Almost done....

We spent over 3 hours working on ONE packet of paperwork for our Home Studay. I think we completed 20 pages (including some stuff I had already done) We have about 2 and 1/2 pages left. I spent other time working on some other papers. However the 3 hours was BOTH of us talking about the answers. I am much calmer about things and will be even more to know it is all done after tomorrow afternoon. Let me tell you...the stuff we did today wouldn't be done by just anyone. You have to REALLY want it.

Questions, questions, and more questions

2 hours of working on answering questions and we MIGHT be half way through. Time for a nap to refresh and then back at it. Can you say overwhelming? At least it is the weekend that we are working on it. It will be nice to get it finished. I like doing something besides waiting.

There is always something to do

Today was a "calm" day on our journey. I came home from school and called the doctor to see about the documents I was waiting for. The part time nurse was there so I didn't learn as much as I could have. She said that on Wednesday the other nurse was working on stuff and it was on the doctor's desk. So.....HOPEFULLY that means it won't be too much longer. Thanks for the additional prayers. We really appreciate them. I scheduled physicals since I know it takes awhile to get in for "healthy" stuff. My appointment is April 13. Wow! That is a long time away when paper work will be on hold again until the next list of stuff gets turned in and cleared. If things work out to use Catholic Family Services, we will be in a push to get our home study done. It has to be completed in 120 days after application. I was told it rarely ever takes that long. Our case worker will be going on maternity leave the first of June so we will want to have everything done by then IF possible. Our home study consists of 2 office visits and then the actual home study. If I don't get paperwork in until the middle/end of April, it will be pushing it to get it finished by June first. So--I contacted AGCI to see if any doctor could do our physicals or if it had to be our primary one. She said it could be any one! That is good news b/c I know I can get in sooner then. It is ALWAYS something to think about. I know we need FBI fingerprinting. I was told that once upon a time, the only place to get that done was in SF. My dad works for dispatch and I had him check to see where they do FBI fingerprinting. He thinks any Sheriff's office can do this. That would be awesome as we were thinking we'd have to take time off from school to drive to get them done. I think that is all I know for today. I don't know if these posts make any sense. My mind is a big foggy from time to time. I've done well with the being patient part. However, the control freak in me wants to know when we will get our fingerprints done, when we will get our physicals, blah, blah, blah.....I want to PLAN it out as I am a planner. I guess I need to try to let go of that a bit. That is very hard to do. At least we have decent news today.

The roller coaster continues....

What a day of emotions!!! I heard from Catholic Family Services. They got the agreement from AGCI that they need to sign in order to be able to do our home study. (Yeah) However, the lady I am dealing with didn't have some of the stuff they needed. (Boo) Then she said that her supervisor probably had the stuff in the SF office. (Yeah) However, she wasn't sure where some of those documents were at the current time so she would have to look for them. (Boo) After much communicating, it is still hopeful that CFS will be able to do our home study. I'm not going to feel better until we are 100% sure they can do it. The thought of using this other agency that we aren't happy with or having to start over at ground zero with another agency is hard for me to handle. The lady from CFS has been very reassuring that it would work out and they would be able to work with us. So--we wait for paperwork to all come together b/t AGCI and CFS. I did get a letter from one doctor today. (Yeah) That means that it will be sent to AGCI soon if it hasn't already been sent. I still have one doctor to get ahold of. I will call tomorrow and hope I get good news, but am not holding my breath. (Boo) Here again....I am not going to think too positive until I know for sure it is done. The ball can really get rolling when we get all these supporting documents turned in. This weekend we are going to sit down and fill out lots of stuff for our home study. IF we don't work with CFS, the information we compile will still need to be used in a home study. It will be time consuming. We have to fill out our relationships growing up and how our parents parented, etc...We have to fill out things about our marriage. We have to fill out about our parenting styles, etc...We have to fill out stuff about our faith, etc....It will be a chore, but will be nice to get it done. (or close to done) We can't send in this paperwork until our formal application is approved. However, we CAN have it all ready to send it as soon as we get the go ahead. I don't know if you are able to follow all of this. It is clear as mud some days for me and I'm dealing with it. :) Some of you have wanted to post comments and can't. I don't know this, but I wonder if you have to be a follower to be allowed to post. I'm not sure. Until next time......

