing us and we will be waiting with open arms.

As soon as I have any more information I promise I will post it, but it may be a little while before we choose an agency and or lawyer and or .... and or .... one of the other million choices we will let you know via this blog.

Thanks again for your prayers.