Active August!!

Thoughts, adoption cards ordered, written home study received, more pictures edited! 

Thoughts--

We can't help but search and read others adoption stories, it gives us hope that our day will come. It also makes us day dream about the day we get the "call" that an expecting parent (or parents) would like to meet us, and boy do we want to meet them! We have been watching the families at our agency get chosen and see their status go from "Waiting Family" to "Pending Placement" and we get chills every time! We anxiously await the phone call that changes our lives forever. Will it be a call from our adoption worker, will it be a call from an expecting parent directly, is the child already born, being born or still growing in their mommy's tummy?  Does the mom want to be part of our lives just as much as we want her to be a part of ours? 

We would say we can't wait until our story has a happy ending, but what we really can't wait for is until our story has a happy beginning. 

We ordered our adoption cards last weekend and we should be receiving them in the mail on the 28th! 

Here is a picture of the front and back:)

Front of Adoption Card

Back of Adoption Card

Our adoption worker sent us our completed home study rough draft yesterday! We have some minor revisions needed and then we should receive the finalized one so we can get our profile up on parentprofiles.com  :--)

Here are some other pictures we took for our profile!  

This one I thought was hilarious!! Obviously we aren't using it but it really wants to make someone pick us doesn't it!! HAHAH

Small Update

#5

Hello Everyone! We figured we should give a quick update. Last we knew we were number 11 on the waiting list and we wouldn't get notification until we reached number five. WELL... After 1.5 months we reached #5!!  This means six families have been placed in the last month and a half, that sounds promising to us:) After we enter the book, we then have the opportunity to have our profile seen by all the expecting parents that go through our agency :)

This notification kicked us into high gears! We have to start preparing our profile so when we get the invitation to enter the book we are ready. 

We took some photos to put on our profile and make our adoption business cards with. We will probably only use one or two of them on the actual profile itself and the rest will go on our website! Thank you too Kaylah's mom (future grandma) for taking them! 

We have also been patiently waiting for our adoption worker to finish our written home study so we can put our profile up on parentprofiles.com. We received half of it today to review, and it is looking great! She hopes to have it complete this Friday so we can make our edits and send it back !:)


Thanks for listening!

Kaylah and Jordan

Paper Pregnant!!

Finally we can announce we are officially PAPER PREGNANT! 

If anyone knows where i can get this necklace PLEASE TELL ME

We have been home study approved and we are now able to have a child join our home whenever we are found and chosen. This can happen quickly or slowly. Who wants to take a guess how many months we will be paper pregnant before we get chosen? 7? 9? 12? 18? 

We wanted to wait to take some pictures and make a cute announcement but let's face it, we have been waiting for 8 months and that is long enough!  Oh....we will still take pictures so beware ..

Our next steps: 

Throughout the next couple weeks we are going to be preparing all of our outreach materials. Some of these items include: 

• Photo shoot: we will be trying to come up with creative photos that will make us stick out as a couple for our profile photo.
• Business cards with our information on them: we will be handing these out to family, friends, strangers and more! We will be asking everyone to pass them on! I know it sounds crazy, but almost half of the adoptions last year through our adoption agency were through creative outreach techniques.
• Youtube video: My mom has taught herself how to make creative videos for weddings and other major family events. We will be working closely with her to come up with one that represents us as a couple.
• Jewelry: something our family can wear everyday which will cause someone to ask why they wear it. Maybe a unique bracelet or necklace?

Although we will be doing a LOT of outreach ourselves we still put our names on the waiting list for the family book! There are currently 10 families in front of us. The profile book has a list of 60 families that expectant parents look through when they are trying to find a waiting family. 

So far no morning sickness, but the paper cuts are terrible!!

Home Study Completed!!

Sorry for the delay in getting more information up! We've been so busy since the last post that we haven't been able to get a good update up.

This week we finally completed our home study! 

We spent a couple of hours with our adoption counselor last week getting to know her and helping her get to know us better. It was interesting telling essentially our whole life stories in such a short time, but it was actually pretty comfortable and it helped to better understand ourselves as a couple and help her know who we are and what we're all about.

Yesterday our adoption counselor came out to our house and spent a couple more hours finishing with learning about us and touring our home. Over the two-week period we discussed so many topics about our lives including:

- What our immediate and extended families are like
- What it was like growing up
- How we met, fell in love, and got married!
- Our personalities (including strengths, weaknesses, hobbies and interests, and lots more)
- Our values, morals, and beliefs
- What we expect from the adoption process
- How we plan to incorporate aspects of our child's culture into our lives
- Our thoughts about open adoption
-Our support system and how they feel about adoption

And many, many more topics. We really like our adoption counselor and had a great time getting to know each other. It sounds like sometime next week, she will be presenting our family to the agency for a decision about whether or not they'll accept us into the program, but she told us not to worry. We know the challenges that face us in the adoption process, but we're excited to meet them head on and overcome them together as a family.

We're so excited and anxious to officially enter the waiting family group and start getting the word out that we are officially a "waiting family".

The next week or two we will be preparing our materials that will help us get the word out that we are looking for our little one (and possibly some more extended family).

We should hear early next week if we were officially accepted!

Until then, thanks to everyone for your love and support!

Let the Journey Begin

It's been awhile since we've been able to post an update with any major progress about what's been going on with our adoption journey. We now have more exciting news to share with everyone since mid-April when we finished our Pre-Adoption education program and outreach training!

• Our background checks came back! Usually this takes 4-6 weeks or more to complete, but ours only took one week!
• We completed our giant stack of paperwork necessary to complete the application and got it all submitted.
• We've officially signed up for the home study to take place!

So, what's this all mean? The home study process usually takes a two to three months and involves the adoption agency sending us an assigned adoption councilor to better get to know us through interviews and visits at our home. This way they can ensure we have represented ourselves accurately and make sure that our home is a safe, secure, and supportive one for our future child!

We're even farther in the process now and are extremely excited to get through with the home study and prepare for the next steps in the process. In the meantime, we'll be putting our outreach training to good use and determining how best we can reach out to let people know about us and how excited we are to adopt a child of our own. Hopefully with hard work and determination, we'll be able to find our perfect match as we wait to get into the family book! It can't happen soon enough!