Things to share

Yesterday we got our Home Study packet in the mail from Catholic Family Services. She wanted me to have the paper work so we could start on it as soon as we knew IF we could work with them. She emailed me today and told me that she talked to her supervisor in Sioux Falls. They did a home study for a couple that was using our agency (AGCI) in 2009. That family was also adopting from Ethiopia. So---we SHOULD be good to go, but have to wait until we get the official word.

Silly things we think about and talk about. We are going to add a bedroom to our house. Of course the new room will be OUR bedroom. I think that sounds fair. :) It will be a tiny bit bigger than what we currently have. We thought we'd just have the newest addition to our family have our bedroom. After much discussing, we are going to have Lexi move into our current bedroom and then the new one will get Lexi's bedroom. So that means 2 rooms to paint. Good summer projects. Out of the blue today, I wondered how we will paint the new ones room. It is crazy b/c do I say the new baby or what? We wanted a child less than a year, but it depends on how old he/she is at the time of referral. If he/she is 3 months and we wait 4 months to travel, he/she will still be a "baby." If he/she is 12 months before referral, he/she could be a year and a half before we get to bring him/her home. It is all a guessing game at this point. So--I don't know what to say. Oh well! Anyway--I LOVE the chocolate brown and either pink or blue together. So, we are going to paint the bottom half of the bedroom brown and then when we know if it is going to be a boy or girl, we will paint the top half accordingly. This is a big deal that I'm making this decision without having bedding picked. What if we don't have brown/pink/blue bedding? I don't really care at this point. We don't have anything at this point. So time will just tell. I do have more than enough time to decide what colors to paint the bedroom. However, it is stuff like this that is fun and something we can do to help during the wait time.

A small prayer request

Okay--if you are following this blog, you either A) care about us and want to know what is going on (and maybe want to help) or B) just are snooping b/c you have nothing better to do. It is pretty sad if my blog is your entertainment. HA! :) Either way I decided to go out on a limb and write this. I know God put us in the situation we are in. I know He will help us with every hurdle we come to. I know that we have the love and support of so very many. So--with that being said, I will put in a small prayer request. Part of me doesn't even think I should mention this b/c there are going to be some much bigger hurdles to cross in the future. For right now, we need help clearing a hurdle. We are still waiting for our application to be approved. We are waiting for doctors letters as support documents to be sent to our agency. We have been able to do a few things even though we are waiting. I know this is all about waiting. It is a HUGE waiting game and a true test of patience. Very soon we are going to be sitting and waiting with tons to do, but nothing we will be able to do until our application is approved. We will be at a total standstill. So--it is SO important that these doctor letters get to our agency soon. I have prayed really hard about this. I know that this too is a test of patience and trust. I'm TRYING to just relax and pray about it. Any of you that know me well know that the word relax is not in my vocabulary. Those of our faithful followers that are reading this, I ask you to please take a moment to pray that God places urgency in the hearts of the doctors that need to get letters written on our behave. I'm going to call at the end of the week to see how they are coming in the process. It is my hope (and prayer) that I won't need to call them.

Changes, changes, changes

One thing that I'm slowly learning is how quickly things change in the adopting world. Last night really had me down in the dumps. Try to follow this. We are working with the agency called All God's Children International. (AGCI) They are based out of Oregon. Obviously we need to get a SD based agency to do our home study. There is an agency that AGCI works with in SD. We contacted them. I haven't felt comfortable with them from the beginning or we would have chosen them since they are in state. I talked to AGCI and they didn't agree with the costs this other agency was going to charge us for the home study. There was a huge difference. I am not sure why. However...what could we do if they were the only one we could get to do our home study? AGCI said we could find a different agency to do our home study as long as they met certain criteria IF we could even find someone that could/would do it. Bethany Christian Services is also is SD. I was VERY impressed with them in the questioning stage of the game, but just felt AGCI was the way to go. Also--AGCI has their own orphanage in Ethiopia. Bonus! So last night I was looking for places I could call today to see if they could do our home study. Bethany will not do them for other agencies which I TOTALLY agree with. So I was in quite the tizzy wondering if we were going to have to switch agencies to prevent us from having to have our home study done by the one that made me so uncomfortable. I will admit this is the biggest tizzy I have been in. That is so impressive that I've been so calm about all of this. God is teaching me patience and He is teaching me to chill out when it is out of my control. :) I called Catholic Family Services (CFS) today to see if they do home studies and to see if they would meet the criteria, etc....They said "Yes!" They have worked with AGCI before and were willing to do what AGCI wanted/needed. I talked to AGCI and they were mailing an agreement to this CFS. IF they can meet all of the requirements....we will be good to go. The lady from CFS didn't think it would be a problem. She too was great to talk to. She was going to send paper work to us in the mail so we have it as soon as we get the okay. Here is the best part of the whole deal.....this agency is in Aberdeen while the others were in Sioux Falls. It will be nice to pay mileage for a 2 hour round trip instead of an 8 hour round trip. I'm so excited! I hope and pray this works out. So--last night I was down in the dumps wondering what to do. I really like AGCI as they have been wonderful and we are only in the beginning of this process. They make me feel like I'm the only person that they are working with. That is so important when doing what we are doing. I didn't want to leave then, but thought we might have to so we could switch to Bethany to avoid having this other agency do our home study. We would lose ground as our application is already in at AGCI and we'd have to start back at ground zero if we switched. It still amazes me how fast things turn around in this whole adventure. It truly is an adventure! God is continuing to provide. I am reassured more and more each day that this is what His plan is for us. I'm glad we listened. :)

The roller coaster begins

Today was filled with mixed emotions. We got the application in the mail. Yippee!! :) However, I talked to one of the people that needs to send a letter to the agency on our behalf. It didn't sound like they were in much of a hurry to get their information compiled and sent. :( Our application waits for all these key essentials in order to be approved. Until approval, we are at a stand still. It is hard enough to wait. Harder to wait when we are waiting for someone else. So it goes. This is a lesson in patience, right?

Ready for the mail

Our application is all ready to be mailed! :) We will drop it in the mail tomorrow. :) We are waiting for a couple of letters that need to be sent directly to our agency. Hopefully those letters get their soon. We are praying that everything we have to submit is in order and they like what they see. :) We also hope and pray that our application will be accepted sooner than later.

Time frame

I know many of you are wondering what kind of a time frame we are looking at with this process. I thought I'd let you know what I know. They say 3-4 months for paperwork. (I think this is AFTER they receive and approve our application) Referral (when they match us up with a child) process 6-8 months....however, we have requested an infant so that could take up to 12 months just to be matched up with a child. After we are matched up, it could be another 3-4 months until we are ready to travel.

Trying to get our ducks in a row

I'm sure you probably think I just forget to post things on here. Well, there are lots of days when there really isn't anything to post. We are currently gathering all we need to send in our formal application. There are different things we must have to be able to submit our application. So--we are just working on getting our ducks in a row. We are HOPING to send in the formal application next week. I'll let you know when we drop it in the mail. Thanks for your continued support and prayers! It is greatly appreciated!

We get to do something. :)

They got our prelim application and let us know what additional documents we needed to submit our formal application. Finally we get to do something. :) We took a family picture today after school. The last family picture we took was at Christmas which wasn't too long ago. However, due to the blizzard we weren't nicely dressed, no hair fixed, no make-up, etc...I thought we maybe should have a better one. I also took a picture of our house that has to be mailed in with the application. Funny!! Hope they can see the house that is half buried with snow. We have read about all that is coming and all we have to do. It is a bit overwhelming as the reality sets in. This is real and it is AWESOME!!! :)It is nice to be able to get to do something instead of sitting and waiting. The sitting and waiting will be here again soon! Until then....

So it all begins....

I submitted our preliminary application on the 30th of January. It takes 5-7 days for them to review our information and then call us to tell us what other documents we need to have with our formal application. I have waited patiently....really I have. Today I emailed them with a question and they said they hadn't received our prelim application yet. Bummer! Here I had been patient and I was going to have to continue to be patient. I called them to see if I should resubmit our application. They said I should. They also said they would get someone to look at it right away since the situation was what it was. This hasn't ever happened before. Oh--I hope that isn't how this is going to go. :) So it all begins...we wait!